Due to a new find on Earth the whole Galaxy's is in a State of utter bafflement and confusion.
Even Scientists are clueless about the How.
One Human has Survived. Locked away deep underground in a sort of Cryogenic sleeping Cell, years before even the First Prototypes where built.
The Signs on the Pod says "Activated 2019. All Vitals normal. Beginning Waking-Procedure. T-24 Hours"
A Human still alive from before the Shattering. -- Anon Guest
The vault under the mountain was brilliantly engineered to stay intact despite the passing ages. It ran on a combination of geothermal, nuclear, solar, and wind power. It had backup systems on its backup systems. It had conditions on its conditions.
Nevertheless, when it was discovered and then subsequently breached - because there is no such thing as a locked box that a Human will not want to open - sensors and systems activated, and surviving displays activated.
For the record, a properly shielded CRT screen can last forever if it is made out of bulletproof perspex. All the partially broken ones showed the same display. It read, Cryosuspension chamber V12.87.12.3 Activated 13 Dec 2019. Dots crawled across the screen. Chamber breach detected. More dots. Atmosphere analysis complete. Beginning revival process. Further dots, then some incomprehensible technobabble. The bottom of the screen maintained the same information.
Full revival in: 23 hours, 54 minutes... and the seconds were steadily counting down. The automated machines had lain in a state of neglect for almost five hundred years, but the engineers behind it all had evidently thought of this. The electronics were all housed inside casings of toxic petrochemicals melded with poisons that even the most determined of vermin couldn't survive consuming. Where possible, everything was bronze or aluminium gears. It was built to last the ages, possibly even the end of the Earth. Nevertheless, the available technicians and historians swarmed, making sure a hundreds-year-old machine was actually functional.
Media makes an enormous deal out of ancient, abandoned temples with functioning death traps. The sad reality is, if you have an ancient, abandoned temple, it is the death trap because architecture that has stood firm over thousands of years just might collapse because your stupid ass bumped into an inconvenient wall, thus burying you alive. Nevermind the giant boulders and the conveniently un-rotted thousands-year-old ropes or amazingly well-preserved weighted pulley systems.
They had to move carefully[1], whilst at the same time rushing to non-invasively diagnose machines that had activated and were trying to perform tasks. They had to figure out what the machines were designed to do whilst also making sure that they were still capable of doing them and, if they weren't, actively assist in the function on the fly. It was a very tense twenty-four hours for the shifts of people attempting to save a life that may already be cryogenically mummified[2].
It was almost a miracle that ninety percent of the entire machine worked, and that the failsafes actually kept safe the functions that failed, as they were supposed to do. Finally, the singular sarcophagus opened and a living, breathing, Human male was exposed to twenty-fifth century air for the first time. Of course, they did so inside a well-constructed isolation tent because twenty-first century diseases and twenty-fifth century ones should never mix.
The head Medic of the team entered in a specially-sterilised livesuit to double-check the vital signs and welcome the living artefact back into life. Eyelids fluttered. A body stirred. A smile formed.
"It worked," he said. He noticed the suit. "What? Y'all haven't conquered disease yet? Or am I overdue a few booster shots?"
Of course, twenty-fifth century people wouldn't be speaking the language we know. It would be the same as expecting the populace to be well versed in Chaucerian English or even the lingua franca at the time - Latin. Therefore the translation modules in Medik Taki Khaadya's livesuit kicked into gear and provided the best fit dub. "We will not shoot," said Medik Taki. "We need samples to tailor engineer specific immunoflus for yourself and the rest of the populace. We require a blood sample, and a cheek and nasal swab." Ze lined up hir equipment. "Please introduce yourself to the recording crew. You are a very interesting case we all wish to study."
This seemed to please the man and he allowed Medik Taki to take hir sampled. "The name is Martyn Dominion Alberthorne the Fourth. My family are likely famous historical figures by now."
"I studied medicine," said Medik Taki with some evident diplomacy. "The people here are recording history, not studying it... yet."
Martyn Dominion Alberthorne the Fourth decided to fill them in. He came from a family of -in his words- business geniuses. They were actually what history now described as Lead Exploiters. Those who made their fortunes on legal-but-unethical practices whilst using those fortunes to keep the unethical legal. Well, some of those fortunes. They kept the majority of their wealth to themselves and paid lip service to charity whilst siphoning off the majority of the money and using it to fuel the fires that caused the charity to be needed in the first place.
His father made a fortune on exploiting loopholes in wage laws, tax laws, and political laws that were kept wide by his fortunes, and Martyn Dominion Alberthorne the Fourth made his own way on his own merits, thanks to a top-notch education at the most expensive and most exclusive schools... and a 'small loan' of two billion dollars from his super-wealthy family.
At the time, many billionaires were looking to escape Earth by moving into space. Martyn worked out in a cold second that they were all idiots and the money was better spent in future-proofing himself. Therefore he poured his 'fritter money' - staggering amounts of money - into cryogenic suspended animation and the best of reliquary-esque technotombs that could keep his body safe until the world had passed through whatever apocalypse the 'tree huggers' feared.
Medik Taki showed excellent restraint in not ending that man's life then and there. That said, she may have taken some supreme delight in giving him the Bad News.
"It has been a little less than five centuries since your... embarcation," ze said. "In that time, the Green Revolution has eliminated all excessive fortunes equal to or above five million of the United States Dollars. All the mansions except those of profound historical significance have been destroyed. The surviving ones are all museums with free public admission."
He seemed unfazed. "I predicted this. There's another vault containing several artworks that have been recovered from the hands of art thieves," translated: he paid for the art to be stolen and made it 'vanish' himself. "I have every confidence that the art world will pay a fortune of whatever currency is most valid for their recovery. Art nerds are just like that."
Medik Taki checked her feeds. "Ah yes, the other vault that was cleared out a century before this one was found. Even then, it was over two hundred years old and therefore exempt from fiscal evaluation, since literally nobody can keep the Time they need to afford it."
"Say what now? Is that currency? Time?"
"As the only non-bankable valuable asset everyone has, yes. It is. The leading cause of economic upset through disparity of resources was the ability to pass valuable assets on to succeeding generations, so it was eliminated. Anything over two hundred years old is no longer valued at a price. In order to make profit out of art, it must therefore be displayed for the public to appreciate. Recommended donations of up to an Hour per visitor are encouraged."
Now the smile began to fade. "I still have gold. Precious gemstones... some holdings that are worth something..."
"Every planet has gold and precious gemstones. As for jewellery, it is also art in excess of two hundred years old and therefore best suited for display."
"Are you seriously telling me that I have nothing?"
"You have your health," said Medik Taki. "Free of charge."
"This is a leftist-run nightmare! Tell me I have something that can be used for trade. I'll work my way up. I'll prove I'm better than this... this... fascism."
Medik Taki raised a brow-ridge and said, "This is the opposite of fascism, sir. This is a regulated socialist meritocracy with accomodations for those like you who find themselves lacking."
"Like what?"
"Since you left society at the end of Terran Common Calendar 2019, you can become an Ambassador for that year. We do this for the temporally displaced. Since your -ah- time ark can be directly placed into that era, there's no need to prove your identity through archives. You can start fielding questions through the Archivaas... and most likely from them. If you overlap with Ambassador Shayde, you can provide some counter-perspective into what you recall of her era."
"Ambassador... what?"
"Ambassador Shayde. Her story is... complicated[3]. She is Ambassador to TCC 1986, since she left society in the middle of TCC 1987."
"I was preceded," he said, "by a woman?"
"She wasn't cryopreserved, sir. As I understand it, her complications include a nasty run-in with extra-dimensional entities calling themselves deities, and some anomalous temporal disparities in other realities. Amongst some other things. Do your timelines overlap?"
"What? No! I'm in my twenties, there's no way I'd even be here if I was -what- forty something? The technology could only work on the young and healthy." An idea occurred to him. "The technology! I funded all of this. That has to be worth something residual, right?"
"No, sir. Patented technology is no longer allowed, sir. Either it benefits the greater societal group as a whole, or it doesn't. Sales are based on partial payment of the inventor's original time spent inventing, and afterwards based on a small profit from the Time taken to create it. This lasts for the remainder of the inventor's lifetime."
A society that did not allow family lines to accumulate wealth, that capped even corporate income to a percentage of its expenditures, and made the body corporate responsible for the health and welfare of its employees. A society that valued things opposite to those that Martyn Dominion Alberthorne the Fourth had held dear to his shrivelled heart. The only things he had of value were his own memories, and the stories he could tell... and he had direct competition in the form of a low-class woman with a streak of mischief in her roughly as wide as the Milky Way.
She sent him gift baskets and a primer for living in the twenty-fifth century.
He almost turned around and put himself back into cryosleep.
[1] Because a five-hundred-year-old structure is still five hundred years old even if it's been over-engineered to survive, and is therefore potentially vulnerable to things the original designers didn't foresee.
[2] An unfortunately common side effect of early cryogenic attempts.
[3] See the novel Adapting, out soonish I hope. Chapter one is available for free here
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Grigorenko]
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