Danuta Reah - The Forge - Fire and Ice

How could that be?

‘What does his biometric-info say?’

‘Subject is pre-bio. He is recorded as entering hibernation in 2035, prior to the 2038 regulations. All other personal information has been purged.’

‘Can’t we access the archives to find and collate any information relating to that contract?’

‘Archive search is possible, but will take some time.’

‘Proceed and notify me as updates occur.’

The man struggled to understand what was happening. He recalled going under.

It was all meant to be so easy.

Go to sleep and, five years later, have enough to retire on.

It wasn’t as if anyone would miss him – money for old rope – almost too good to be true.

But this…

This wasn’t in the script!

He glanced down at the state of his withered digits, viewing them as alien, not recognising the hands as his own.

How could they be his? He was only 35 but these were the gnarled fingers and sallow skin of an old man.

‘We’ve managed to get some more information.’

The board had reconvened. Once again, their disembodied faces circled the virtual conference-room.

‘From the archives it appears that the five year support term, which should have ended when the system was shut down, didn’t complete as planned. The company found a loophole and used it to avoid reviving him, choosing instead to take the saving. The expense was initially deferred but this became a liability that could no longer be covered.

‘It looks like the old system was left running as an archive. By the time they’d realised what had happened, another 5 years had elapsed.

‘Correspondence from the time shows explicit instructions that the system was to be hibernated, stopped from running active work, but never actually shut down.

‘And whoever-it-is had his employment terminated but was kept under to avoid the severance package kicking-in.’

Tomorrow’s problem.

Fired & Iced!

The faces round the table grimaced in disbelief.

‘So, this employee was been kept in stasis for over a hundred years to avoid honouring his contract? And now he’s being revived due to having a stroke!’

‘He’s not an employee. He’s history. A liability.’

‘He’s an old man. We owe him. We have responsibilities.’

‘We can’t afford to owe him. This problem needs to go away.’

A medbot busied itself around him. Equipment buzzed as it attended to him, still recumbent in the pod.

‘What…’ he managed to croak weakly, ‘is my name?’

A smartly dressed man with a stern expression stabbed internally at his tablet.

‘Is he going to live?’ he said dismissively, ignoring the man’s question and without looking up.

‘It’s difficult to say,’ replied the medbot.

‘There are very few precedents for this length of time in stasis, he’s suffered substantial organ damage over the last hundred years and he’s just suffered a stroke.

The man with the tablet raised his gaze and stared angrily at the medbot. ‘Look, I need to draft an update to the board on the status of their responsibility and I need to send…’

His sentence was cut short by a message in his earpiece.

‘Yes, Sir. Understood.’

He reached over to the rear of the medbot’s neck and it slumped forward as he powered it down.

He moved over to where the man’s wide eyes stared at him in fear.

‘Well, I guess we’ll never find out who you are,’ he said as he grasped the release mechanism of the pod’s power unit and pulled out the thick, hose-like cable.

Turning away, he ignored the man’s last writhing moments to turn his attention back to his tablet.

the end

About the author

CM Angus grew up in the North East of England and now lives in Yorkshire with his wife and children. He is interested in all things creative & technological. Having previously published technical non-fiction, he moved to a work of speculative fiction which you can read more about on his blog http://cmangus.blogspot.com/. He has been published in a previous Fantastic Books horror anthology, 666 .

This couldn’t be happening to him. He was a success; the success. Owned his own asteroid. Had even named it. His own private domain. Astronomically dark, it was almost impossible to find without advanced tech. In any case, it was impregnable, impossible to breach the defences he’d arranged. So, how had he arrived here?

But, there she was. A slip of a girl. Foreigner. How had this bit of skirt got through his barriers, breached his defences? And alone, if his captivity on her ship was any clue.

Coal-black eyes, inscrutable, gazed through the small clear aperture of the cell’s opaque force field entrance. Where’d she get such tech? It had been in its infancy when he’d deserted…left Earth. The state of the home planet made such scientific progress unlikely.

‘Let me out, bitch!’

Smiling, as if he amused her? Impossible. Frustrating. Humiliating.

‘Let me out now, bitch, or I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll remember the rest of your short fuckin’ life!’

She laughed. Laughed at him. Larry Puregreed, the most successful businessman ever; that name personally chosen to reflect his absolute faith in greed as a driving force for success. Bitch with a tit hanging out, laughing at him. How dare she?

‘You and your type killed all plants we used for fabric, sheep can’t survive. Plastic products are banned. We wear what we have. Or nothing. This.’ She displayed her ragged outfit. ‘And I’m privileged.’

How did she know? No matter. He’d had hundreds of whores like her. Had them. Tossed them aside like the garbage they were. She’d get hers, and how. Then he’d chuck her into space, keep the ship, return to his safe place.

‘Except it’s not safe, is it?’

Surely, she couldn’t read his mind? No. Must be guessing.

‘We don’t guess, Larry. We make sure we know. How else did I penetrate your fortress on my own?’

No answer. Knowledge is power. Uncertainty creates distress and weakens opposition. Done that all his life. Built his empire on the weakness of others.

‘You’ve been captive nineteen hours. No food. No water. If you collapse from dehydration, I’ll use intravenous fluid, enhanced with enough energy to keep you alive. Your choice, Larry. Cooperate and retain some bodily comfort, or resist and subject yourself to close confinement and force feeding. We won’t let you die before the trial.’

This wasn’t right. He had rights. Enshrined in law. The law must protect him.

‘Those who break the law like you have throughout your life, Larry, place themselves outside the law. They become outlaws, in the most accurate meaning of the term: that is, you are without law, outside the law, lawless. You flouted the law to your advantage all your life. The law is no longer available to you. Your rejection ensures you have none of the normal rights you denied others by your actions.’

‘What about the Human Rights Convention?’