The Long Sleep

I

He was not dead, but nearly so.

Many times, the heavy breath of the void — cold, sweet, slow, and fetid — had been inhaled and exhaled over him. But it had failed to claim him.

For an inestimable length of time he had seen nothing except a hazy light emanating from an unknown source, filtered through (it seemed) the underside of a cosmic fly's unfurled wing: translucent white streaked through with pale blue veins. He had heard nothing at all in that time: not the breath of the void nor his own breath. He had required no nourishment. He had needed no entertainment. He drifted in syrupy warmth which had no odor, and received no tactile stimulation. As a substitute for the womb, this place, whatever it might be, was without parallel.

Perhaps because of this lack of stimuli, he had not even entertained a single thought in all those hours. Mindlessly, he had drifted, swimming down rivers of nothingness… He existed as much like a vegetable as like a man, insulated from everything except his own greatly reduced bodily functions.

All this changed in an instant.

The distant, blurred light burst apart and showered down onto the cosmic fly's wings, setting them afire instantly. The flames greedily consumed the veil. The warm air was filled with the shrill, awful shiek of destruction.

He was heaved abruptly upwards into dim purple light and cold dry air.

He was naked upon the couch that had risen from the long metal cylinder which he had inhabited during his sleep, but he was not the sort of man to be diminished in stature by the removal of his clothes. He was six-two, slab-shouldered, pinch-waisted, lean, and very broad across the chest. His arms and legs were roped with compact muscles, the result of weight lifting which had been performed until further development would have been cumbersome and detrimental.

In the background relays clicked.

Computers chattered as they produced printouts of his physical condition. Overhead, suspended from the ceiling, a teleprinter had flashed with dull green light when the cylinder opened, and now it was marked by white letters which drifted across from left to right: heartbeat: 92/ respiration: 35 per minute/blood pressure…

Like unseen gods of concrete, heavy machinery growled in the floor, while hydraulic arms pivoted his couch to the right and angled it toward the floor. In a few seconds the couch had been brought within three feet of the floor, well below the level of the pod hatch from which he had come.

Relays ceased clicking.

Computers stopped rattling forth print-outs. The teleprinter above the cylinder went dark,

The machinery — or the gods — beneath the floor sighed and was quiet. Deathly quiet.

The next move, this animated room seemed to be saying, was entirely up to him.

He sat up, swung to the edge of the couch, and dangled his legs so that his toes brushed the cold floor. Bewildered, he wiped one hand across his pale face and looked around for a clue to his whereabouts.

On three sides the white enamel walls were featureless except for a breathcoat of dust. On the fourth side, a door marred the chalky uniformity, as did several observation windows. The room behind those windows contained no light whatsoever. The ceiling of this room in which he had awakened was low and black, fixtured only with a long central light row that provided a minimal illumination like the glow of certain lichens in limestone caves. The chamber measured approximately thirty feet on a side and contained fifteen other pods like the one he had just vacated. Each of these devices was half again as long as a man, fashioned from burnished steel; and each had a well delineated topside hatch the center of which contained a four-inch square of thick glass so that one might see who lay inside. From his current angle he could not see any of the viewplates or the sleepers who rested behind them. Beneath the big cylinders, conduits encased in pipe fed into the floor, out of sight. The pipes were coated with dust; spider webs laced the angles at the joints. Without the steel pods, the place might have been a walk-in freezer for a modern but abandoned butcher shop. However, even without the pods, it was an altogether alien room, utterly beyond his experience.

He was still confused, but confusion no longer preoccupied him. Now, he was preoccupied with a growing fear…

He closed his eyes, counted to ten, opened them again and frowned when the scene remained the same. He had been hoping that it would prove to be a nightmare, that it would dissolve, fade away and permit reality to seep through the illusion. He didn't like the idea of waking up in a place where he could not remember having gone to sleep.

That hinted at madness.

He got off the couch and stood on the cold floor, shivering, exposed, vulnerable.

Where was he?

Suddenly he realized that there was an even more pressing question to be answered: Who was he? He looked down at himself as if he were a stranger. He saw only well ended muscles, unblemished skin, a flat abdomen, a long-distance runner's legs without the scars and knots of competition. He could not remember anything this body had done — anything he had done. His past was a blank. He felt newborn — but with an adult's mental capacity.

Behind him, an electric motor whined. The couch rose on its hydraulic arm, straightened above the open hatch, and lowered out of sight into the pod. The motor died. The hatch slid shut, locked itself with a snick! as final as a bullet in the face.