Stasis sleep. That was what they called it. To Theo, it sounded like something out of a science fiction novel. Then again, what they were attempting to do was not too far off of that mark. Send men and women into space, not just to visit a planetary body and return, but to colonize. Humanity was preparing to escape the bounds of Earth permanently and begin to live among the stars. Even so, the journey would still take six months to reach the planet. That meant a great deal of food, water, oxygen, and everything else a human would need for that journey. Add in another hundred colonists, and they were looking at a very large logistical obstacle. What if the colonists could sleep through the journey? They would need a minimum of nutrients and oxygen while the colonists slept. They would almost literally be put on ice, kept just alive enough to function once they arrived at their destination. Additional ships would have the supplies needed to build the colony. They just had to make it there without using too many resources. A colony on Mars within ten years. That was the goal.
So Theo had volunteered, along with nineteen other, to be put on ice. They were that weird mixture of individuals who enjoyed doing math as much as they did going to the gym. All were fit, smart, experienced. Engineers, scientists, soldiers. Theo was part of the Army Corps of Engineers. He has extensive experience helping rebuild entire countries during the last brushfire war. Broad shouldered and barrel-chested, he was strong, powerfully built. He would also eat through half a ship’s worth of supplies if he was awake for the journey.
The test was supposed to last two years. Mars would be just the beginning. Some of the moons of more distant planets were promising for supporting life, as were larger asteroids for mining operations. If, after two years, these individuals could wake up, work, crunch numbers, and be functioning human beings, it would be promising for long-distance journeys. Some of the more ambitious individuals were already talking about Alpha Centauri as a goal. A sleep lasting a generation.
Two years turned out to be so much longer, however…
A beeping noise was the last thing Theo heard when he went to sleep, and it was the first thing he heard when he woke up. Like a metronome, once every second, along with a dull red light that flashed. His throat was dry, and his mind was fuzzy. Like waking up from a bad sleep and a hangover, but multiplied by about twenty. His vision was blurred, and it felt like he was going to vomit. He made to sit up, and cracked his head on the top of the capsule that held him. He winced in pain, gave a hoarse groan of pain. On a screen to the right of his head, text flashed up on the screen.
OPERATION RIP VAN WINKLE
AUSLANDER, THEODORE A.
SPECIALIST
ARMY C. ENGINEERS
STATUS: GREEN
The capsule opened with a whooshing noise, the stale air flooded the pod. clutching the edge of the metal frame, Theo leaned over it and wretched, his chest heaving, and he spat out bile. Taking a deep breath, he tried to get a sense of what had happened and where he was. The test. Two years. He hoped the pay was worth it. Two years in that pod was more than he’d make in fifteen doing his regular job with the army.
“Fuck,” he managed, the words dry and almost a whisper. It was about then that he realized something was not right. Where were the doctors, nurses, and everybody else who was going to be asking him ten million questions. He shouldn’t have gotten far enough to get over the side of the capsule, much less try to heave his empty stomach up onto the floor. Somebody should have been there to restrain him, talk to him, give him a goddam glass of water.
His vision was starting to clear. Aside from the blinking inside his capsule, there was no lights. That was not good either.
“Hello?”
His words were quiet as they came from him, but in the dark it was as loud as the roar of a stadium during the Super Bowl. His name continued to flash on the screen. STATUS: GREEN. He looked down at himself. His muscles were still there. He did not feel weak. No more than after a really, really bad night out on the town. His blue jumpsuit looked as neat and clean as the day they had put him to sleep. He did not have any shoes on. Theo tried again to sit up, and this time the wave of nausea passed after a moment. Swinging his legs over the side, Theo’d whole body tensed when his feet touched the floor. Stone. Not gravel, but debris. Concrete, cracked and rough, but with those defined edges which were made by man. “Shit.”
Gingerly, Theo attempted to stand, keeping one hand on the capsule. Surprisingly, he was not dizzy. His vision was nearly back to normal now, but it was so dark as to be nearly useless. He was trying to think. Why was it dark? Why was nobody here? His brain still wasn’t working properly, still felt sluggish. He could see one of the other pods, next to his, looked like it was open. The dim light from inside his capsule was not reflecting off of the top of the glass and metal.
Shuffling his feet, still keeping one hand on the edge of his capsule, Theo slowly made his way around to the other capsule. It was looking more and more like his word of the day was going to be “shit.” The capsule’s front had been broken. A chunk of concrete the size of his head had smashed through the top, and had caved in the chest of the woman inside. At least, he remembered that she had been a woman. There was little left of her now, aside from a skeleton inside the blue jumpsuit. Theo’s breathing began to quicken, and his head was rapidly beginning to clear as his blood pumped more quickly. He let go of the capsule, and made his way around the pod with the dead woman, and made for the next one.
That was when he found the first body. His bare foot kicked it, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Like the woman, this one was little more than a heap of bones inside a uniform. A piece of mortar had fallen straight onto the man. The helmet he wore probably protected his head, but it did damn little for when his spine was broken. Licking dry and chapped lips, Theo fumbled in the dark, looking for anything useful. He nearly sobbed when he found, stashed in the decaying pocket, a zippo lighter. He flipped it open, struck the ignition, and then just stared.
The other pods were all destroyed. Debris had hit them, broken the tops, cracked them, made them fail. There were the corpses of other guards, soldiers who had been stationed here. They had all met a similar fate. Falling debris had killed them. Whatever had hit, it hit suddenly, and had given those inside no time to react. Looking back at his own capsule, Theo could see just how close he, too, had come to death. Debris had rained down around his pod. He could see that smaller pieces had been knocked off when it opened, but none had been large enough to damage it.
How long had it been? Theo did not know how they were supposed to be woken up. He had assumed that the scientists, the ones who were in charge, would wake them up when the time came. If there had been nobody around to end the experiment… What made him wake up now? Perhaps it was the end capability of the capsule to sustain him, and it had aborted automatically. He did not know.
With the dim illumination which the lighter provided, Theo saw something that would make him feel a lot better. A pistol, strapped to the hip of the guard. He picked it up, checked the magazine. Seven rounds. He went to the other guard, and did the same. He would feel a lot better with shoes, and something to drink, but that was not an option right now. Theo could see the double doors at the front of the room. Lighter in one hand, and weapon in the other, he cast one final look around at the destruction laid before him, and pushed open the door. It opened harder than he expected, and he had to put his shoulder into it. He could hear the crunch of gravel and debris on the other side. Not good.
The corridor on the other side was buckled and broken, caved in on itself in places. Doorways had collapsed, and the ruined remains of human beings littered the inside. He did find something that was useful, even if it gave him chills. One of the doctors wore a pair of rubber slipper-shoes. The kind that orderlies and nurses used to keep an environment clean and sterile. He had to take them off of a corpse, but they fit, and it made him feel a little better. A little more… normal. Theo did not dare try to open any of the side doors to other parts of the facility. To open them might invite the rooms, precariously held in place, to fully give way. His feet scuffed in the quiet of the hall, echoing down the hall. Everyone was dead. Shit shit shit.
After what seemed forever, but what could only have been a minute or two, Theo reached the end of the hall. He remembered that the facility was inside what had once been a missile silo. It had been designed to resist nuclear attack, but that had been back in the 50’s. Had the place been hit? If it had been a nuke, Theo would probably be just as dead as these folks. Maybe a natural disaster. In the almost-death of stasis, they might not have read him as being “alive” to rescue. That was the best he could hope for right now.
At the end of the corridor was a thick metal door. He knew it was designed to repel explosions and worse. A rocket could be fired at that door, and it would barely shake. There was a key pad on the door, and it still gave off the faint glow of activity. Through the thick, bullet proof glass, Theo thought he could see movement on the other side. People.
Almost shaking with relief, Theo punched in the six digit code they had given him to get in and out of the place, however long ago it had been. There was a pause, and then a long, low beep, followed by the door swinging outward on heavy metal hinges. “Hello?” he called out to the group outside. “I need some…”
His words trailed off as he saw. Five men and two women. The two women were tied up, one was whimpering and sobbing. A body dangled from the ceiling, flayed and bleeding. For what felt like the hundredth time in the last hour and a half, Theo said what was starting to sound like his catchphrase.
“Shit.”
