Ekon

Red heat lamps cast their glow and penetrating warmth through the blanket draped about me. The warming room was crowded, at capacity. Other than one man grumbling under his breath, no one said anything. At the edge of audibility there was classical music. I recognized the piece: Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.

The hibernated must be awakened once every one hundred years, at minimum, to reduce health risks. That’s the technology aboard the Carthage, anyway. By now, 600-some years from port, certainly things had changed back home.

My shivering had at last stopped and I was warm enough to drop the blanket to the floor. A knee-high quadrupedal bot entered and handed me my watch, data speks, and clothes. It was a serve bot I had a hand in designing centuries ago, I noted with a touch of amusement. The watch displayed a message as soon as it felt the skin of my wrist: LUCIUS, CONFERENCE ROOM 7b, AS SOON AS ABLE.

My data speks indicated this was not my routine hibernation emergence. I stood, stretched, donned my clothes.