#FridayFlash – Don’t Lose Your Head
Cryogenics, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology
I lie in my hospital bed, feeling the life slowly drain out of my body. It started in my toes and worked its way up my legs. Now I can’t feel anything below my hips. This should worry me, or send me into a panic, but it doesn’t. Death won’t be the end, not for me. I’ve made plans. I’ll just sleep away the years until science can regrow a new body for me. Ah, they’re here now, I can see the collection team out of the corner of my eye. I expected them to have saws, or at least some kind of container for my head, but they don’t. I suppose they’ll do that sort of work away from the hospital. They talk to me, offering reassuring platitudes, but their voices grow dim and I close my eyes. A figure comes for me, and I can’t decide if it is Death or Sleep before the world goes dark.
* * *
My eyes flutter open before I realise I am awake. Panic crashes over me in an awesome wave. Where am I? What’s going on? My eyes won’t focus properly and I can’t blink properly. All I can see is a dim haze of white, traced with dark grey, like crystals of frost on a windscreen. Cold fluid fills my nostrils and ears, and the shouting going on beyond my vision sounds as if it were miles away. Who’s shouting? Shouldn’t I be asleep in the facility? A needle of hope pierces the panic – maybe they’ve found a way to bring me back, to add my head to a new body.
Suddenly a dark shadow passes before the white haze in front of me, and the fluid around me moves. It’s more like syrup than water, and I move with it, first towards the white haze, and then to the side. The voices are louder now, but I can’t recognise the words. I don’t think I even know what language it is. This can’t be good. I slide forwards again and my forehead bumps against the white haze, which feels a lot like glass on my preserved skin. There is another jolt and I slip back into sleep.
* * *
Bright light stings my eyes when I try to open them. There is no white haze this time, no cold fluid on my face, just cool air and battered strip lights overhead. I part my lips and waggle my tongue. I am aware of a body below my neck, but it does not feel like my body. This body feels…alien. The doctors warned me of this, and I look around to try and see where they are. I expect to find myself in a recovery room, surrounded by whatever futuristic technology now exists, but my heart drops when I see cracked tiled walls coated in mildew. Broken ceiling tiles lean against the strip lights, and the only clean thing in the room seems to be the stainless steel bench that runs the length of one wall. There are no windows.
I try to lift an arm, not expecting the nerves to be bedded in yet, but to my surprise the arm moves. I lift it into my view, and recoil in horror. The arm is shiny and black, with scales where my flesh should be, and it terminates in vicious claws. The fluorescent light dances along their serrated edges. What is this? This cannot be my arm. I raise the other arm, and find it to be the same. A scream threatens to erupt but it dies in my throat when my body sits up of its own accord. The rest of my new body matches my arms – shiny black scales covering hard muscle, with long feet topped by more claws. It gets worse when I spot the long tail lying between my legs. It tapers to a razor sharp point, a stinging barb meant only for fatal wounds.
My body helps me to stand up, and vertigo grips me when I realise that the body is friendly. A series of clicks and whirrs unspool in my mind, and even though they sound like the chittering of insects, I understand them. The body is greeting me. Worse, it is glad I am awake. It reassures me that it knows what it’s doing. I expect to feel unbalanced, or unable to walk, but the body takes me across the room in graceful strides. It opens the door, wrapping its claws around the handle.
A maze of corridors lie beyond the door, but the body seems to know where it’s going. Panic and confusion have paralysed me, and it is oddly comforting to let the body do whatever it wants to do. It moves along the corridors with ease, its claws clicking on the broken linoleum floor. I cannot bring myself to call them my claws, even if my head is attached to its body.
We pass a stainless steel cupboard, polished to a high shine, and I sneak a glance at my reflection. The body looks much as I expected it to, but I didn’t expect my face to be covered with the same shiny black scales. Two small buds sit on my forehead – are they horns?
The body carries me onward before I can ponder further. I decide to ask it what is going on. It chuckles – it actually chuckles – and explains that I am in the future, only by sixty years. It was not human technology that thawed my head and gave me a new body – it was theirs. I am theirs.
A crack appears in my mind, and part of me teeters on the brink. I am no longer myself.
We reach a set of stairs, and the body begins to climb upwards, explaining it does not like elevators. I nod, remembering my human claustrophobia. Our claws click on the stairs as we head towards our new life.
