Mantafin Posted March 11, 2003 He was sobbing quietly as his mind entered a state of disbelief. How long had it been since he had cried? For some reason he thought of a girl he used to know. His crying stopped and he laid silently on the ground, exhausted and disspirited. He let himself rest, because he decided there was no use fighting the after effects of his twenty two month nap. His mind would have to return to him naturally, and what he was experiencing was pretty normal considering how looped a lot of other people had described their own pod discharges. He completely lost track of time as he lay, absorbed in his own internal world. It was like waking from a coma. The tile floor was cold but the oil in his suit was keeping him insulated. He felt numb, but in his mind the dark fog was dissipating, and he was beginning to feel better. Half an hour must have passed before he opened his eyes again. To his delight, his vision was returning. He looked around the Hibernation Bay with his eyes wide open. What he saw was still pretty fuzzy, but he was able to absorb the hospital-like atmosphere of the place. There were about 70 pods running up and down the sides of the main aisle, ending in doors fore and aft. At the fore was the crew quarters, and behind that was the cockpit. Aft, behind the other door, was the hibernation prep and discharge room, followed by a small cargo bay which had an airlock to the outside. It was a fairly small ship considering the number of passengers, and the roof was about a foot taller than Thomas. He was looking around, and it occured to him that it felt like it was yesterday when they were all standing in this room in their oil suits, receiving the standard speech about operating procedure regarding the hibernation pods. They all had lockers beside their pods to hold personal belongings, because many people felt more comfortable having some of their things beside them while they slept, instead of in the cargo hold. That might've been for superstitious reasons, he realized. He crawled over to his locker, smearing oil across the floor as he went, and opened it up. His dog tags were hanging from the hook on the inside of the door. He hated them but he was overjoyed to be holding something familiar. He threw the chain over his neck, and noticed there was a small box sitting in the locker that he didn't recognize. He pulled out the box with suspicion, and looked it over. It felt like it was probably made out of steel. The bottom had some sort of number pressed into it, but no identifiable markings. He opened up the box and discovered a note and three syringes. The note read: Lt. Thomas Purcell, This is your post-discharge treatment: Blue: immediate Yellow: 2 hours post Red: 4 hours post BMP Johnson Purcell crumpled the paper into his fist. He remembered Johnson from the pre-flight orientations, he seemed like a lush. He was probably in a seedy miner bar right now, drunk off his ass. He was going to face hell for being absent during Purcell's discharge. He took the blue syringe out of the box and tried to calm down. As he pushed the incompetant bumple from his mind, he uncapped the needle and spiked his upper left arm. He felt instantly the military grade pharmaceuticals as they entered his bloodstream and began to rework his body fibers, repairing the twenty two months of disuse. He was going to need some proteins in his stomach to help the rebuilding process, and the drugs caused an intense hunger to appear. All of his thoughts faded in the presence of this insane hunger. If he didn't get his hands on some food, he was going to kill somebody. He grabbed his clothes, boots, and watch from his locker and carried them along with his treatments as he walked towards the fore section of the ship. There had to be some food in the crew quarter. The door wouldn't open. The lock used a biometric identification system which didn't recognize him as a member of the crew, and denied him access. He'd have to go out the other way. At this point, he felt like a lion left in a cage without food. He tried to run towards the other door, and fell to his knees in a reminder of how weak his body remained. He hoisted himself up with his belongings and walked as fast as his tortured body would allow him. He walked the entire length of the hibernation bay with thirty five pods on either side of him, and unlatched the door to the BMP's office. As he pulled the door open, the first thing he saw was the blood. --- to be continued 0 Share this post Link to post
Little Faith Posted March 11, 2003 Okie, you just appear like a bolt out of the blue and start churning out the most well-written stories I have yet seen. 0 Share this post Link to post
Rotting Corpse Posted March 11, 2003 Cool stuff. How long have you been writeing? 0 Share this post Link to post
Mantafin Posted March 12, 2003 thanks for the praise, i hope others are enjoying reading this story as much as i'm enjoying writing it this is an experiment for me, as i haven't done any creative writing in a long, long time 0 Share this post Link to post