by E. Steven Jones
Forty-five minutes after my death, I can see the doctors surrounding me. They aren't trying to revive me, that won't happen for quite some time. They are, instead, checking various dials and machines, making sure that everything has gone according to plan. By their calculations, that's exactly what's happened. I was injected with the drugs and I gently fell asleep. From my point of view, however, things couldn't have gone worse.
I am an experiment, you see. I am XS-1034, according to their rosters. I am also one of the elite, one the best soldiers this side of the Trojan War. And better still, for their purposes, I have no family. I suppose that's to be expected though. That's the norm, isn't it for all these super-secret underground bunker experiments? Find the guy that no one is going to care about if he suddenly doesn't show up for Thanksgiving dinner. I know, I know, I'm sounding a bit cynical. Especially for someone who volunteered for this anyway. And it was for precisely that reason that I did volunteer. I had no one to go home to for Thanksgiving dinner. I wasn't going to miss anyone, and I wasn't going to be missed. Besides, my current company commander is a class-A prick. Not having to deal with him for the full year that this experiment is supposed to take would almost be incentive enough. Of course, I'm supposed to sleep away that entire year, so I could wake up thinking I'd only had one great (and really long) night's sleep, and find Captain Numbnuts still my CO.
Wake up. Oh yeah, I got off on a tangent there didn't I? Well, you see, it's that whole waking up thing that has me bothered right about now. I'm supposed to be asleep. Well, technically not asleep - I'm supposed to be dead. That's the way these eggheads in the lab coats explained it to me. They were going to completely shut down my entire bodily functions and revive me in a year. And apparently, that's what's happened. Heart rate? Zero beats per minute. Blood Pressure? Zero over Zero. Brain activity? It's supposed to be non-existent (no wise-cracks from the cheap seats), and according to monitors and that machine that used to go 'ping', it's flat-lined. But here I am rambling on about how I got this way? See why I'm worried now? How am I supposed to wake up if I'm not asleep?
Every now and then, I can see them milling around me. It's not often that they enter my field of view, looking straight down into my face, but once in a while they do. Most of the time, I have just a wonderful view of the acoustic tiles above my bed. By the way, there are five thousand three hundred and twenty-eight little holes in the tiles that I can see. Just in case you were wondering.
Ahh, wait a minute. I think they finally realize something is wrong. Maybe my eyelid flittered or something. They are all around me now, a needle goes into my chest and electrodes are placed on my body. With a jolt that's feels like I was kicked in ass by a mule, I'm shocked back into life.
I blink. I try to swallow with a mouth that is bone dry, but don't have much luck. I look about me. Yep, the same eggheads. But something isn't right. The pretty blonde one, I'd swear her hair is a good six inches longer. And there's Captain ... What?? I guess it's Major Numbnuts now.
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