Jon looked around the room trying to estimate how many of these bodies there must be but his head was too fuzzy and he gave up. Hundreds certainly.
But more importantly – he was the only one who had emerged from its strange chrysalis: he was alone in a huge room full of comatose beings. And also, he finally realised, he was completely naked. And there was another oddity: between his legs was a bulbous sack with a fleshy tube hanging down. He touched it and could feel the touch: it was definitely an integral part of him. Most odd.
Completely at a loss as to what to do, he began to walk up and down between the caskets to see if he could determine what was the purpose of all these structures. Initially he looked into each one as he passed but soon became bored by the repetition of motionless forms floating in liquid, all completely oblivious of him, or anything else for that matter.
But as he walked he gradually realised that his movements were becoming easier; he could feel strength and suppleness very slowly returning. But as his vitality returned he also became aware that he was ravenously hungry. Ravenously hungry in a cavern of grey metal.
He leaned back against a casket and tried to remember how he had got here. Were there memories further back than just a few minutes ago? He couldn’t recall any. Had he just been born, born from an artificial womb of a mechanical mother?
It was just as he had reached that dispiriting conclusion that he felt a vibration in the substance of the casket that was leaning against. He spun around to see that the liquid inside was draining away and that the pipes were pulling away from the figure inside. Fascinated he watched the person’s eyelids flutter and open. The figure pulled the pipe from its mouth and began to toss its head from side to side in obvious anxiety. Jon tried to catch the person’s attention but to no avail. He stood rapidly aside as the cover made a groaning vibration and then slowly rose up.
A figure stood up as the cover finished its retreat and slowly stepped out. Jon stared in amazement at what was revealed. It was something not too dissimilar from himself in that it possessed legs, arms and a head, but the body was constructed entirely from curves and the head was topped with a mass of amber-gold hair, formed into a kind of cap by the residual liquid. And there was also amber-gold hair between the legs, as well as an indication of some kind of indentation in the centre.
She, for such the being obviously was, stood there blinking in the unaccustomed light, rubbing her eyes to get rid of the residual liquid. Then as she turned she saw Jon for the first time and started. Her hand flew to her side with fingers searching for something that she expected to be hanging there but was not. Then her eyes widened in joy and amazement.
‘Jon!’ she gasped, joy flooding her features.
‘Do you remember anything?’ asked the woman, whose name she had informed him earlier was “Shana”, ‘you must remember something!’
Jon placed his chin on the backs of his thumbs and stared moodily at the floor. She gazed at him with an odd mixture of worry and impatience. Finally he said: ‘There was a hill.’
A broad smile lit up her features. ‘Yes, Jon a hill! But there’s much more! What about the hill?’
He waved at her to leave him alone and stood up angrily. ‘A hill, a hill! What more is there to remember! And I’m hungry. How can I be expected to remember things if I’m hungry!’
Shana’s smile vanished abruptly. Jon was right – she was hungry too, terribly, terribly hungry.
Jon glared at her. ‘Maybe I could eat you. You seem to have plenty of spare flesh that’s not doing anything.’
Shana was tempted for a moment to cover her breasts but thought better of it. She was what she was and this man had his own physical excrescences that appeared to be functionless.
It was then that their impasse was shattered as a directionless voice suddenly boomed out: ‘Shana12! Jon21! Proceed at once to the cleansing station!’
They both looked at each other in amazement. They were not alone! There was somebody else awake in this building!
Even as those thoughts flashed through their minds there was a metallic grinding noise behind them as if something that had not moved for a very long time was finally trying to do so. They spun around to see a section of the wall slowly and jerkily begin to slide open, gradually revealing a brilliantly lit corridor. Twice it stopped, making an angry whirring noise, before moving again to complete its journey.
They stared at each other for several moments before Jon said; ‘Come on – if we stay here we die slowly, so nothing out there can be worse.’
They stepped out in the corridor. It was very cold with a thin film of frost clinging to the curved walls. The frost was slowly subliming, with the resultant water vapour being sucked away into vents in the wall. The temperature was rising rapidly, leading to the suspicion that not long previously the corridor had been cold: very, very cold. They stood watching the little curls of vapour vanish, not at all sure what to do. But then on the wall a glowing arrow appeared, pointing straight down the corridor before them and at its tip were the words CLEANSING ROOM. After one more glance at each other they obeyed the implicit instruction of the sign.
As they walked the temperature continued to climb until it was warm enough for their shivering to stop. After many twists and turns through the damp, grey corridors they reached a section where there were glowing words on the wall, stating: CLEANSING ROOM. They stood before it and watched with growing impatience as another section attempted to slide open, whirring and clunking as it did so. This took quite a while longer than the original door but eventually it was wide enough for them to enter.
Inside were cubicles with many vents in their walls and fronted with transparent doors. These opened as they approached and the same commanding voice told them to enter. No sooner had they done so when the doors swung shut. Suspecting a trap, Jon had just begun to raise his fists to try and batter his way out when he was hit simultaneously by thin jets of extremely hot water which swiftly covered him in a bubbling white lather. He was rapidly covered from head to toe in the clinging foam which, in turn, was blown away by blasts of warm air. The door then opened, fortunately without any whirring or clanking, and he stepped back into the main room, feeling remarkably fresh and invigorated.
He turned just in time so see Shana step out and was pleasantly surprised by the transformation she had undergone. The globules of mucus-like liquid had vanished from her skin, which now gleamed with a rich, almost luminous, sheen, reminiscent of rosewood. And her hair had gone from a streaked, greasy cap to a tumbling, cloud-like mass of amber-gold glory.
Jon thought of saying that she looked “Good enough to eat” but decided that would be distinctly unwise under the circumstances. Instead he merely commented, ‘You look better.’
She looked him up and down. ‘And so do you.’
Their mutual admiration was interrupted by the directionless voice which commanded: ‘Now get dressed. Clothing is on the shelves to your left.’
They found one-piece garments of a soft grey cloth that fitted them perfectly, hiding those useless excrescences. They were puzzled by two pairs of small objects with large holes on the tops before Shana realised that they were intended to go over the feet.