August 4th, 2326

“Today is August 4, 2326,” a voice said waking you up, “in the city of Helsinki.” It repeated the date four times as you managed to open your eyes for the first time in… wait, in how long? “Today is the 322nd birthday of Dr. Wiggen. Today is the 412th anniversary of RB laboratory opening. Internet bill is 109,503 days overdue.”

The room is dim and you have difficulties making any kind of shapes out. You can’t lift your head and look around. Your arms feel heavy and clunky, like they’re just bags of wet sand sewn onto your shoulders – which are feeling like weeks old cement churning around still in the truck. And there’s a damn itch on your neck. Great.

“What” is what you try to say. “The fuck are you and where’s the bathroom?” Is what you mean to say. Instead of words, however, a dry heave barely crawls out and the sore throat to end all sore throats immediately grasps your neck. You go through what you can do: You can hardly see. You can’t move your arms. You can’t speak any more than a chair. And you’re pretty sure you can’t really remember how you got here to begin with.

“The forecast today for August 4th, 2326 is rainy.” The voice said yet again.

Either your eyes were improving, or the light was sluggishly getting brighter. Maybe both. Probably both, you reason. A ding goes off, sounding like it was in another room, and you hear a sizzle. The smell isn’t far behind.

Eggs.

Eggs and bacon. Glorious bacon.

Even if you can’t remember quite exactly how you got here in the first place – your memory seems to be improving as the room gets brighter – you remember the smell of bacon. Bacon. RB laboratory. Helsinki. Dr. Wiggen. It’s all so annoyingly at the tip of your tongue, mocking you.

You try to wriggle tips of your fingers and find them, well, if not functional, at least responsive. Same with your toes. And you think the lights are finally bright enough to take a look around (it was definitely the lights. Your eyes have always been great, you figure).

“You are awake.” That same voice said, and you tense up. What’s going on? “Please relax as I restore your functionality.”

You can’t see much, yet, but you certainly notice when this damn huge contraption with a long needle slides right above you. “Don’t you dare stick me with that or I’ll disassemble you piece by piece and let you rust to death.” Is what you tried to say. “Arrrchhhh” is what came out. Of course, that needle plunged down into your right bicep. If you could feel that stab you’d be so pissed right now. Though the contraption – the hand you’ve decided to call it – pulled out as quickly as it was stuck in.

Warmth. Sweet warmth flowed through your body. It was like drinking coffee in a cold winter morning, feeling it travel down into your stomach and heat up your extremities. You could almost forgive the hand for that attempted homicide just now.

And like that, you feel your legs start to feel like themselves again and your arms tingle into sensation. You zero in on your neck and scratch that itch. Hell. Yes.

“Functionality nominal” The voice says.

You swing about of the pod, and for some reason you’re expecting to see pods like this one lined up around the circumference of the room. But yours is the only one. But it felt like there was supposed to be more. Straight in front of you, high up on the dark stone wall engraved in white lettering, are the words RB- Cryostasis Arena. RB Laboratories. Cryostasis. Today is August 4th, 2326.

Fuck. They didn’t wake me up.

You forget the bacon – your stomach won’t ever forgive you – and walk straight passed the kitchen, through the open doorway down the hall and into the main office. You remember now. RB Laboratories was supposed to freeze you and send you off to the habitats on Titan. You picked Titan specifically because the low gravity was going to be far easier on your joints and the doctors recommended it. Plus the brochures all had incredible views of Saturn.

You reached the reception area – all the furniture was gone – and looked out the fortified window.

A blood red sunrise shown faintly to the east. Ruins would be the word if you could see structures or any kind of sign buildings once existed. Instead, it looked like heaps of dirt and spires of stone awash in black clouds.

“Today is August 4th, 2326.”