by Guy Salvidge
“What time is it?”
“After eight. Come on.”
Ji Tao got up. Her throat was dry and her hair a tangled mess. “Just let me find something to drink.”
Liang's excitement was infectious, and she began to recall her own enthusiasm of the night before. “Okay, I'm coming,” she said, gulping down a cup of water.
Tuan and Yi Min were waiting in the hall near the lift.
“You must have been tired,” Tuan said.
“Where's Sovann and Kalliyan?”
“They've gone down to the ground floor,” Tuan said.
“Is it safe?”
“There has been no sign of the scavengers this morning.”
“No sign of our caravans either,” Liang said. “Come on, Tuan and Yi Min are going to look around the Stores level while we explore the last levels. You've still got the key?”
The key. “Got it.”
They went down. Not having eaten, Ji Tao's stomach felt empty. The motion made her feel sick. The lift finally arrived at the ground floor. Sovann and Kalliyan were waiting for them near the corroded door-frame.
“Still nothing?” Liang asked.
“Nothing,” Kalliyan confirmed. “I think it's safe.”
“Are you coming, Sovann?” Ji Tao asked.
Sovann shook her head. “I'm going to stay here with Kalliyan.”
“Okay.”
The lift doors closed again, and they went down to the Stores level.
“Be careful,” Tuan said. “If something happens to you, Yi Min and I will be stuck on this level.”
“No you won't,” Ji Tao said. “You can still call the lift without the key. We'll leave the key in, won't we Liang?”
“Nothing's going to happen to us,” Liang said. “You worry too much.”
“We won't be long,” Ji Tao said. The doors closed.
“Okay,” Liang said. “Shall we try -6 next?”
“No,” Ji Tao replied. “I want to try the bottom level.”
“If you say so.” Liang hit the button and the lift descended.
The doors opened into darkness, to which they had become accustomed. But this place was not like the other levels at all. The air was colder and they couldn't immediately find a light switch. Ji Tao suddenly became aware of the thin wrap across her shoulders. They stepped forward uncertainly. In the gloom, Ji Tao could discern that they were on the edge of a large chamber. The lift doors closed, banishing the light.
Slowly, they began to see more clearly. It was not completely dark; there were dim lights coming from hundreds of coffin-like tubes arranged in rows. There was a path running through the middle of the chamber.
“What is this place?” Liang whispered. “A crypt?”
Ji Tao searched the wall for the familiar red writing. There it was. “Cryonics,” she said. “What does that mean?”
“I don't know,” Liang said.
Ji Tao crept along one of the narrow aisles, looking at the tubes. There were people inside; they were either dead or sleeping. Each tube had its own array of controls and flashing lights.
“Looks like we found the owners,” Liang said, coming up behind her. “Are they dead?”
“I'm not sure.” Ji Tao stopped and looked down at a pale, unmoving face. It was a woman and her eyes were closed. Her arms were crossed over her chest. “All this equipment must be here to keep them alive.”
“But for how long? Indefinitely?”
“They must have been sleeping here for centuries,”Ji Tao said. Her hands were numb, her breath billowing out in clouds.
“We should get out of here,” Liang said.
“No, let's look around some more.”
“Can't we at least find some warmer clothes first?”
“You go back to the lift,” Ji Tao said, wandering off into the darkness. “You can wait for me there.”
“You'll freeze to death.”
She ignored him. Walking down the aisle, she started counting faces. By the time she had reached the wall, she had counted twelve in each row. Her face was numb, and when she put her hand on the cold tube to steady herself, she felt nothing. Suddenly a yellow light flashed up above her, accompanied by a strident beeping sound. A jet of cold air plumed down from the ceiling, freezing her escaped breath into frozen crystals, which descended slowly. Someone was calling out to her but the sound was a long way away. Too far. She noticed then that all the lights on the tubes were red. Perhaps the sleepers were all dead. But look there, at the end of the row—the lights were blue.
Her lips were blue, and her head was resting on the floor. Someone was dragging her by her feet. It felt good to rest, but now she was starting to wake up again. Light surrounded her.
“What happened to her?” Tuan was saying.
“It's freezing down there,” Liang said. “She wandered off.”
“Are you all right, Ji Tao?”
Ji Tao wanted to say yes, she was all right, but her lips weren't working. She wanted to tell them about the blue lights. There might be more survivors in the other rows. Sleepers from a vanished world. Now they were putting blankets over her.
Ji Tao soon felt better. She was in a bed in a small room on the Stores level. She got up and went out into the hall, where Yi Min was waiting. “Where are the others?” she asked.
“Uncle and Granduncle went down to the cold level,” Yi Min said.
“It's all right, Yi Min,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “I will go and talk to them.”
“You can't leave me here!”
“Okay, okay. Did they find some warmer clothes?” Yi Min nodded and led her to a room with clothes all over the floor. They chose appropriately thick garments and got dressed.
“Hurry up, I'm boiling,” Ji Tao said. She had put on some heavy trousers and a huge, padded jacket.
“They wore gloves too,” Yi Min said. She chose some and put them on.
“Let's go,” Ji Tao said. Walking was cumbersome in this ridiculous jacket. She was sweating profusely by the time they got to the lift. She pressed the down arrow. The lift rumbled up to them. They got inside and went down to -8.
“I'm scared, auntie,” Yi Min said. “Are there dead people down there?”
“It just looks like they're sleeping,” Ji Tao said. “Come on.”
Liang and Tuan were there to greet them.
“Ji Tao,” Liang said. “You woke up.” He was covered from head to toe in woolly garments, his face covered with a cotton mask. Only his eyes and lips were visible. Tuan was similarly dressed. The only way she could tell them apart was because Liang was taller than his father.
“Did you see the one with the blue lights?” Ji Tao said.
“Which one?” Liang said. “Quite a few have blue lights. How many did you count, father?”
“Fifteen so far,” Tuan said. “And we hadn't quite finished going through them.”
“How many are there in total?” Ji Tao asked.
“More than two hundred. Probably closer to three hundred.”
“And only fifteen alive,” Liang said. “Come and help us look through the last couple of rows.”
Yi Min clutched her hand and they followed Tuan and Liang into the darkness. Liang and Tuan had been methodically checking each sleeper.
“Try not to get too close to the tubes,” Liang said. “You'll set off the alarm. It's heat sensitive.”
“Why do some have more blue lights than others?” Ji Tao asked.
“Don't know,” Liang replied. “Perhaps those with only a few blue lights are closer to death.”
“They must be very weak,” Ji Tao said.
They found two more alive in the last three rows, taking the total to seventeen.
“Are we going to wake them up?” Ji Tao asked.
“Maybe we could wake up one first, just to see if they are friendly,” Liang said.
Suddenly the sound of the lift interrupted them. “That scared me!” Liang said.
“The key is still in the li
ft?” Tuan asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I hope that's Sovann and Kalliyan wanting to come down.”
They went back over to the lift. The lift had stopped at G and was coming back down.
“Hide, all of you,” Tuan said.
Ji Tao ducked off into an aisle, crouching behind a tube. She could hear the doors open.
“It's all right,” Tuan called. “You can come out.”
“It's freezing down here!” Sovann said. She and Kalliyan were wearing their normal clothes.
“I'll come up to Stores to find you some clothes,” Liang said. “Come on, Yi Min. You look like you could use a mask.” This left Tuan and Ji Tao alone.
“Things will change if we wake the sleepers,” Tuan said.
“They must know a lot of things,” Ji Tao replied. “We have to wake them!”
“Probably too much,” Tuan agreed. “We will wake them, Ji Tao, if we can. I'm just warning you. Do you understand?”
“Maybe we have been brought here for this purpose.”
“Have we?” Tuan replied. “I cannot say. This is the mystery of life, is it not? We perceive the alternate possibilities inherent in every action, and yet we cannot explore them equally. We live in the world of what has happened, not the worlds of what might have happened.”
“Can I choose which one to wake up?” Ji Tao asked.
“If you wish.”
Ji Tao went to the aisle she had first entered, and the sleeper whose blue lights she had first seen. Yes, nearly all of the lights were blue. This was a healthy one. It was a man with closely cropped hair. He was not a young man, but nor did he appear to be very old. His arms rested at his sides, and his expression was serene.
“I wonder what his name is?” Ji Tao said.
“You can ask him in a little while.”
“We probably won't be able to understand each other.” She stood over the tube, breathing as shallowly as she could.
“If I wake you up,” she said to the sleeper, “will you promise to tell me your name?” She took his silence for assent. “Okay. Now how do you think we do this?”
“What does that panel button say?” Tuan asked.
She looked. “It says 'REVIVE.' Do you think it's as simple as that?”
“See what it does.”
She pressed the button and the lights turned yellow. The message 'REVIVE PATIENT?' flashed up on the screen. She pressed the button again.
Part Two
Chapter Six
Kai Sen woke to light above, darkness below. He woke in a cold tomb, from a slumber so long he had forgotten what it meant to be awake. His body had slept for centuries, during which time it had been cared for by a machine that had done the job of a thousand nurses, over a million shifts. And now it released him.
How strange it was to be awake again. How odd that he experienced duration from one moment to the next. And there were memories. Memories of the needles and the drips, the cold hands at his side. Of enclosure and panic. The immovable lid. And then the whirr of the cold hands on his skin, a gasp he barely recognised as his own as the needles punctured him. Finally wooziness and warmth.
But now movement was required, actual bodily motion. How to rise toward the light? Begin with hands, arms, feet, seemingly frozen solid after their long disuse. He looked down the tube at himself, trying to rekindle the life of his limbs. Yes, he could raise his arm, he could use it to lever himself into a sitting position. Attempting to peer out of his tube, he felt dizzy. Kai Sen subsided once more, exhausted from this brief effort of motion. Panting, he prepared himself for a second effort. This time he would try to stand.
There were voices in the darkness, but though he tried he could not understand what was being said. Footsteps, a woman's face above him, and then a man's. Their tone was one of questioning. Some of the words sounded like words he knew. The man reached down to Kai Sen and helped him out of the tube. His hands were gloved. He was being ushered toward the waiting lift. Hang on, Kai Sen thought, what's all this? He looked back at the tube and the winking lights on the console. There were several hundred sleepers in this room, but on most of the consoles the lights were flashing red, red, red. His own tube winked a neutral yellow, signifying that he had been released.
In the lift, where it was warmer and brighter, Kai Sen studied the man and woman. The man appeared to be quite old, and when he removed his mask, his face was reddened from the intense cold. He had white hair and dark eyes, but he did not seem threatening. The woman was much younger. She wore no mask, and her face was red from the cold. She had straggly black hair and the same dark eyes. She was staring at Kai Sen, which unnerved him. Both of them were wearing heavy jackets while he wore just a thin robe. As the lift rose, the man and woman began to struggle out of their jackets. Everything in Kai Sen's body was aching. Even standing was making him feel tired.
“Can you understand me?” Kai Sen asked.
At first he thought they could, but when the woman replied, he could not understand her words at all. The lift stopped at sub-level 5.
There were others here. Two more women, another man and a young boy. One of the women was slender, her face thin and pinched; her hair was short and tied in a bun. The other was quite beautiful. She had long wavy hair and smooth brown skin. The man was younger than Kai Sen, and he was grinning. He said something that Kai Sen did not understand. “Lang,” the man said, over and over. Perhaps this was meant as an introduction.
“Kai Sen,” Kai Sen said. “My name is Kai Sen.”
“Ker Den,” the man said, pointing at him. Then he pointed at himself and said, “Lang,” again.
The others introduced themselves. Soban was the thin blonde. Karryan was the tall, dark woman with wavy hair. Twan was the old man. Jetow was the young woman with black hair. Yi Min was the boy. Six names to remember in total. Each one pronounced his name wrong. Ker Ten, Choi Sen, and Kai Sheng, they said, but never Kai Sen. Kai Sen still had no idea what they were saying, but at least now he knew their names.
He had an idea. Pointing to the painted word on the wall, he said, “stores.”
“Sores,” Lang agreed. Their languages were not so dissimilar after all. It was just that these people spoke in a strange dialect. Lang gestured for him to follow, which he did. If he remembered correctly, then this level had been where the specialist had examined him, confirming what he had already known in his heart—that he was dying. But now all the medical imaging equipment had been removed, the rooms stocked with supplies of every kind. What had happened here? Lang led him to a room stacked with boxes full of clothes. He indicated that Kai Sen should find something to wear.
Looking down at his pale arms, Kai Sen wondered how long he had. His arms were weak; even lifting them to his sides caused them to tremble. Something felt terribly wrong: the tubes with consoles flashing red, meaning death; the people with their bizarre dialect; the imaging lab stripped and filled with supplies. What were the supplies for? How long had he been under? Where were the doctors who were supposed to cure him, when the technology became available? Why was he alive when so many of the other sleepers were apparently dead?
Kai Sen stripped off the hospital robe and saw that he was so thin that his ribs were protruding. He must have lost ten kilos. “What's happening to me?” he said. Lang must have been waiting outside the door for now he came in again, visibly disconcerted by Kai Sen's sickly figure. Lang said something and then began rummaging through a box on a shelf, pulling out pairs of trousers. Lang found him a shirt, socks and boots. The shirt was expensive, made of silk, and the boots were heavy. They were work boots, which hardly matched the silk shirt and trousers. But Kai Sen was thankful anyway. “Thank you,” he said, getting dressed.
Lang nodded.
Back in what had once been the reception for the imaging clinic, a heated discussion was taking place. Kai Sen was not able to follow the conversation. Soban seemed to be arguing a particular point, with Jetow apparently in disagreement, for the la
tter was waving her arms in anger. Twan interjected with a soothing tone, and the women settled down. Lang added something to the discussion and an agreement had apparently been reached, for now Soban nodded and Jetow said nothing. Twan spoke again and went over to the lift. He pressed the up arrow. The lift doors opened and everyone got inside. Kai Sen was encouraged to do the same. There were several hessian bags in the lift. In the bright lights, Kai Sen noticed for the first time that these people were quite dirty. They were wearing brand new clothes, obviously plundered from the supplies on this level, but any exposed skin was streaked with dried mud. Kai Sen was in the back corner of the lift, next to Twan, and the smell was not pleasant.
The lift stopped at the ground floor.
The reception was dark; all the lights were turned off. Everyone was hustling around as though they were in some kind of danger. What were they afraid of?Soban grabbed Kai Sen by the arm and led him over to the front desk, which looked like it was about to fall apart. She indicated for him to crouch down, which he did. What the hell? The floor was covered in vines!
“Scab injures,” Soban said, pointing to the doorway. Kai Sen saw nothing. She repeated this meaningless phrase, looking at him to see if he had understood.
“Scab injures,” Kai Sen repeated. Soban nodded. Then she started moving in a crouch toward the doorway. All the windows were broken. Perhaps there had been an explosion? Lang was moving along the far wall. Was the building under attack? Was that why he had been woken up?
Seeing that he had not moved from behind the desk, Jetow called out to him. “Kersen,” she said. “Kersen.” Kai Sen's feet crunched through foliage toward the doors. Something was desperately wrong here; Kai Sen's mind struggled to comprehend these details. Lang was at the edge of the doorway now, his back against the wall. The door-frame was rusted beyond repair. Then Kai Sen caught a glimpse of a vast green tangle outside. Jetow ushered him out the doorway into a scene of utter desolation.
The city lay ruined, having been swallowed by the jungle. Here and there buildings were still standing, but vines had buried the streets. Over in the east district everything seemed to have been flattened. To the north, the destruction seemed less complete. Crumbling apartment towers stood defiantly against the catastrophe. Directly ahead of him grew a cluster of trees, where no trees should have been. While his new saviours or captors moved around, Kai Sen sat down on the moss-covered steps. The sun was shining on his cheek. Kai Sen looked up. At first he did not understand what he was seeing. Most of the sky had an unearthly amber sheen, as though the world was about to come to an end, but part of the sky was blue and white, and the sun was peeking through. It was like there was a layer of yellow film covering the city, but the film had been ripped. It was the Great Shield of Shulao, Kai Sen realised, a project that had been in its infancy when he had gone into cryogenesis. So it had been completed after all. And then destroyed. Kai Sen felt dead. Why had he been woken to bear witness to this?