>>6294009>>6294055>>6294064>>6294080>>Willpower – the instinct to thrash and panic is strong – but you deny it. Instead, you allow the fear to pass, steady your breath, and wait with grim patience until the mechanism cycles on its own. [+1 Willpower]The lid hisses open with a hydraulic whine, and the cryopod exhales a blast of compressed air into a stale chamber. A deluge of icy fog rolls up and over the rim of the coffin, spilling and pooling across the floor of a some sort of laboratory in an opaque, ghostly cloud.
You lurch upward, collapsing against the edge of the pod as shudders and spasms wrack your body. Violent retches tear through you until a slick stream of fluid erupts from your throat. It clings to your lips, sour and slimy as you expel it from your body. The nutripaste resembles a lime-flavored mucus, cloying and so utterly artificial. You swallow by mistake and nearly set off another round of heaving.
…limes. <span class="mu-i">Citrus aurantiifolial. Subtropical cultivar. High in absorbic acid.</span>
...nutripaste. [i[Synthetic surfactant. Lung protectant. Prevents cryogenic frost lesions.
The definitions are abrupt, sterile and exact. They are like notes read aloud from a manual. You don't remember learning about them.
You don't remember <span class="mu-i">anything.</span>
Then more words intrude, hammering one after another.
<span class="mu-i">Cryostasis protocol. Oxygen saturation: 91%. Carbon dioxide retention: elevated.</span>
<span class="mu-i">Adrenal response: catecholamine surge. Blood pressure: unstable.</span>
Each phrase slices into your thoughts like broken glass, jagged and merciless.
Your hand tightens into a white-knuckled grip on the cyropod <span class="mu-i">-titanium-alluminum alloy, tensile strength in excess of 1,100 megapascals, just short of the grade used to manufacture spaceships</span>.
The the taste in your mouth stings with ozone <span class="mu-i">-triatomic oxygen, unstable, reactive, toxic in high concentrations, indicative of arcing and malfunctioning electronics or circuitry.</span>.
The flow accelerates. Somewhere in your mind, a mental dam breaks.
<span class="mu-i">Condensation. Gas expansion. Ideal gas law.</span>
Every flicker of the failing lights <span class="mu-i">-fluorescent cathode, lifespan near expiration.</span> Every heartbeat <span class="mu-i">-132 BPM and rising, sinoatrial node faltering under sympathetic overload.</span>
There's no stopping it. Each detail arrives with perfect clarity, a sterile avalanche of data points cascading through your skull. Facts without context. Knowledge without memory.
Every detail is vivid. Every word precise.
There is no silence in your head. You are drowning in a torrent of sterile definitions and chemical formulae that flood your senses and leave no room for <span class="mu-i">you</span>.
(cont.)
