I wake up gasping, my lungs burning like I've been holding my breath underwater. Everything's blurry, and there's this weird ringing in my ears that won't stop. My hands are shaking as I try to push myself up, but my muscles feel like jelly.
"Holy shit, there's someone in here!" A voice echoes from somewhere nearby. Footsteps, getting closer.
I blink hard, trying to focus. The ceiling above me... wait, what ceiling? Just open sky, grey and cloudy. That can't be right. The cryo chamber was supposed to be underground, in a secure facility.
"Ma'am? Sir? Can you understand me?" A woman in a hard hat and dusty clothes is crouching next to me. Behind her, other people are scrambling down what looks like... are those ruins?
"I... yeah," my voice comes out scratchy. "What year is it?"
The woman glances back at her colleagues, then turns to me with wide eyes. "You're speaking English. Ancient English."
Ancient? My stomach drops. "What do you mean ancient? I just... I went under in 2024. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. They said they'd wake me when there was a cure."
More people are gathering around now. Someone's taking pictures. Another person is waving some kind of scanner over me.
"Professor Chen, you need to see this!" One of them shouts. "The readings... they match the patterns we found in the other chambers!"
A tall man pushes through the crowd. He looks Asian, maybe Chinese or Korean, but his features are slightly different than what I'm used to. Everything about these people is just a little... off.
"What's your name?" he asks slowly, like he's talking to a child.
"James. James Morrison." I try to sit up again, and this time the woman helps me. "Look, can someone just tell me what's going on? Where am I? Where's the medical team?"
Professor Chen sits down on a chunk of concrete nearby. "Mr. Morrison... the facility you were in, it was called New Hope Cryogenics, correct?"
I nod.
"We found records of it... what's left of them anyway. It was one of the first civilian cryogenic storage facilities in North America." He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "The company went bankrupt in 2027. They... they were supposed to transfer their patients to other facilities, but something went wrong. Most of the chambers failed."
"But I'm alive," I say. "So they must have transferred me, right?"
The woman who found me shakes her head. "Your chamber was different. Prototype model, self-contained power source. When the main systems failed, yours kept running. Just... longer than anyone expected."
"How long?" My voice cracks. "How long was I under?"
Professor Chen looks at his team, then back at me. "Based on our initial analysis... approximately 312 years."
I throw up. Right there in front of everyone. Some future archaeologist is probably gonna dig that up too someday.
When I can speak again, I ask, "The cancer... can you cure it now?"
"Cancer?" Professor Chen actually laughs. "Mr. Morrison, we eliminated most forms of cancer over two centuries ago. Your illness would be trivial to treat today."
I should feel relieved. That's what I went into the chamber for, right? To be cured? But all I can think about is my wife Juliet. My kids. My grandkids. Everyone I ever knew or loved... they lived entire lives while I slept. Grew old. Died.
"I... I need a minute," I manage to say.
"Of course." Professor Chen stands up. "We'll need to take you to a medical facility anyway. Your body needs time to adjust."
As they help me onto some kind of hovering stretcher, I look back at the ruins of the cryo facility. A concrete tomb where I slept through the end of my world and woke up in another.
The woman who found me walks alongside the stretcher. She's trying to look professional, but I can see the excitement in her eyes. To her, I'm the discovery of a lifetime. A living piece of history.
To me... I'm just lost.
"Hey," she says softly. "For what it's worth... you did it. You beat the cancer. Just took a little longer than planned."
I try to smile, but it probably comes out more like a grimace. "Yeah... just a little longer."
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