Alice was standing at the viewport. She didn’t know precisely how far apart Earth and Saturn were, but the simple act of being able to wash and dress herself here, might not mean the same thing as starting a whole new life on an Earth she hadn’t seen for centuries.
Alice felt like a queen in her new quarters, she even liked the funny shower with water in a packet that washed her and moisturised her skin and little peppermint-flavoured wafers that cleaned her teeth. Every night, she had hot chocolate in a pretty mug, just like she always had in her old life. Even in the future, bedtime rituals were the same and always at bedtime, Alice thought of her family.
It was her memories of Eliza that started the tears. Her granddaughter wouldn’t know her in this dream, she looked so different and the new baby, when it came, may never know his or her grandma. Alice wondered if Eliza did well in her exams or if she had a boyfriend by now and wished she could see her again.
Sometimes, Alice thought maybe she had died. Whether she’d gone to heaven or hell, only time would tell, but this was a nice place in the meantime. She enjoyed meeting up with Principal Hardy and having a cup of tea with him and chatting with Dr Grossmith and going to the mess to eat proper food, much of which she didn’t recognise but liked. And most of all, she liked the warm friendship developing between her and Kelly. She tried to make this her last thought. A nice thought to drop off to sleep with.
But Alice’s body was changing. One morning, she woke, startled by the artificial light from the station’s day/night system. Kelly was already by Alice’s bed.
“Did your alarm clock go off too early?” Alice said, peering through a haze. It felt like the first morning she found herself here and it took a moment for the fog to clear.
Kelly laughed. “No! You woke with a start!”
“Did I? Oh, ok. I was dreaming, I thought I saw a young man with white hair.”
Alice rubbed her eyes. Her mouth tasted terrible, and she needed to pee. She slid out of the bed and looked for her slippers, but they were next to her bed at home, so, barefoot she stepped through the washer portal, feeling stiff and sore and her tummy ached. She felt very groggy this morning.
“Kelly? what year is this?” she called out, standing in the shower and blinking to wake herself up. Alice had been giving thought to the fact that in all these weeks, no-one mentioned the date. “It hasn’t occurred to me to ask.”
“2513. We’re on the 28th day of the first quarter.”
“2513? That’s impossible.” Alice’s face twisted up in concentration as if trying to grasp all the years between her birthday and now. She’d bypassed Christmas.
As she dressed, she tried to get her head around the missing years. When she first moved to her new quarters, Kelly had given her sleeveless, grey shift-like tunics to wear, tidy enough, but plain and uninspiring and shorter than she would normally wear, so she wore trousers underneath, with no bra or knickers, leaving Alice feeling a little exposed. As she was deliberating about the year, lack of a bra and more importantly, the lack of knickers, Dr Grossmith chose that moment to step through the portal, unannounced.
“Dr Grossmith,” Kelly acknowledged him as protocols demanded then reproached him with a grin “You really should buzz in, Doctor.”
Alice thought so too but wouldn’t have dared say so. Fortunately, she was almost dressed.
“I’m here to see my patient,” he looked chastened, seeing Alice quickly sliding into her slacks and Alice felt sorry for him getting told off.
“I should have buzzed, I’m sorry,” he bowed a little and left the room. Alice and Kelly looked at each other and burst out laughing. The portal buzzer sounded and Dr Grossmith was invited in.
“Good morning, Alice. I thought to take you outside after breakfast.”
Alice looked out the window—going out there didn’t appeal. Out there was outer space. She pointed to the viewport.
He laughed loudly and placed his hands on her arms
“On a shuttle, Alice! It’s exciting. Don’t worry, I’m not planning a spacewalk! Trust me, you will enjoy it.”
Exciting? Out there? But she did trust him, so she would go. Her tummy fluttered. Nerves? Probably hunger.
“Why do I never see Dr Clere?” she asked as they travelled on the walkway. She’d discarded the calliper weeks ago, and she walked as well as she ever had. Better even. “He seems to have disappeared,” she said, peering across to someone vanishing through a portal.
“Dr Clere’s work is finished now you are resuming your life, he will conduct one more examination before you leave and after that, keep in close contact with me to ensure your heart and other organs stay healthy.”
The first part about Clere finishing his work was a lie but Dr Grossmith saw no reason to add that Dr Clere’s own heart was made of stone and that his interest in Alice was far less vested in her internal affairs than keeping her in a laboratory. He’d known Larry Clere for years and always found him to be a self-congratulatory, pompous ass. Recent events confirmed his diagnosis.
“Thank you for all you have done.”
A sudden fog came over Alice and she retreated to a listening place, with no control over her voice. “I’m sorry I haven’t regained my memory. It must be frustrating for you to have invested so much, for so little return.”
Dr Grossmith didn’t notice the brief change in her pattern of speech.
“Don’t worry Alice, it may take a long time. That you are alive and going home is reward enough.”
“How did I get preserved, Dr Grossmith? Please explain it again.”
They sat at their favourite table in the mess and Alice had fallen back into familiar, ignorant territory. She knew she’d been preserved, it was the how that interested her. Boiled with sugar perhaps. Vinegar?
He wished she’d asked him something else. The weather patterns on the moons of Saturn, the composition of the rings, anything but this. It was easy to confound and confuse Alice, but he would stick to his promise; that when she asked questions, he would answer as directly as he could.
“A preservation technique that appears to have died with the creator of its formula and technique, I’m afraid. After your removal from the mountain vault, no-one could gain access to the preservation fluid to analyse its composition. When the sarcophagus opened, with no interference from us, we still couldn’t examine it.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t exist.”
He expected her to ask why, but she didn’t.
“Did they find anyone else with me?”
He wanted to tell her everything, the whole story, not leave out a single detail, in the hope it would dislodge a memory and give an answer that would satisfy Clere enough to ensure he left her alone. But she’d moved on, so he reined himself in to provide an answer to this much simpler query.
“A few human heads and tissue samples, but there appears to have been no effort to preserve them in the way you were preserved, nor by employing either primitive or known cryogenic applications. They looked like specimens, with evidence of cell manipulation in one or two but far too degraded to be of any use.”
Alice had made a point of reading about cryogenics and bombarded Kelly with questions, but it still made no sense.
“And they found me in China?” Alice asked between bites of Petit Pain Au Chocolate, a new and delicious discovery.
“Well, yes, that is what they called it then. It’s Principality 4 now. The moment you woke, the fluid evaporated, it vanished before my eyes. No residue, no signature, no trace, as if it hadn’t existed. I was the only one present.”
“Can you tell me anything about the people with me in the chamber?”
“No, no records relating to them at all and they were only heads, no bodies.”
As he spoke and listened to her occasional reply, he wondered about the labels being mixed up. Could that have happened? What about those moments of clarity witnessed by Kelly and Hardy? Her chamber and the sarcophagus were clearly marked, her chip
in place, but if someone else got there before? Could they have missed something of importance? And what about her assertion she was a mother to—who did she say? yes, Michelle.
She was asking him about chips.
“Chips?” he said, his expression blank, still off somewhere with Alice’s sarcophagus.
“Yes, chips.”
“Chips—your chip gave us personal history, your birth date, the state of your health but little else.”
She sipped her coffee and studied him. Her green eyes holding only the question. He’d spoken of this many times but it was clear she hadn’t retained the information.
“The sarcophagus was impenetrable. Hammers in the early days, lasers, even weapons didn’t so much as scratch the surface. And you were suspended within it. By the time you arrived at the Bell Institute, about 80 years after your discovery, they still believed you to be a perfectly preserved corpse, that’s why they tried to open the sarcophagus, believing you were dead. Technology hadn’t advanced to the stage where they could detect you were alive.”
He wondered why she had asked about the preservation. He could see from her expression she was no closer to believing any of it. Soon, she would leave, and he needed to help her understand something of her origins. She waited for him to continue and he would tell her the story as many times as she wanted to hear it, adding in tiny snippets of extra information each time.
“I became a consultant to the project 40 years ago, some 150 years after the discovery that you were living and almost 350 years after your preservation. In the centuries prior to my involvement, and though the sarcophagus yielded none of its secrets, scientific instrumentation did at least detect rudimentary brain activity. The neurological sequences proved indecipherable but were too organised to be random. In short, we don’t know what kept you alive, or how. There can be no other conclusion other than specific, unknown factors within the fluid-filled, glass-like sarcophagus, somehow sustained your life.”
“How did I get out?”
“As technology developed, we found that you had a heartbeat, though it was slow and irregular, and although preserved, your kidneys and liver weren’t functioning. The other organs seemed intact, and apart from their dormancy, seemed to be normal healthy tissue. To grow a new heart, Dr Clere required tissue samples and of course, to achieve that, he would have to access your body, but the sarcophagus, as I said, could not be penetrated. Around fourteen years ago, one of our technicians noticed hair growth over the top of your scalp, a few months later, fingernails. It was extraordinary, Alice. Just before the sarcophagus opened, your hair covered your body like a shroud from just four years of growth and you were barely visible. Around that time, your internal organs showed signs of necrosis.”
“What’s that?”
“Dying. Specifically, death of tissue.”
“So, to save me, you had to pop the blister.”
“What an intriguing analogy, Alice. Well, yes, I suppose the capsule did look like a blister,” he angled his head, this might be a good time for a little digging. “Do you remember any of this?”
Alice shook her head. She didn’t believe it either. Not really.
“We didn’t ‘pop’ it as you say, we were never able to penetrate any part of it. When you woke, the fluid vanished, and you were left lying in a primitive polymer shell. This shell had somehow been encased along with you in the sarcophagus. It was only the fluid and the sarcophagus that dissipated in the instance you woke.”
How often had he relived that day? A day that started like any other, three years following the project’s removal to Saturn Station. He was in her room, carrying out the solitary task of routine checks on life signs and equipment function; once completed, as he always did, he sat down to record his findings on the registry. Identical readings to the day before, and the day before that, apart from the tissue decay, which appeared to have accelerated.
He’d stopped to deliberate on his concerns, at first ignoring the eerie tingling that started at the base of his spine but as the tingling became more intense, he became aware of a presence behind him and he sat up straight, all senses attuned, and he turned slowly towards the centre of the room where Alexis Langley lay enshrined.
It was opening. Without a sound, the uppermost chamber of the sarcophagus had already parted. She lay still and pale, silent and serene. Transfixed, he watched the sarcophagus lift, centre itself and rejoin to form a canopy, hovering over her while the fluid, instead of rushing like water bursting from a broken jug, continued to ripple and cradle her within its depths. Slowly, her body moved upwards and for a moment, floated, her shroud of hair falling away from her face while gently, the fluid supported her descent into the shell-like remnant of the sarcophagus. No equipment sounded, no distant everyday noise could be heard from elsewhere on the station, there was no sound at all, save the sound of his own heart beating.
He didn’t even try to move, such was the impossibility of the moment, and the incomprehensibility of the scene he was now witnessing. The room was still. Hushed. Suspended in time. An eternity.
The peace exploded when the canopy suddenly shattered, sending him scrambling for cover, the shimmering liquid slipped from around her and joined with the shards of the sarcophagus, before vanishing into nothingness, leaving her abandoned in the shallow capsule. He had enough presence of mind to slap the visual beam on the registry as he dived for the floor and in doing so, preserved the final image of the disappearance of both sarcophagus and fluid.
He later learned her awakening and the subsequent disappearance of the fluid took less than 20 seconds. As the only witness, he filed a report that, given the image recorded, suitably satisfied and astonished the Tabernacle but he never told another living soul what he really saw in the room that day. Not because he didn’t wish to, but because when he tried, his tongue stilled, and his jaw would not move. He tried to record it in the written word, a skill possessed by only a few in society but each time, his hand could not move the pen.
She watched him while his thoughts were in the past. He could not tell her of them.
“Then you struggled to breathe, and we were all galvanised into action,” he said quickly when he saw she was watching him.
“I suppose it would have been no loss even if you had been able to penetrate the shell before that, seeing I was dead already.”
“I disagree, it would have been a loss, a great loss,” he held up his hands as though measuring the extent. “Alice,” he clasped his hands over hers, she saw his wonderment and awe, “you are one of a kind, there are no others.”
Alice did not share his wonder. It was too unbelievable, no matter how often she heard the story. She took her hand away and picked up her tea.
“If we had lost you,” his voice an urgent, emphatic whisper, “we would have lost part of our history.” Then he realised what she had said before. “And you weren’t dead.”
“Near enough,” she pointed out. “I can’t fill in the gaps, Dr Grossmith, I’m not really part of your history, if anything, I appear to be part of your future.”
He raised an eyebrow at the sudden variation in her tone and speech. Was he going to witness an episode of elucidation?
But then she shrugged the shrug her mother would have thought disrespectful and sat back, speaking in the words of Alice Watkins.
“You don’t know how I’ll turn out, really, you don’t. You don’t even know if I’ll survive.”
“No, Alice, we don’t, but you are neither an experiment nor a curiosity. You are a wonder.”
“What about my appearance?”
“Alice, your looks are the same as before your stasis, although you do look healthier!”
“I don’t recognise myself.”
“I realise that, but the woman in that sarcophagus is the woman who is sitting before me.”
“Dr Clere has replaced most of my insides.”
“He grew them, Alice. They are entirely yours. The scientist who placed you in that chambe
r; he took the chances.”
“How?”
“By preserving you in a living state. No technology, not historic, nor current, was ever successful in that. Your uncle either had a vision or help. You were the original Sleeping Beauty.”
She doubted that. The original only slept for 100 years and woke up looking like she did when she first got into bed. Alice was an old lady dozing in a chair.
Dr Grossmith was proud of her and didn’t treat her as a curiosity, no-one here behaved as if they were curious about her. Only a select few knew the truth anyway, and she was treated with kindness and respect, as for Dr Grossmith, she considered him a friend.
“Would it be alright if I asked for more pastries?”.
“Yes, Alice,” he said with a sigh and a grin. “it would be fine.”
Chapter Eleven
The shuttle landing bay was like many of the rooms on the station, glass-walled with portals and a view out to Saturn, the only difference being the presence of a complicated-looking metal door. The pilot was waiting and on seeing them, bowed and released the door by flicking his finger against a series of lights. The door slid away in four parts, up, down and side to side, to reveal what looked like the inside of a small car, with a driver’s seat, passenger seats and controls but no steering wheel. Beyond the shuttle, through its viewports, Saturn glowed, looking bigger and brighter than it did from inside the station.
This would be what Dr Grossmith called ‘going out’, buzzing about in a tiny vehicle in space. Unsure whether to be overwhelmed or terrified, Alice settled for both and held on to Dr Grossmith for support, hoping he would reconsider.
“Is it safe?” she didn’t want to look out the viewport, there looked to be a sheer drop through eternity on her side.
“Perfectly safe, Alice. There hasn’t been a shuttle accident in twenty years.”
“Oh dear, maybe they’re overdue for one.”
“Don’t worry, these little shuttles are very robust and manoeuvrable, I guarantee you will think differently at the end of this trip, besides, we use shuttles all the time on Earth to get around.”
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