Fred Aiken Writing

Suspended animation. 

I guess I never realized how quickly time would go by.

Though I suppose it’s all supposed to be an illusion when it’s all said and done.

Like an extended dream. But because there is no REM, it felt like torture. Not the physically painful kind, but a mind numbing condition that never seemed to end.

Some white coats woke me up at 3am, which I guess the time doesn’t really matter, though maybe psychosomatically it made it all that much worse.

What’s groggy times ten?

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t speak.

My eyelids didn’t want to open. I didn’t want to be exposed to the light.

I guess it is kinda like being born again.

Probably just as painful.

I didn’t have any clothes on. It seemed more humiliating than I expected.

In a state of stasis for how many years, I’d lost count.

“You awake?” I heard a voice. I didn’t recognize it. Though why would I?

“Where am I?”

“The future…” I heard laughter. “No, that’s a bit of cryonics humor. You’re actually in our present. But I guess it’s the future for you.”

“It’s time?”

“Yeah, well, I guess it is.”

It took a lot longer than expected, probably because I was so out of practice and groggy, but within about fifteen minutes I was able to kill everyone in the room, five people in all.

They didn’t know they had just woken up a serial killer from cryogenic slumber.

The lab technicians probably thought I was some sort of eccentric billionaire from years ago that had been diagnosed with some crippling disease with the hope that a cure would be discovered a couple centuries in the future.

I guess it’s best not to come to any conclusions.

Though why would they suspect anything?

No one knew in my own time either.

I had killed enough people and stolen enough wallets in my day that by the time I turned forty-two I could retire and live a fairly comfortable life. 

Instead, though, I decided to buy a cryogenic pod and hide away from any suspicion, despite there being none, so that I could do it all over again.

“Welcome, to the future.” An automated voice sounded.

I realized it was a rookie mistake to kill the first group of people I met. I’d be the first suspect.

Good thing I used a fake name when signing up for cryogenics.

But I’d still probably stick out like a sore thumb.

I had no idea what the future might look like, but I assumed two hundred years would radically change the culture.

There might even be the possibility that humans had left earth. That would be a real mind twister. Go to sleep for a couple hundred years and wake up on some foreign planet, like C3-19F in some galaxy lazily named after a Greek god or goddess.

Maybe alien life finally discovered us, and rather than some epic all-out battle, we got along swimmingly with them and the alien species helped us advance our technology to explore wormholes and interdimensional traveling.

People might have the capability to vacation in a version of Chile that never experienced the brutality of Pinochet. And I’d have the privilege of exploring realities that had never met me, and what horror I could spread.

But I was getting ahead of myself. 

I needed to find clothes to change so I wouldn’t be walking around in nothing but my birthday suit. 

I should have taken one of the lab technician’s clothes. But they ended up being a lot bloodier and ripped up in the struggle than I thought.

I didn’t feel as if I had time to explore the lab and find clothing. Perhaps no one would notice me.

That was a dumb thought.

Of course they’d notice a naked man running around with other people’s blood on him.

Perhaps I could convince the first person I met that it was my own blood, that I had been in some sort of accident, and as a gesture of goodwill they would let down their guard, help me by cleaning me up and finding me some clothes, with the added benefit that I could kill them as well.

When I got outside, I found nothing. 

It seemed as if the lab had been relocated since I had been put to sleep in the most remote location ever.

But the further I went out and explored, the more I realized that there was no civilization. Something happened. 

I don’t know what that something could have been.

I guess the only people that could have explained the situation were the technicians that had woken me up and I killed.

Was I supposed to be humanity’s last hope?

I had often wondered what it would be like if everyone in the world was dead but me.

It feels a lot lonelier than I expected.

No one stopped Paul from claiming to be the Radish King. He didn’t necessarily expect heavy resistance from claiming the title, but he certainly didn’t expect no resistance at all.

He bought one farm after another, slowly creating a radish empire that had no rival. It usually never really mattered what the land was used for previously. Paul always repurposed his property to grow more and more radishes.

At one point, it took days of traveling for Paul the Radish King to travel from one end of his property to the next. He no longer had any neighbors.

A representative from the government came to see him. He asked Paul why he needed so much land. To which he replied, “For radishes.”

“I don’t think that many people are eating radishes.”

“I am.”

“So, this is all for personal use?”

“I guess you could say that. I grow and eat radishes.”

Paul was left alone after that visit. No one wanted to question the Radish King of his domain. He sat atop a mountain of radishes readying themselves to bloom from the ground.

I might work out, but then I knew I would have to work out in proceeding days, and I don’t know if I could ever force another person, including my future self, to have to do something that I’m not entirely sure they wanted to do. You know, because it’s a commitment. No one just works out once and then that’s it. Every single day there needs to be a renewed interest in getting on a treadmill, running a few more miles, lifting a few more weights, and constantly straining my body to endure one trial after another, for what? Health. A good body. Self-confidence. None of which do I think I could ever achieve. Whereas eating cheesecake and feeling a modicum of pleasure with my decision I know, empirically, without a shadow of doubt, I could achieve right now, just with a quick strut downstairs to my kitchen and to the fridge. Or, better yet, I could get some more rest. I think I’m tired for once.