POV: You Wake Up in the Year 2526 — Transcript

The pen is cheap. That's the detail you'll remember 500 years from now. A blue ballpoint. Plastic. The kind you steal from a bank without thinking. It sits on a clipboard on a desk in a waiting room that smells like burnt coffee. And the woman across from you slides it toward you like she's seen a thousand people pick it up before. You flip through it the way a dying person flips through anything, fast looking for the part that says yes. The cancer in your pancreas has been winning for nine months. Now you're here. The woman has gray eyes and a name tag that says Elena. She tells you to take your time.

coffee. And the woman across from you slides it toward you like she's seen a thousand people pick it up before. You flip through it the way a dying person flips through anything. fast looking for the part that says yes. The cancer in

You don't. You flip to the signature line. There's a door behind Elena's desk open about two inches. Through the gap, you can see the edge of what might be another clipboard on another table. Someone is in there. Elena follows your eyes just for a second. Then she gets up, walks around the desk, and closes the door without explaining it. Forty-three pages, she says. Take your time. You sign. Your hand is shaking. And somewhere behind that closed door, a second pen scratches against a second page at the exact same moment yours finishes. You don't notice. You won't notice for 500 years. The countdown is in a voice you didn't expect to find soothing. A man, older. He tells you you'll feel a coolness and then a warmth and then nothing. You close your eyes.

You don't. You flip to the signature line. There's a door behind Elena's desk open about 2 in. Through the gap, you can see the edge of what might be another clipboard on another table.

The coolness comes first, then the warmth, then light. Your body is wrong. Not bad wrong, different wrong. There's no fire in your stomach. There's no metal taste in your mouth from the medication you took every six hours for the last year of your life. Your hand lifts when you tell it to. The veins are younger. You feel healthy. A face moves into view. She says, "You made it." She says the year and your brain refuses it for a full three seconds before your body catches up and you start to cry. She doesn't look surprised. She's done this before.

somewhere behind that closed door, a second pen scratches against a second page at the exact same moment yours finishes. You don't notice. you won't notice for 500 years. The countdown is in a voice you didn't expect to find

Her name is Meera. She's your guide. She tells you you've been gone for 53 years. She tells you that you were one of 41 people preserved in 2026 who were successfully revived. The rest didn't make it. She walks you to a window and shows you the future. What you see is a city. Towers that move slightly in the wind because they are partly grown from the earth. Streets that are gardens edged with flowers and colors you don't have names for. Air that smells like nothing. The way air should smell if no one had ever been allowed to ruin it.

The coolness comes first, then the warmth, then light. Your body is wrong. Not bad wrong, different wrong. There's no fire in your stomach. There's no metal taste in your mouth from the medication you took every six hours for

And above it all, the cars. They glide. Not zip, not fly, but they glide. Long, silent shapes moving in lanes you can't see. Layer after layer of them stacked into a sky that has been engineered to hold them. You watch one drift down toward a landing pad on a tower roof and touch down without a sound. Five hundred years.

for a full 3 seconds before your body catches up and you start to cry. She doesn't look surprised. She's done this before.

You start crying again. The first week blurs. Clothes that adjust to your body without you understanding how. A room where the walls go gold when you want them gold. You ride in one of the cars for about ten days. You fall asleep grateful. The first wrong thing is small. Meera is showing you the gardens when she stops at a bench and pulls out two containers of food. She hands you one and you open it. It's peanut butter on toast cut diagonally. You stare at it. You haven't told Meera you like peanut butter. You haven't told anyone in this world anything about what you eat. You've been here six days and every meal has been served to you and every meal has been something you didn't recognize. This is from before. Your mother used to cut your toast like this, diagonal. It's not in any file you've ever seen. Meera is already eating. She doesn't notice you staring or she doesn't look like she notices. You eat the toast and you don't say anything. The second wrong thing is bigger. You ask Meera if there's still cancer. She tells you no. You ask her how. She starts talking. A date, a name, a research institution. Her voice is bright the whole time, but halfway through the story, she skips. Not a pause, a skip. She jumps from one sentence to the next like there's a paragraph between them she was told to leave out. You wait for her to finish.

She tells you that you were one of 41 people preserved in 2026 who were successfully revived. The rest didn't make it. She walks you to a window and shows you the future. What you see is a city. Towers that move slightly in the

You smile and nod and say, "Wow." That night, you stare at the ceiling for a long time. The next morning, you ask about the public archives. Meera lights up, tells you that of course you can access them, that everything is open. She walks you to a console in the library and leaves you alone with it.

And above it all, the cars. They glide. Not zip, not fly, but they glide. Long, silent shapes moving in lanes you can't see. Layer after layer of them stacked into a sky that has been engineered to hold them. You watch one drift down

You look up your own name first. There's an obituary. You look up the Cryonics company. They went bankrupt in 2071. Their assets were sold at auction. You follow the auction record. The buyer was a research group. The research group was dissolved in 2189 after and here the entry stops. Just a sentence fragment and a redaction mark and a note that the records are sealed by court order. Sealed by court order in a future where everything is supposed to be open. You type one more search.

You start crying again. The first week blurs. Clothes that adjust to your body without you understanding how. A room where the walls go gold when you want them gold. You ride in one of the cars for about 10 days. You fall asleep

Subject 7, a phrase you saw in the auction section. A single result loads. A scientific paper from 2154. Most of it is redacted. The abstract mentions a subject referred to as seven. The dates of the study run from 2089 to 2151.

it. You haven't told Meera you like peanut butter. You haven't told anyone in this world anything about what you eat. You've been here 6 days and every meal has been served to you and every meal has been something you didn't

You close the console. You walk back to your gold-lit room. You smile at Meera and tell her the archives were lovely.

the toast and you don't say anything. The second wrong thing is bigger. You ask Meera if there's still cancer. She tells you no. You ask her how. She starts talking. a date, a name, a research institution. Her voice is

You don't rest. You go looking the next night. Meera showed you around the facility days ago, but you take a wrong turn looking for a stairwell. The walls in this hallway are darker. At the end of it, leaning against a door frame like he's been waiting, is a man, old, white-haired, and thin. His left hand is missing the tip of the ring finger. He says your name. You stop walking. He tilts his head toward the room behind him. You found subject seven. You'll find the rest of it whether I help you or not. Come in. You only get one chance to see this.

You smile and nod and say, "Wow." That night, you stare at the ceiling for a long time. The next morning, you ask about the public archives. Meera lights up, tells you that of course you can access them, that everything is open.

The room is full of old screens. He taps one with the bent finger. A document loads. Your contract. Page 31, section 14, subsection C. Read it. You read it.

You look up your own name first. There's an obituary. You look up the Cryionics company. They went bankrupt in 2071.

It says that you consented to the use of your preserved body and neural data in ongoing comparative research applications for the duration of your preservation period. It says the company can thaw, sample, copy, and represent.

by court order. Sealed by court order in a future where everything is supposed to be open. You type one more search.

It says any consciousness from your neural data is the property of the company. You read it twice. The third time you finally understand how many. He doesn't look at you. Four hundred twelve that we have records of. You sit down on the floor. He tells it slow. The Cryonics company went under in 2071. Your contract was sold at auction. The buyer used the clause to begin running experiments on your tissue and your scanned neural data. For hundreds of years, copies of your mind were spun up in simulated environments. Some lived for hours, some for years. Some were given full lives in labs you would never see and then erased when the data was collected. He pauses on that one. Full lives, childhood to old age. There are copies of you that lived to 104. There are copies of you that died as children.

Most of it is redacted. The abstract mentions a subject referred to as seven. The dates of the study run from 2089 to 2151.

There are copies that never knew anything but the inside of a research environment. And they had names and they had favorite songs. And then when the experiment was over, someone just hit a key. He looks at you. The technology that lets the people of this city live forever, they built it on us. The cryosleepers. The ones who didn't read page 31. In 2189, the new government passed laws against what had been done.

You don't rest. You go looking the next night. Mera showed you around the facility days ago, but you take a wrong turn looking for a stairwell. The walls in this hallway are darker. At the end of it, leaning against a door frame like

The records were sealed. The 41 of us who had been preserved well enough to be revived were placed under the care of the state. Promised peace, promised a beautiful welcome. We were promised a future. But we weren't promised the truth. You say they think you've suffered enough. They think the kindest thing is to let you die a happy old man in a gold-lit room. Well, I don't agree with them. You ask him who he is. He's

find the rest of it whether I help you or not. Come in. You only get one chance to see this.

one of the 41. Woke up 15 years ago. Had a mirror, had a gold room, had a flying car, and he found a corridor. He found a man who knew his name. Now he is the man. The chain has been going for a whi

It says that you consented to the use of your preserved body and neural data in ongoing comparative research applications for the duration of your preservation period. It says the company can thaw, sample, copy and repres.

It says any consciousness from your neural data is the property of the company. You read it twice. The third time you finally understand how many. He doesn't look at you. 412 that we have records of. You sit down on

the floor. He tells it slow. The cryionics company went under in 2071. Your contract was sold at auction. The buyer used the clause to begin running experiments on your tissue and your scan neural data. For hundreds of years,

copies of your mind were spun up in simulated environments. Some lived for hours, some for years. Some were given full lives in labs you would never see and then erased when the data was collected. He pauses on that one. Full

lives, childhood to old age. There are copies of you that lived to 104. There are copies of you that died as children.

There are copies that never knew anything. but the inside of a research environment. And they had names and they had favorite songs. And then when the experiment was over, someone just hit a key. He looks at you. The technology

that lets the people of this city live forever, they built it on us. The cryosleepers. The ones who didn't read page 31. In 2189, the new government passed laws against what had been done.

The records were sealed. The 41 of us who had been preserved well enough to be revived were placed under the care of the state. Promised peace, promised a beautiful welcome. We were promised a future. But we weren't promised the

truth. You say they think you've suffered enough. They think the kindest thing is to let you die a happy old man in a gold lit room. Well, I don't agree with them. You ask him who he is. He's

one of the 41. Woke up 15 years ago. Had a mirror, had a gold room, had a flying car, and he found a corridor. He found a man who knew his name. Now he is the man. The chain has been going for a

while. There's one more thing, he says. He taps the screen. A second contract identical to yours. Signed on the same day, the same hour, the same facility, but a different room. A different name on the signature line. Her name is

Hannah. She was your pair. The research group worked in pairs. Every cryosleeper was matched with another. The two of you were thawed together, copied together, simulated together in matched conditions for hundreds of years. Every life one of your copies lived, one of hers lived

alongside it. The second pen you heard behind that door in 2026 was hers. When you can speak again, you ask the question, "Is she alive?" He nods. She woke up 2 years ago. She remembers. You ask how. One of her copies, one of the

long running ones. When the research group merged it back into her prime template for storage, some of the memories bled across. It was a flaw, a bug. She woke up 2 years ago remembering things she shouldn't have been able to

remember. Lives she never lived, a face she'd never seen. The face was yours. She's been waiting. He says, "You're the only other person in the world who shares what happened to her." It takes 4 days. 4 days of being the most grateful,

most easily managed cryosleeper Meera has ever guided. 4 days of going to bed early. 4 days of letting her think you suspect nothing. The old man slips you what you need on the third day. A name, an address, and a way to get there

without being tracked. On the fourth night after Mero leaves, you get dressed in the clothes you came in 500 years ago and you walk out. The city is quiet, but the cars still glide overhead. You walk 11 blocks. You stop in front of a small

building with a green door. You knock. The woman who opens the door is in her 40s. She knows your face. You have never seen her in your life. She steps aside.

You walk into her home. The door closes behind you. You stand in her small kitchen for a long time without speaking. She makes tea. You sit down at her kitchen table. She slides the cup over to you the way Elena slid the

contract across 500 years ago. Hannah looks at you. We have a lot to talk about. You nod. She talks for a long time. She tells you about the memories.

Not all of them. She says there are too many, but she tells you about the ones that won't leave. A house, small wooden floors, a window that looked out on a yard with a single tree. She lived there

for 46 years in one of the simulations. She had a dog. She had a job she didn't love. She had a neighbor who brought her soup when it rained. She knows it wasn't real. She knows the house was code and

the dog was data. and the neighbor was a variable in someone's experiment. She knows this, but it doesn't help. She tells you about the other ones, the short ones, waking up in a white room, being asked questions she didn't

understand, being watched, being reset. She doesn't remember dying, but she remembers the moment before it, and some of them, a feeling like the air being turned off. You ask her what she wants to do. The records are sealed, she says.

But the records exist. The old man showed me where. There are names, dates, procedures. Every experiment they ran on us is logged in a server room four levels below the facility where you woke up. She puts her hands flat on the

table. The people in this city don't know. They don't know what built their world. They think the technology came from a lab. They think it was clean.

They think no one got hurt. They did get hurt. You say 412 times, she says that they have records of. She tells you the plan. It isn't complicated. The old man has access. He's had access for years.

The files can be copied. The copies can be released. Every sealed record, every redacted paper, every experiment log, all of it pushed into the public archives that Meera told you were open, making them actually open. The government will deny it, Hannah says.

They'll say the records are fabricated. They'll say we're confused. They'll say the cryosleepers are traumatized and unreliable.

Are we? You say? She almost smiles. probably. But the files don't lie. The dates match. The procedures match. And there are 41 of us. That's 41 people who can stand in front of this city and say, "This is what you built your paradise

on." You look at her across the table. This woman you've never met. This woman who lived alongside you for hundreds of years in places neither of you can fully remember. When you say, "Tomorrow," she says. If you're in, you walk back to the

facility in the dark. The city is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, and you know now what it cost. You let yourself back into your gold lit room.

You lie down. You close your eyes. You think about 412 versions of yourself waking up, living, and being erased. You think about the copies of Hannah who live next to the copies of you in matched conditions in worlds someone

else designed. And you think about the people in this city. The ones who will never get cancer. The ones whose children will never die of anything. The ones who walk through gardens in clean air under a sky full of silent cars and

never once wonder how it got this way. They were all just simulations, right? Just code and data, not real people. It wasn't actually you, right? But Hannah remembers the house with the wooden floors. She remembers the dog. She

remembers 46 years of a life that someone built to study her and then deleted when they had what they needed.

That's not code. That's a person who had a favorite mug and a morning routine and a spot on the couch where the cushion wore thin. 412 of those. But because of them, no one in this city will ever die

the way you were supposed to die. No one will have to sign a 43page contract at 3 in the morning because it's the only option left. You don't know if that makes it okay. You don't know if anything makes it okay. You don't know

if the question even has an answer or if it's the kind of question that just sits in your chest for the rest of your life and never leaves. You think about the pen, the cheap blue ballpoint on the

clipboard on the desk in the waiting room that smelled like burnt coffee. The way your hand was shaking, the way you didn't read page 31. You think about the second pen, the one behind the door, the one you heard for half a second and then

forgot for 500 years. Tomorrow, you could make sure no one forgets what you had to go through. Or you could let it go. Walk through the gardens. Ride the cars. Let Meera bring you breakfast. Let the gold lit room be enough. 412

versions of you suffered so that no one in this city ever has to. If you tear that open, you don't give those copies their lives back. You just take the city's peace away. You don't know which is worse. You close your eyes. You don't

sleep.