A Fiction

Loius Calderone had been awake for some time. How long, he wasn't sure, but he knew he was awake.

Can you dream in cryo?

Loius's last memory was puking as the stasis-techs manhandled him into the barrier solution. To keep his thermal mass down, he hadn't eaten anything in the previous 18 hours (the scripted laxitives had achived their goal hours earlier) and had nothing to offer the gods of retch.

The gods, angry at the insolence of one who denied them their right, took their vengeance. Each heave started low in the gut, like a case of Mexican food poisoning, and pulled in a contraction of pain. Through peristaltic forces, his stomach tryed to exit the locus of pain, and would have, except it was anchored by the small intestine, or so it felt. His lungs, to avoid notice of the angry gods, got small and refused to breathe, each one afraid it would be noticed as a first born.

He wanted one last breath before he drowned in the barrier solution. Just one breath. The statis-operators called it "supercessation of atmospheric oxygenation process" or something similar. Loius had been here before. He knew what was coming. They were going to drown him.

But that was a long time ago.

Now his training took over.

I'm still drunk. Go back to sleep.

Cryo-stasis exit procedures called for the subject to remain motionless till fully revived. Lest frozen tissues get damaged. Microscopic ice crystals will slice through fragile and tender cell walls as easily as tissues frozen solid can fracture.

Lack of attention to his revival led Louis to believe that he was still in stasis and that stasis-techs would be tending to him when he was sufficiently thawed and revived. He was wrong.

Loius willed himself into a deep sleep believing that assistance would be coming at the appropriate time.