‘Okay friend. Any last words.’ The doctor said laying over the lid of the coffin.
‘Can I change my mind?’ Cameron asked with fear in his mouth.
‘Actually, I don't really know.’ And the door closed.
A warm bath and prickly heat. That's how Cameron would describe it. Beginning from his toes a gentle tingle began, gathering like a pool around his ankles all though he felt prickly heat the cold made his muscles tighten and bladder curdle spilling its content below where it frosted over and drained away through grills in the porcelain. Up to his knees now. It wasn't like the movies where you were flash frozen. It felt like a million years was passing as the plumes of white iced air danced around Cameron's chest.
The particles of frozen water in the air dancing around his eyes than black. Nothing else a hydraulic hiss was heard just below him, around his thigh and he was out cold.
Mikey sat in a swivel chair behind his desk wirelessly checking the vitals of all the produce. That's all they were to the company and their agents, slabs of meat with very big paychecks and very large pockets.
Chapter 2
He woke.
A light flashed dimly below a solid lit set of numbers glowed through the room, the flashed off, for a second, then back, they reminded him of the cheap microwave he once used in a cheap van they rented to travel most of the UK, excluding Ireland, Scotland, and they only visited Cardiff for the Wales leg, which is just a terrible photocopy of a photocopy of London. The closest of the small sheet Mikey was fiddling with when he went under, he could see the digits being four zeros.
They had been a much longer set of numbers when Cameron was put under. A click as the hydraulics that nipped him awake recoiled.
Crawling thick smoke made of frost bloomed across the floor like a thousand white and blue roses, freezing insects as it went. Obviously, sci-fi tropes still applied, and the last into one of the tubes was the first out, the door of his cell had clicked open but something still held it locked. The little square which was Cameron just considered a window flickered white then blue, then white again, his face itched.
‘Hello there. I am Doctor Franklin Dean. You probably already know that. I was most likely the man who froze you.’ he wasn't. Franklin Dean didn’t look anything like the man who put him into the chamber, he was white and old, and Mikey, well he wasn’t either of those things. In fact he couldn’t be further from either statement.
‘Well Mr. Cameron Bishop.’ the name was recorded in a completely different voice. It sounded like Mikey to Cameron, that very thick English accent, if you closed your eyes hard and focused on using your ears, some words snuck through with a Indian twang, probably from a strong father, who refused to let go of his heritage.
Cameron’s porcelain prison held him still tight, something kept him in place, the hard frost, tightened his muscles like the springs in a clock. They were pulled so ridged his legs and arms seemed like heavy branches, his legs, like thick roots set in ancient soil.
‘We have provided some viewing tapes to be shown during your free time, a sum up of the time you have spent in our care.’ Cameron watched the old man as he walked back off from the screen and vanished into the line of no more. He’d never get to see those tapes, not the ones he'd been promised, a collection of movies lay waiting for him, most of them reference videos, if you wanted to paint the world violent and scary. Nobody watched the film’s anyway, they just chatted and worked on what they worked on before their well-timed deaths.
A click sounded, and the door was loose from its self and waved from his hinge, Cameron went to push the door open and found he still was restrained, looking down to see what bound his hands he noticed a heavy growth of facial hair which pressed up from his face as he looked down to his chest. Now he knew why his face itched so much.
The door wobbled a bit and was pulled open, ten fingers with ten trimmed nails they were both brown, but not dirty brown, just brown.
‘Hey buddy, have a good nap?’ the Englishman asked, it was Mikey, have a good nap seemed like it would make a good catch phrase, if you were in the business of putting people to sleep, which mike was, so that’s handy.
‘You’re looking good, we have a last one in first one out rule around here, it can take a little time to pull you out of your ice boxes.’ Mikey pulled the straps loose from Cameron's wrists, faded red rings circled his cuffs.
‘They’ll fade by medical, you’ll notice you'll get them less and less from now on, and if not, then who’s going to see them anyway.’ Mikey gave Cameron his hand and pulled him from the chamber, it was like pulling a man from the bottom of the sea, covered in green moss and sea weed, boots made of iron to keep him down.
Cameron's legs stretched out, weak and unstable he pulled himself from the white pads and readers that he'd forgotten were attached to his body. A white jumpsuit sputtered with purposeful holes hung loosely from his body, as if this was the outfit of a man riddled with bullets. Some of the holes still had frayed wires where the readers and equipment hadn't released themselves properly.
‘I hope I haven't broken anything.’ he croaked. It had been some time since he was iced. His voice was a worn mess of frozen cords and untrained muscles, it felt as if somebody had opened a very small brolly in his mouth, possibly one you get with drinks at a pool side bar. He coughed twice in an automatic way. Hoping this would clear the frog in his throat, of course, it failed.
Being an icicle for thirty days will do a lot more than a cough can undo. His body wasn’t the only thing that was unsteady, his mind was just as unsteady as the rest of him.
‘You may want to rest that voice for a bit.’ Mikey put Cameron in a wheelchair and pushed him into a corner till his body had reset and he could stand again.
‘It gets easier man. These guys wake up right as rain when they get up.’ Mikey had turned by this point as was talking to Cameron with his back against him. He was right, it does get easier, everyday, even if your every days are ninety days apart. Your body gets used to the aches and pains of living, the year of muscles and their repair, more so when they shoot you up with drugs. Each of the vases was unlocked and pulled open like shipping crates. After a few minutes, which felt like hours to Cameron feel began to prove the ground below them feeling around for purchase on the metal grids which lined the room collecting the moisture.
‘You'll want to lean over the side of the chair around now. Try and aim for the grates please.’ The doctor said helping some of the bodies from their coffins. You don’t often see people getting helped out of their coffins, or in for that matter. In or out it was always unsettling.
Cameron didn't know what Mikey meant by lean over, but the doctor was the doctor for a reason and he listened to him, Cameron’s father always said that before telling him to listen to his doctor, he was a man was missing teeth and had every heart condition you can name. Suddenly his mouth opened without warning and spewed other a thick clear bile. The stench was terrible but it drained away quickly through the little holes. He hoped it wasn’t due to the image of his father and his missing teeth.
‘It's the fluids your body couldn't expel during your incarceration. Once you're down you're down. No time for a potty break for you, not exactly the rock and roll lifestyle you’d be used to.’ Mikey pointed the last paying customer to the door and headed back over to Cameron in his chair leaning over the side with his hair a flop and his beard he never wanted, filled with liquid.
‘I don’t know, I’ve puked a lot.’ The corpse answered.
‘Let's get you up and kicking right. A little addition helps to kick start your system?’ Mikey said rolling up the sleeve of Cameron's gown, the doc held a plastic tube with a plunger between his teeth, he looked like a pound shop pirate.
In a single move it was out of his mouth and in the air in seconds. He flicked the very long needle of a syringe.
Cameron pulled away with some force waving his arm around like a madman till his sleeve rolled back to where it had been.
>
‘No drugs.’ The thirty days of being frosted had detoxed his body and he didn't want to fill it full of toxins again. He waved his body into shapes he didn’t think were possible, what little bishop had recovered was all burnt up in a single mess of motions. He felt suddenly ill again, the bile tumbled around in his chest, where it shouldn’t be.
‘Okay then. Alley oop. It’s not like you can get addicted to stuff you’re only taken every three months.’ Mikey said pulling Cameron from the chair. He pulled himself straight and staggered to the stairs in a zombie like state. There was something depressing about this caveman learning to walk again.
‘You can have personal time while we do some medicals on some of the patients.’ Mikey explained to Cameron passing him on the stairs the wind pulling Cameron's gown open in his wake. Personal time made bishop think of prison, he didn’t want to think of this place at a prison.
Cameron mumbled something but it was too late and he was too quiet to be heard. Bishop wasn’t sure if he mumbled because it was unimportant or because he couldn’t push his voice out.
He shuffled down the cold metal steps, they were painful on his bare feet being they were grilled like most of the rest of the establishment, it was as if he was stepping on a gravel drive way. Walking down he caught a sniff of his own scent, it disgusted him. A mix of sweat and what could only be described as rot, punched through the sea-scented air the company filtered in from the sea just outside.
Twelve steps. That all the curled stairs were made up of twelve steps after those Cameron rested for twice as long as it had taken him to make them twelve in preparation for the next twelve. His life was full of twelve steps, it seemed to be a number which followed him like a bad smell. Iron, that was the other smell, Cameron had once went to a photographer, when he was a kid, his mother had taken a very young boy which looked like Cameron but before the drugs drew bags under his eyes, the young Bishop dressed as a cowboy, full gear, little hat, cow print pants which flared out at the sides, he looked like the milky bar kid, if he had a dirty face and dyed his hair black. There was a pop and the iron smell filled the room, much as it did now.
‘For fucks sake.’ he growled being that was all he could muster. It sounded a little more like him, not exactly but coming closer with each word he spoke.
Another flight of stairs, these counted down much easier and Cameron only stumbled twice. At the base of the stairs, a nurse stood. The silent nurse from thirty days ago, although to Cameron, the more he processed it, the more it felt as if he was lying to himself. Other than some aches and pains it didn't feel like eight hours never mind a whole month. It felt like he’d slept for less than a hand full of hours, a restless night with tossing and turning, the ones where you woke up with new pains that you didn’t go to sleep with, the sleep you feel worse for having.
In her hands, the nurse held, and partially leant on a wheelchair. She half smiled at Cameron in gesture to the chair. Once he made it to the bottom of the stairs he grabbed the handle of the chair clasping the nurse's hand. His palms were cold and moist with sweat that felt like gel. The nurse had worked as a midwife for a bit and the residue left on her hand reminded of the jelly they used to scan pregnant women.
‘Congratulations’ Cameron leant in and whispered. A face of puzzlement washed over the nurse's face. She wasn't sure what he meant.
‘Oh.’ She said slipping her hand from under his. The sweat helped, and her hand was released with some ease. She twinkled her hand around a little bit.
‘Yeah, you're looking at the soon to be Mrs. Lucy Brown.’ she said still moving in her fingers so the ring caught the light at the proper angle.
He had it. The nurse's name was Lucy. It had been a craw in his side for too long. Hours he tried to guess it, well it felt like hours but realistically it was thirty days. This was the first example of things can change in thirty days that Cameron had really come across and it hadn't hit him too hard.
The human mind was stupid and held on too little things for far too long, Cameron pushed away the wheelchair, nurse with it. All he wanted to do was push through the pain and keep moving, which he did, inch by inch holding his body up with the egg blue walls of the building.
Cameron came up to two large doors labelled cafeteria. Mumbles and Mirth came from the room, collapsing onto the handle the door refused to budge, his strength couldn’t undo the latch.
From inside the room Cameron heard a posh sounding mumble, he considered it a very educated accent if it sounded so posh it was understood through what he guessed was a metal door.
‘There seems to be some scratching from this door,’ the voice explained to somebody he had obviously been talking too prior the noise.
The clicking clacks of a latch being unlatched echoed through the steel door, you could only hear if your face was pressed up against it. luckily for Cameron, this is where his limp body had left him. He righted himself as well as he could, before collapsing through the now opening door.
A mustached man caught him.
‘Steady on there, chap. People will talk.’ The moustache spoke, a thick overeducated accent poured below it.
‘Fresh frozen I see. nice to move the brand on to be fair friend.’ Using the red smoking jacket that felt soft and bristly at the same time like a used toothbrush, Cameron pulled himself up and onto his very unsteady feet.
‘Not shot you up? Normally the shoot the fresh frozen all the time.’ Now Cameron had pulled himself straight the smoking jacket straightened himself up and grabbed Cameron by the collar before he fell.
‘Okay fresh, your valuables are in the corner there, I'd presume that's your instrument with them.’ He pulled Cameron's limping body over his shoulder and helped the hobbling mess over to the chair which held Cameron's clothing.
‘I'll. Em. Leave you to it.’ The jacket strolled off with its content inside.
Cameron quickly got dressed he sat in the chair and composed himself till a question surfaced inside of his head.
The moustache returned with a tall paper cup filled with water.
‘See you seem to have managed to dress yourself. Better than I did my first time. And you didn't swear or hit anybody. you're beating a couple of the others around here.’ he handed off the drink. With his thumb, the man pushed down one side of his moustache where it had broken away during his speech. A hand moved forward, not aggressively but with a destination in mind.
‘Simion Stoneman. like Easter island,’ and shook a very limp hand which belonged to Cameron. The rattle nearly ripped Cameron's flimsy arm off.
‘Just call me Simon. Most people do.’ Simon still gripped onto Cameron's hand, pulled him up.
‘Cameron, and I think their heads, not men.’ the name stuttered out his mouth in shock that he'd gained enough volume to be heard.
‘Oh, I know. I've seen you on the Television.’ said Simion although the words sounded alien coming from his mouth.
‘Huh?’ Cameron asked without the proper inflection.
‘Tv, the box in the corner, talkies?’ Simon explained.
‘Never mind this bullshitting. Let's get you up and moving we still have some time before physical anyway.’ Simon pulled Cameron close to his shoulder and paraded him around the room a little. It looked like a school cafeteria, white tables with blue chairs sat in the center.
A buffet of treats over on the far side of the wall a hand full of people were picking at some pickled onion, Bishop flashed back to a dinner party he hadn’t wanted to go to, but was forced to by his managing director, people picked at food there, a man in a purple jumpsuit cover in sequins ate a small block of cheese with a toothpick in it.
People were dotted around in small groups, now in their own clothing the clicks of people are themselves apparently. Some ball gowns, the over the top type, which French ladies in movies wore, with their powdered faces and faux moles. A collection of males dressed in white with different fit trousers stood around a wooden desk on the far side just outside of them sat a
woman reading dressed much the same, she looked almost rejected. Two women wearing long cream colored dresses and spat shoes played a computer came, it looked like plumber man but Cameron couldn't see over their large hair to catch a glimpse. The man in the purple jumpsuit started to cough, choking on his toothpick, another man dressed in a black suit which screamed dictator, clutched at the jumpsuits chest, he spat up a blob of cheese.
‘Welcome to club twenty-seven.’ Simon waved his arms displaying the wide variety in the room, in his voice, there was a proudness that Cameron couldn't see himself.
‘Twenty-seven?’ Cameron asked.
‘Twenty-seven, yes, unless you’re not twenty-seven.’ Asked Simion in shock, everybody in here was twenty-seven. Cameron nodded to confirm his age. His face continued to hold the ridged look of confusion. Why twenty seven? A question popped up in his head, it wasn't important to him, it was simply a question.
‘Everyone here is Twenty-seven, or got Vased at that age.’ Simon explained. for a man who’d been defrosted recently, he was holding himself together pretty well, much better than Cameron at least.
‘Vased?’ Cameron asked.
‘Vased. chilled, what have you been calling it?’ the posh voice poured out like thick honey.
‘Frosted.’ answered Cameron.
‘It’s not really cryogenics it's more chilling and hiber.’ Cameron cut Simon off before he could finish.
‘Hibernation, I know.’ Hibernation was becoming a word said so often it had started to lose its meaning. If you have no idea what that feels like, find a word you’re fond of, and say it, say it over and over till either the word or the world around you mean nothing.
Mikey stepped out from the shadows or possibly just through a door that Cameron didn’t notice. He'd spent so much time looking he’d noticed the many doors and the lack of windows.
‘Higgins. Shields. Bishop.’ Mikey checked a clipboard in his hand for other names.
‘Can you please follow nurse Study too medical!’ he gestured to the nurse. She stepped in like a nurse Bishop recalled from cartoons he watched on one of his come downs, all hips and legs, she wore heels, which seemed terrible an idea for somebody who spent so much time on her feet, even then she seemed to hover on her toes.
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