I've decided to post my work in progress. It's kind of long, but incomplete right now. Hope you like it so far!
The Cryonic Stage
It was a cold winter night, and it hadn't stopped raining all night. This was surprising, as it was well below the freezing point, but yet it still rained. All night it rained, with loud, cracking thunder and shockingly bright lightning accompanying it.
All throughout the night Zen laid there in his bed, freezing near to death. He was shivering, and the temperature only seemed to get colder, and colder. Hours were passing by and Zen couldnât sleep, it was so cold. He kept thinking "Will it ever end?" But it didnât end. It only seemed to drag on, for what felt like eternity.
Then it ended. The rain stopped, along with the thunder and lightning, and the sun rose above the horizon, for the first time in what felt like the longest day of Zen's entire life. It had finally ended, but Zen hadnât stopped freezing. "Why?" he asked himself. The answer was simple: It hadn't stopped raining, Zen had just fallen asleep. He fell asleep, but into a never ending nightmare. His body had come out of hypothermia, yes, but had gone much colder. His body was slowly freezing solid.
"Ma'am," said the doctor at Nightins Institute for Cryogenic Research, "Your son is gone. All that's left is a shell of frozen meat. He's dead. Unfortunately, if we unthaw him, his body will fall apart. All over the floor." He said rather unsympathetically.
Zen's mother broke out hysterically crying almost immediately, and had to be escorted from the building to prevent her from attacking the doctor.
"Sad." Said the doctor, shaking his head slightly, "What a useless waste of life."
They wheeled Zen way and into Long Term Cryonic Storage, or LTCS. There is where they held all the dead and beyond repair bodies from past experiments and for long term storage. Zen would stay there for 500 years, the minimum length for all LTCS victims.
But Zen was not dead, rather, his mind wasn't. He could hear, he could think, but he couldn't see, eat, drink, move, breathe, or die. He had to freeze there, through all the wars, through all the genocides, all the elections, all the presidents, and all the lives. He had to listen as dozens of poor souls came in to the LTCS, and all the ones that left. They were all dead, but their bodies were still intact, rather than being burnt into cinders and ashes or rotting 6ft under. That was a fate he was wishing for, every moment he was alive. He couldn't die though. His body was frozen in time, never changing since the day he was put into cryostasis.
He had to live through all the family members who came to him once a week, thinking he was dead, when he wasn't. He had to live through all the family members get old, and eventually die. Then the new generation would come only once a month, until they died. Then their decendants would come only once a year, and then he felt like little more than an exhibit. Then they stopped coming altogether. He was now officially alone in the world, with no family, no friends, and no life.
Each day came and went, moving to the next torturous day, knowing that only in 500 years he would be released from this hell that he was in. This hell was a frozen one, however, and he wouldn't ever die. First 50 years went by, and slowly but surely, 100 years. By this point the world he had lived in was gone, and a new one had taken over. He eventually figured out a way of passing the time: He would work on his memory. He would train his mind to exactly when and who left, as someone left at least once a month. He would entrain this into his mind, and write a mental story about that person. His stories would be only written to him, and he would read them in his mind.
Slowly, following this routine of getting through hell on Earth, 150 years past by. He began to wonder why God had put him in this situation, and began to wonder why he was here. He knew why he was here, in this grassy field of the mind, freezing to death. He had gone into that chamber of his own will. He began to wonder why this had been done. The doctor . . . that doctor . . . that evil thing. He had told him there was a 95% success rate for experimental cryostasis freezing. He began to think. How could there be such a high rate? Unless he was freezing millions of people, that was impossible. There were thousands in LTCS, maybe more. But why? Who knows. He is dead now, so it matters no longer.
He took up his routine again, but making longer, and longer stories, including how the doctor had killed the poor souls. He was a murderer, and Zen knew he was rotting in Hell. Now 200 years went by. LTCS victims started coming in less and less. Until, 221 years into his prison sentence, they stopped coming in and out.
