Sunshine…Part Three.

I don’t know how long I’m in the darkness but I’m not really all there either…the drugs…I know their drugs are keeping me under…and I sleep deep but it’s ever deeper than the sleep I remember that real sleep was.

I do remember the cold!

Cold unlike anything I can ever describe and it was not just outside of me, but seeping inside of me too.

This wasn’t drugged blackness but a hell I have never known.

I can very slowly feel myself losing my mind…they say your brain doesn’t stop but it does once you’re here…everything gets played and replayed and everything is so slow…actually thinking so slowly forming thoughts feels like hours.

That’s when It gets too hard and I stop, and here when you stop you just…I know that I’m losing it and forgetting things, places, people…even me.

I’m so tired.

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“We’re thawing this one out too?”

~I’m awake? I hear voices, pins and needles and fire fill me.~

“Yeah, some kind of new tech deal.”

~Different voice, two people….men.~

“Nano-remodeling.”

~Three people, this one sounds older.~

“Yeah they’re working on the crispy critters here to see if it’ll work.”

~I don’t understand, I don’t remember…ow this hurts.~

Older voice. “Don’t be crass, we bought these subjects to better understand the exact methodology to run the nano-remodeling. And be careful this man’s a hero. A firefighter.”

“Okay, okay so who are the other ones?”

“Burn victims, suicide attempts, others that were sold to us.”

“Hey I read about this one, didn’t they get doused in oil and set fire?”

“Yes, we’re here to try and help all of them. Get them thawed and stabilized for the process.”

~I hear footsteps leaving but two others still hear.~

~My brain hurts.~

It slowly becomes different, there’s other pains and aches, aches as deep as they go. I’m scared this is very scary.

I don’t know where I am, who I am or what’s going on. Part of me knows it’s a medical place, part of me knows what nano tech is and that they’re using it to fix me? Others?

I know I was sold to these people.

I know I’m at their mercy.

I’m so, so scared.

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***Sonya…

“Miss Thompson?”

Ow…my ears sort of hurt…I’m not used to hearing again.

“Miss Thompson?”

Someone touches my eyelids and their fingers feel like sandpaper and there’s a light as my eye gets opened and I scream, or try to scream but my throat isn’t used to being used and I barely sound human.

But it forces me to move and writhe and twist on the bed.

Everything is pain.

“Grab her!, hold her down she’s going into shock!”

“Why? What the hell’s going on doctor!?”

“She’s been in cryo for ten years and an induced coma before that it’s sense dep shock.”

“Sense dep?”

“No sensory input at all.”

“Oh God!”

“No, more like hell it’s why we’re doing this, they were slotted and held for parts.”

“For parts?”

“If the donors are still alive their organs are always in better shape for transplanting.”

“Alive…”

“Yes, the ones here when Chimera corp. went belly up had viable brainwaves.”

“Viable…”

“They might have recovered consciousness it treated right.”

“Oh my god so she’s….?”

“Been alive and semi functioning with no input for two and a half decades.”

“Will they be sane?”

“I don’t know if any of them will.”

I feel the bite of a needle twice.

The pain fades but the darkness doesn’t come just…the pain fading…

*** Joel…

Everything hurts when I’m awake.

“Joel? Joel? Can you here me?”

Everything hurts worse as I try to move.

“Yeah…” My voice is screwed.

I look around.

There’s a nurse there looking at me or I think she’s a nurse the scrubs look different with this under tunic to them.

“I feel really hung over.”

“That’s system crash, you ‘ve been swarmed.”

“Swarmed?” She passes me water and I take it sipping it. “Oh holy fuck…water’s never tasted this good before.”

“Language mister you’re still in a hospital.”

“Sorry Miss?”

“I’m Kelly, like I was going to say you were swarmed. That’s nano-rebuilt.”

“Oh sounds major, I thought nano-tech wasn’t that evolved yet?”

“Not twenty years ago, so you remember everything?”

“No, just kinda knew that. Heck I’m not sure that Joel’s even my name.”

“That’s something we couldn’t fix”

I nod but take another savoring sip. “So why? Can you explain all of this Kelly?”

“Okay just close to twenty five years ago you were a newly retired firefighter and had been badly injured and nearly killed. You saved a lot of people to in that ire Joel or it says so in your file.”

“Okay.” That’s a good thing…so far not hating this. I have to set the water bottle down….I’m so weak that I’m shaking.

“The HMO officer was dirty at the hospital and he had pushed your wife into signing you over to this company called Chimera Corporation that were collecting people in your situations where there was loopholes in their coverage or in some cases no one there as next of kin and they kept you all on ice until they could sell you all off as parts.”

“Where’s my wife?”

“I’m sorry Joel she passed away eight years ago, but we’ve tried to contact our children.”

“Okay?”

“Okay? Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Oh I’m sure I’m not alright, it’s likely going to hit me later but right now being empty header’s the only thing from me freaking out. Did these people get stopped?”

“Oh yes they were defuncted eleven years ago. But all of you were in facilities all over the globe.”

“So why aren’t we just dead this has to cost a fortune.”

“Truth is Joel it’s all experimental, it’s part nano-tech and part cloning using stem cells we’ve guided into using the nano’s to rebuild all of you.”

“All of us?”

“Nearly a thousand people all told have come out of this relatively unscathed.”

“Relatively unscathed?”

“Some people like you were in induced coma’s then cryo’d for as long a time. Some have had memory loss like you where there stuff buried deep as the brain was saving itself, others went crazy and we’re not sure if they’ll pull out of it, others are completely blank slates and some just are stuck there in a deeply vegetative state.”

“Shit…anybody remember stuff?”

“Only the youngest ones put on ice, five years plus seems to be the memory, mental line.”

“And we’ve been saved why?”

“Technically it’s a military experiment, they want to see how good the swarming tech works for the soldiers. “

“And they used us as guinea pigs?”

“Yes but they’re also footing the bills including recovery and physiotherapy.”

“That’s why I’m so weak?”

“Yes you’re really, really thin Joel from the rebuild, they harvest a lot of parts off of you and most of you is brand new.”

“And new enough that I’ve never worked or worked out even.”

“Exactly, which is why you’re going o be a good boy and do the stuff I tell you too until you’re better got it?”

I fire her a weak salute. “Yes Ma’am.”

…………I’m really weak as things go and it took about three days to get off the catheter and things going enough to use a walker to go from my bed to the bathroom. I’m six feet tall and I’ve got coppery hints in brown hair and green eyes I’m not a bad looking guy either passing for mid twenties instead of my ninety one years.

I feel ninety one right now though.

My age, or body age is a miracle one they’re hoping will hold out, lots of tests…there’s more than just the military involved with this…swarming might lead to human rejuvination.

Who knows what the serious extension of the human shelf life will do to people. I’m so not used to anything like this. Little things are just gone…like my favorite foods, sports…shaving was hard until I figured out I was left-handed.

Very weird to have forgotten you’re left handed.

I’m on the computer when not resting, and I need to rest with the physiotherapy I’m going through. They say that it must have been there being so much harvested that I’m so thin…I look like a famine version of myself. Okay according to things I’ve been looking up a famine version of my college self.

Apparently there’s a whole degree in physical education I have and don’t remember. I was apparently going towards semi-pro hockey and coaching when my folks died in a fire that spurred me into changing tracks. Nothing it’s all just blank.

But I’ve apparently been given several serious awards and commendations during my forty years on the fire department.

Forty years…I don’t feel that inside, I guess it’s from losing everything…My body though, these are going to be long days.

My kids are coming into see me tomorrow and It’s a little scary and freaky, they’re seniors now and I’m in my mid-twenties. And I don’t remember any of them.

Ho-boy…