The Sarcophagus
I found myself resting in a cryo unit that resembled a sleek, high-tech sarcophagus. The outer shell is made of brushed metal and glass, while inside, glowing, self-weaving nanotech fibres are tightly wrapping around my body. All I could think of were ancient Egyptian linen bandages. My face is partially obscured, but I can feel the signs of distress etched across. The lighting around me is dim, bathed in cold blue and amber instrument lights. How did I get into it, and why am I seeing myself in the revival cocoon?
A Constrained Pilot
The walls are pressing in, suffocatingly close. The air feels thin, hot, and heavy with the scent of my own fear. Sweat stings my eyes, blurring my vision and slicking my skin inside the flight suit, which suddenly feels like a lead weight.
I can see the control panel, it’s right there. It’s a blur of familiar lights, red and green warnings pulsing in the semi-darkness, just inches away. My fingers twitch, aching to reach out, to flip the sequence, to take back the ship. To do something.
But I can’t move.
This shimmering silver nanoweave has me in a vice grip. It’s wound tight around my chest, pinning my arms ruthlessly against my ribs. I strain against it, every muscle in my body vibrating with the effort to break free, to snap the threads. I grunt, I push, I fight, but the weave doesn’t give a millimetre. It just holds me there, staring impotently at the controls I can’t touch, trapped in a silver web while the panic rises like bile in my throat.
The Psycho-Mythic Overlay
The glass descends, sealing me in a coffin of sterile white and clinical blue. But as the seal locks, reality fractures. The harsh LEDs overhead soften, bleeding into a warm, suffocating sepia.
I blink, trying to clear my vision, but the afterimage doesn't fade—it solidifies. Through the transparent hull of the cryo-unit, I see them: ghostly, translucent figures standing over me. They aren't medical droids. They are priests. I can see the rough stone of a tomb wall superimposed over the sleek bulkhead of the ship.
They reach for me. As the machine spins its silver web around my limbs, I feel the phantom touch of ancient hands as they apply ceremonial linen. The timeline is collapsing on itself. I am a modern man drowning in the dust of the ancients, suspended somewhere between the cold silence of space and the golden, heavy air of the afterlife.
My sense of panic is blooming.
It starts on the back of my tongue; a sharp, cold tang of copper, like biting down on a penny, or the taste of a gun barrel.
The weave holds me tight, keeping my body motionless, but inside, I am detonating. Deep in my chest, the spark catches. It isn't a heartbeat anymore; it's a jagged, violent bloom. I feel it tearing through the soft tissue of my lungs; a chaotic explosion of rusty iron and oily, black sludge.
It pushes outward, expanding against my ribs, filling every hollow space with a screaming, metallic heat. I am nothing more than a silhouette now, a dark outline of a man barely containing a catastrophe. The pressure builds, desperate to shatter the shell, but the cocoon holds the shrapnel inside. I am burning down from the centre out.
Unspooling my identity
The world has contracted to the terrifying, singular inch directly before me. I can feel the synthetic nanoweave's cold, efficient hum and the binding material pressing against my temple, unwinding me. The aged,
electronic linen-like threads scratch, and I am consumed by confusion.
My eyes are forcibly locked open, demanding a conscious effort to blink, as I stare into the mechanism. The reflection on the closing shutter reveals my own pupil, dilated wide with sheer terror—a black void. As the pressure finally tightens and locks against my skull, I sense a thread snapping deep within my mind. It’s more than the pod sealing; it’s my disintegration. Everything, my history, my name, my very instincts, is rapidly unspooling, unravelling into the darkness as the machine encloses me.
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