I was born in the spring of 1993, and in the winter of 2024 I died.
The year was 2185 and I was 32 years old. I'd been 32 for a long time really. If a doctor were to give me a physical exam they would find the body of a human female in her 30's, but scanners had to disagree. The radiation levels were off and coupled with the genes that predated the Alliance regulations for health, I was a walking history experiment.
Like I said before, I was born in the spring of 93'- mind you that's not 2093, 1993; A 21st century baby. Most people in this day and age would assume I meant 2093. I had friends, relationships, a family and a life. I went to college, played sports, had a job and even fell in love once. Bastard broke my heart but let's not talk about him. In 2018 a man in a black suit offered me a job. He said that they had been monitoring me for some time and would benefit from a program. Part of me was ecstatic when they finally told me what they were planning on perfecting. I, along with what they called a "handful of others", we are prime specimens of the human race. In all aspects we seemed smarter, stronger, and faster- we were perfect. My job was to be a human experiment- one that would actually be recognized by the government. Scientist's apparently had been conducting experiments of cryostasis; you know the freezing of a person. They had already worked out the kinks of the body, brain and organs being shut down for too long for a person to wake up; they worked out the kinks of the brain forming a mental disorder while in cryostasis. What they wanted to see was if the brain activity could stay active along with partial senses: sight and sound. All to see if we could still understand while frozen.
It took me 5 years of intensive training to officially be let into the program. In that time I kept by wits sharp and my body in shape. I was trained to preform tactical drills; able to take apart, put back together and fire a wide variety of firearms and other military grade weapons. I was trained in hand-to-hand combat and survival skills. I was No. 07 out of 14. And in that time I had also made a choice.
I was born in the spring of 1993, and in the winter of 2024 I died.
I watched from a distance as my family and friend's mourned my death. In that instance no amount of preparation that I said I was good on prepared me for the heart break I felt. I wasn't the only one either. Those who accepted the job were also held back as they saw their loved ones fall apart and break. We were given 3 months at most to get back to our senses. It took me a few weeks to get "my head back in the game" but I buried what remained of my guilt deep down, this was a choice I had made and I wasn't about to back out of something big like this; my parents taught me better... In the winter of 2024 I plunged myself into the celestial dotted goo- eyes open and unafraid, and felt blackness swallow me.
It felt like a movie. I watched and heard things partake around me. I watched our new president take the stand; a war end and another begin. I watched as they discovered something in the ocean deep and the leap through a scientific breakthrough take off. It was then that I woke up. It felt like a few hours of my life went by- like a movie; no ache, no pain, no tiredness. Waking up was annoying though, something that I actually dreaded. I coughed up the liquid my body kept inside and kept dry-heaving after that. I couldn't breathe. The people who surrounded me were different scientists than I remembered, I couldn't ask who they were because after they had declared my healthy and stable they left me to rest. An hour or so after the questions started. For every one of mine they had 20. But the biggest question came through as well.
"We would like to run more tests and let your body heal on its own. It'll be the same as it was before. We perfected the ability to heal while in cryostasis."
I and a few of the others allowed our bodies to be used for more experiments. We would occasionally be woken up and told what was going to happen; since most of the time we had to be put under, we would wake up after the experiment was placed and the healing process had finished. They were careful to monitor our health if our bodies rejected whatever they had given us. And as always, months felt like minutes and years like hours sometimes. Always in the form of a movie.
I learned so much in that time. New techniques for survival, new ways to eat, new technology. The scientists would play vids that demonstrated how to work a certain object on repeat for what they told me, at days on a time. Then they would move to a new subject. The scientific stuff never really stuck with me, I could hold a very basic conversation if I could talk but what I remembered the most was technology and survival, most physical.
My time in that celestial-dotted goo seemed to drag on at one point. The scientists packed up and left for some time, the computer programs keeping our education going. They returned but from what I saw they were different; new; strangers. And it went on like this for a while.