The Lancaster Trilogy

— THE LANCASTER RULE —

A Reflection

This is the future.

My future.

Not my descendants’…

Mine.

The year is 2333. Three hundred and twenty-seven years have passed since my birth. I was born in 2006; so long ago its practically ancient history.

I’m only twenty-five. I went to sleep when I was twenty-four. Instead of losing a year, I lost three centuries!

In the fall of 2030 I lived in a modest, two-story brownstone in a quiet neighbourhood north of downtown Toronto. Though a rental, it was my first grown-up home. I’d used up all my savings to cover the first and last, and made just enough as a part-time art instructor to make rent each month. Occasionally I’d sell a painting, and the cash went straight into my savings. But that place, that house, no longer exists. No one remembers the street name. No one even cares. The playgrounds and parks I used to play in as a kid are all gone. The schools I went to, the streets I walked, the places, my friends…

Gone.

Like them, I should be dead. But I’m not.

I look the same, but…older. And like an initiation rite to be allowed entry into this future, I have scars. I earned those, and brandish them like medals. In the years to come, they will grow pale and thin, but the memory of each will always remain sharp and painful like the day they were placed there. To see my scars gives me great pride. Without them, I’d have no life here.

My time in this future has been short, but I’ve come a long way to get here. I look forward to each new day as if it were the first, and live it like it’s the last. Death has come knocking many times, especially since the life I lead now is a far cry from what it used to be. I’m a different person now. Very different. I’m stronger, and more aware.

Many times I’ve cursed the day I climbed into my father’s suspension chamber. But, in the name of science, I helped Dad achieve the next level towards the advancement of stasis technology. While I curse myself, I also take pride in it. If I hadn’t helped, my life might’ve been normal. I would’ve grown old with my family and friends, married and maybe had a family of my own, lived in a quaint little house with a dog and cat, and my painting.

Maybe.

But since I took that first step into the future I’ve learned the reality of death, of grieving, of being drowned in a sadness—a darkness bordering on madness—that’s so unimaginably bleak. I’ve felt the pain of being wrenched from everything familiar, things I understood, and taken to a strange new world. And because I took that step, discovered the true meaning of living, and of love. And what it means to be alive.

I am living my destiny.

I am Josie Bettencourt, and I live.

Really live.

AWAKE

Chapter 1

"Josie, please forgive me."

Tears blurred my vision as I watched the image of my father struggle with emotion. He sat before his computer as it recorded his confession—three hundred and two years ago. I remembered his office, his desk, littered with files and notes, scattered with odd bits of items, dust, crumbs, coffee stains, and everywhere, discarded wrappers from butterscotch candies.

"It was a mistake, I know… he struggled on, swallowing hard, fighting with his own tears. But I had no choice. They left me with no choice. I should’ve told you, but I—I couldn’t. Dad’s voice wavered as he clasped his hands together, as if asking for my forgiveness. And for that I’m truly, truly sorry."

A thick tear fell from his puffy eyes, evidence this wasn’t his first tear. The normally clear blue of his eyes, bloodshot. He appeared dishevelled. Old. One side of his greying hair stuck out above his ears. He’d been pulling at it in agitation—he did that, usually with his head bent over some complicated calculation or theory. Unlike now, where he looked like he was about to face the executioner.

"You see, he continued, they’ve been after me for months—years, really. It’s when they found out I’d actually done it that things got…well… They killed Peru—right in front of me! As if he was nothing. Just…killed him. He didn’t fall down the stairs, like the police report said. They broke his neck. They wanted it that badly. My experiment…I’m so sorry, but it attracted the wrong sort of attention. I thought it was a secret, but I guess I must’ve slipped somewhere."

He paused and rubbed his face, quick and rough. I stared at his long, elegant fingers. Fingers that always smelled like his favourite candy. "I should’ve sent you away and never involved you in this. Oh, Josie. What have I done? I lied, I’m sorry. I told you sixty days, but, if you live, if you…by some small chance survive and you see this…please, oh God, please forgive me, please!" Dad broke down in spasms and wept.

So did I. Wailing. The lancing pain of betrayal pierced me, leaving me drained. How could he?

The woman tried to take the imager away from me. Clucking softly, she insisted I’d had enough and should rest a little. I was done with rest. I’d been resting for nearly four weeks. I wanted to run outside and scream, to pick something up and smash it to the ground. And I wanted to crawl into a hole. And die. Instead, I closed my eyes to make everything disappear.

This was all some manic dream. That was it; I’d gone mad. What was I even doing here? I didn’t belong here. The holographic image of my father—clearly, I’d just imagined it. Holotech wasn’t so stable and clear, nor had they invented such small devices to project the image from. This was all wrong. This wasn’t real.

None of this was real!

But the pain was real enough, a constant agony deep down in my very core. The physical aches from joints unused for centuries seemed dull compared to what I endured now, what I’d slowly been feeling since that day I woke up. Like an inevitable, impending sense of doom, it clenched from within as if in anticipation of whatever ill fate was to come.

That day.

I wished now I’d never woken up. Reality, or what passed for it, was too horrific to face.

That day.

The day I woke from my dreams and stepped into a nightmare…

* * *

As if wads of cotton and grit had embedded under my eyelids, when I opened my eyes, dryness burned them. And the torture as the light lanced my eyeballs. My mind swirled with chaos. A shooting pain, like the instant headache of a cold drink on a sensitive tooth, blazed an agonising trail straight to the depths of my brain. For a panicked second, I thought I was at the dentist and he forgot the anaesthetic. I squeezed my eyes tight and groaned, but no sound came. My throat burned.

Vague awareness filtered through my confused state. Something was wrong. My last coherent memory was lying down in the suspension chamber and giving my father a wink. But wait…sixty days sleeping shouldn’t make me feel this way.

In a rush, I recalled when I’d done it before and tried to make sense of it, compare it to what I experienced now. That time it had been for two weeks, and I’d woken up with a mild headache, soreness in my lungs and throat from the respirator, and some discomfort in my nether regions from the catheter. And when our dog Moo-Moo had been under for two months, he simply woke up, shook himself, and went back to sleep. The next day he’d gone back to chasing the lab mice.

Muddled voices surrounded me. A shot of fear sliced through me. Something was so very wrong. A woman; her tone soothing, calm. The other, a man, his voice accented, piped with excitement. Perhaps my father had left me in the care of his research partner, Peru. That wasn’t his real name, only that he came from Peru. His real name was a four-word tongue twister that ended with Ximénez. Peru was easier. But something felt wrong. It smelled wrong. And Peru died before I went into the chamber.

A heaviness pressed against me, like extreme tiredness. I couldn’t move, and had no strength to lift my head or move my eyes. My whole body seemed slack. Was I still in suspension? My coherent thoughts seemed broken, like erratic flashes, filled with intense imagery, then blackness. I must’ve fallen back into that darkness countless times, resuming disorganised dreams about painting a cloud but having no white paint, only ochre. And the cloud kept changing into a roiling ocean, and in that briny abyss bobbed people, places, and objects I knew, dotted with lab mice like the froth from the waves. Everyone laughing and smiling, happy, waving absurdly at me, and someone I didn’t recognise kept telling me it smelled wrong and Peru was dead because he jumped off the stairs.

I’m not certain how long this lasted, but it seemed like forever. Days, weeks…months? Between sporadic moments of consciousness and semi-consciousness, my eyes finally adjusted enough to show me a spartanly furnished room. A simple table at my left, on which sat a silver canister, a small roundish object, and water in a glass shaped like a teardrop. I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at the items, focusing and refocusing my eyes on them. Light passed through the glass, reflected on the silverware, and splashed a rainbow of colours like a halo. Above me were a series of small round lights clustered at the centre of the ceiling. The overall colour of the room was something close to yellow, but more like…ochre. When able, with effort, I heaved my head to my right. A wobble of dizziness blurred my vision, and when it passed, an upholstered chair on wheels greeted me. Next to it, another small table littered with instruments very similar to those found at the dentist, which made me frown. I turned left again. A moderate-sized window graced the wall; the glass pane was clouded and permitted only light. I wished I could see out from it to get a sense of where I was. What time of day it was. Anything. Maybe Dad was just beyond that window, and I was in some sort of quarantine. Could he see me? And I vaguely recalled hearing a dog barking. Moo-Moo?

I grew aware of the woman. She’d come in silently, sat on the edge of my bed and touched my forehead, then moved to the chair and pulled up close. I watched, detached, as she poked and touched me, and ran smooth hands over my face and body, gently massaging. Then she kneaded the heels on her palms into my arms and legs and all over my thin, wasted body. She stuck things on me, then wedged a straw in my mouth and made me drink something vile. She injected me but I barely felt it, then she bathed me with a soft cloth soaked in hot water, that made me sleepy. I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next day, at least I think so since the woman wore different clothes, she did the same massages again. She continued this many times over. I lost count, but every day, throughout these ministrations, an immense tiredness and lethargy stamped down on me. I couldn’t even muster the strength to talk. My throat was still raw and swollen. Each time I wished for death to take me, since the mere effort of staying alive was exhausting.

Yesterday the woman hacked off my hair. It had grown so long, and that confused me even more. When I saw the length of hair she’d taken off, I knew I must’ve been incapacitated for…years. Fear crept into me. How long had I been asleep? My weak neck could barely support my head, let alone the hair on it. The woman had braided it and looped up over the pillow, out of the way. When she finished with my hair, she raised my arms and pressed a warm, fabric-like patch under each of my arms. I registered a tingling sensation as if someone was sucking as hard as they could on my skin, making the blood rush there to turn purple. It tickled, but no laugh seemed able to come out of me. When she removed the patches, my own brown armpit hairs were embedded in them. She said something about them being gone for good, and how I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. She did the same to my legs and crotch, winking, saying every girl needed a spa treatment to feel like a new woman.

Whether it was the removal of all that hair, and being lighter from it, I felt a little better. Enough so my focus remained sharper for longer periods and a deluge of questions were lining up to be answered. But my throat failed to cooperate. Instead, I stared out the clouded window, thinking of my father, hoping he was behind it. He had all the answers, if only I could just see him. Why wasn’t I allowed to see him?

Most of the time, my body was encased in some silky material, which made my skin tingle cool like mint as it warmed and soothed. Days followed, weeks, forever it seemed. I flitted between sleep and restless awareness so my conscious scenes were like random snapshots. Sometimes the woman sat with me, talking softly and smiling, her auburn hair held tight in a ponytail, her exotic face calming as I watched her. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if it was all just a dream.

Her name was Madge. With a mix of Asian and Middle Eastern ethnicities, she was tall and had an etherealness to her. A stillness. She appeared to be a young sixty with only a few, thin wrinkles on her face. But her eyes were ancient, as if they had seen many things, and added to her sage demeanour. From under the hairline, along her forehead and temples and creeping out from over her ears, I saw an intricate network of tattoos. They appeared to be vines and flowers, branches and leaves with birds and small creatures entwined and dancing together. And like henna tattoos, she also had them trailing along the tops of her fingers and up the back of her hand, where they ended in delicate flowers around her wrists. Madge’s eyes were a dark grey that sometimes looked black, and her nose was long, graceful. Her full lips were stained with a sort of reddish-orange. Perhaps she’d had them tattooed that colour. She also had the most calming smile. And best of all, she smelled of verbena and other exotic herbs, like she’d just crawled out from those vines that graced her body.

The man, Madge’s husband, was Quin, who sometimes accompanied her. He had delicate, fine-boned features and almost gaunt, like how people who are too preoccupied to eat, appeared. He scurried about in an excitable manner, squirrely, monkeyish. Without meaning too, my lips twitched every time I saw him. His rosy complexion and an expression that always seemed to be surprised, in wait for a good joke, were comical. Quin smiled with uncontained joy, chattering mostly to himself. I knew immediately what a happy soul he was. His twinkling hazel eyes were enchanting, darting everywhere while he talked and talked…and talked. Sometimes he laughed at what he said, seemingly ignoring everyone else. I didn’t understand half of what he said, mostly because I couldn’t keep up and my brain still seemed fogged and unfocused.

My arms were the first to start moving, but they ached constantly with sharp pins and needles. They wouldn’t function normally, and lifting anything weighing more than a feather, let alone being able to hold onto a glass of water, was difficult. My muscles had atrophied so much it was like I only had skin over my bones. The hideous sight of my limbs brought fresh tears to my eyes each time I saw them.

Despite the steady supply of saline patches adhered to my arm, I thirsted constantly for water as I stayed awake for longer periods. Then my voice came back, and I was able to make a few hoarse grunts and groans, and moaning wails for cries. In my mind I wanted to scream: Where am I? What’s happening? Instead, all I managed was a raspy whisper, to which Madge would soothe me with rest now, assuring me all would be explained soon. Despite her reassuring tone, I couldn’t dispel a feeling of foreboding. Everything felt wrong. The edges of hysteria were slowly creeping in. I desperately wanted to know what had happened. But knew the answer would scare me. Terrify me.

Weeks later, when my legs had finally cooperated and I could at least sit up on my own without assistance, they finally told me. They sat with me and told me everything. Everything. Some parts needed telling twice, as I must’ve looked as though I didn’t understand. When they finished, I lay down, curled myself into a ball and stared at the clouded window. Dad wasn’t behind the glass after all. No one was there. No one I knew was even alive. I was all alone. There was nothing else.

Everything was…gone.

My mind shut down. I had no coherent thoughts, no memory of words or speech—of self. I lay there, listening to my breathing until it deafened me.

And then I screamed.

Chapter 2

Quin Aguilar’s first emotion had been elation, then anxiety. Waving his arms, he spread his hands as if trying to catch a giant ball. He explained to Josie how she’d been found, buried deep in what was once a basement cellar in an old farmhouse on Prince Edward Island.

Contractors had been clearing the grounds to make way for an additional wing to the super-structure defence outpost in the Atlantic Basin, when he and Madge’s government contact called to say they had uncovered a stasis pod. Their presence was requested urgently to assist in its removal.

Another one! Quin exclaimed, retelling the events. But I’d been thinking how it’s been nearly ten years since the last one we found. I thought for sure we found them all.

Prince Edward Island. That’s where…would’ve been my brother’s house. Josie’s weak voice rasped. She spoke slowly, like someone learning a new language. Her eyes stared into the distance as if trying to link the events of her life together. But how did I end up there? Why didn’t my brother wake me?

Quin jerked his bony shoulders high and glanced at his wife. Madge, a specialist in resuscitating stasis survivors, complemented him in every way. She was his rock, his foundation. Like him, she was a pod hunter. They were both retired now. Quin had started out as a geneticist, and had studied in detail the obscure research and published works of Dr Peter Bettencourt and Dr Walter Otoo, leaders in stasis technology and genetic science. To have found Bettencourt’s daughter was like finding the mothership.

Perhaps you were sent there for safekeeping? Quin twisted his face in thought. He wished he knew more of Bettencourt’s history, but the geneticist’s work, though known, was overshadowed by Otoo’s.

So, what’s a pod hunter?

Josie had a tendency to flit from one thought to the next with seemingly random regularity. But Quin knew how the mind of an artist worked; after all, being a scientist was akin to artistry. Inspirations came when then came! Eventually, she would piece together all the loose bits of information to get the big picture. And since she had no understanding of what happened in the last three hundred years, he had a duty to explain what being a pod hunter was. To explain everything.

Well, over the last fifty years stasis pods became popular with groups calling themselves the Retro Movement. Quin wriggled in his seat to get comfortable. Josie showed no signs of grasping his meaning. The world…let’s say it had a drastic shift in government. The tide was changing. It became—is—a totalitarian-ruled world. Fear and oppression—everywhere. Every day was a nightmare to live through, and before the Lancaster’s, I remember many days living in hiding, my mother terrified to even go outside to the shops. Technology was halted, monitored, censored. A shock, you can imagine, because the world—since you were born—had advanced so far. Now it was dead in the water. The dark ages once more.

How old were you? Josie asked.

About nine or ten, Quin chuckled. Long, long time ago. It’s not so bad now. The tyranny is pretty much ended.

How bad was it?

"Bad. Dane Lancaster was just emerging, like a hungry alpha wolf—rawrr-rawrr—snapping, biting, challenging everyone, every country. A total knob, to be honest. He succeeded too, declaring himself World President—with capitals! But, it wasn’t too hard, really, taking over. We’d made a mess of the world since you were last here, Josie. There were catastrophic economic crashes all over, and conflicts, disease, water shortages, and environmental disasters. Like a chain reaction they came, one after the next. Anyway, to reinforce his law, Lancaster brought back the old moral codes. It was kind of a relief, actually, being able to look up to someone who had some sense of control, authority. It almost seemed like Lancaster was our saviour. But then…then it started. He had our rapt attention, and he showed his true colours, and condemned anyone who didn’t comply to death. Agitators were silenced, education was government-controlled, media censored. We were spoon-fed what to do, what to think. World President of the United Europe and Americas, Dane Lancaster—sadistic, corrupt, his leadership self-styled. Woo-woo erratic. Unpredictable. We’d gone from disaster to nightmare. It was better to just live scared and not say a word. Live like sheep. He was crazy. We lived like this for many, many years—more than thirty years, at least. And then his son, Baird, took over. It got better, a little bit. Either that, or we’d just gotten so used to living on the edge, of constantly looking over our shoulders, minding our manners and keeping our heads down and just…surviving."

Madge leaned in, running her comforting hands over his shoulders. She smiled and carried on for him. Under Baird’s reign, technology and peace slowly came back, and the segregated world made attempts to unite again. It’s been fifty-five years since Dane first come to power. His grandson John rules as World President now. John is called the New Age leader—the Young Innovator. She sighed. We shall see.

John Lancaster. Quin wagged a finger, then brought it to his chin and tapped it. Yes. Now he’s causing quite a stir. Changing five decades of tight conditioning and fear, creating new ones of his own. You’ll see his popularity famed and frowned upon, praised and despised. We don’t have a clear idea of his agenda. But believe me, after all these years of Lancaster rule, no one’s going to dare question or oppose. I think we’re all choosing instead to watch from the side-lines and see what this new Lancaster does next.

But…hang on. Quin took a noisy sip of the chamomile tea Madge had brought in earlier. "But getting back to history. Not everyone stayed quiet, or were silenced. Some were aggressive and deadly in their opposition to the Lancasters. Others kept silent, determined, and forever conspiring. During Dane’s time the Retro Movement was a pacifist group, but they banded together, voicing their displeasure and opposition to the ruling government. They decided to enter stasis pods. Stasis technology is mainstream now and is used, as it should be, as a medical aid. The Retro’s…they insisted their day would come when the world was once more at peace. So, for the first twenty years, most pods discovered—and there were thousands of them—were destroyed on the spot. It was barbaric. The sleepers were branded and convicted as cowards before their execution. This was how mad—insane—Dane Lancaster was. The sleepers, they never stood a chance."

Josie widened her eyes. Not even a trial? They didn’t even try to wake them?

Quin shook his head, shame heating his face. He hated this part of history. It pained him. So many innocent lives, lost. What would future generations think? But it got a little better. By the time Baird Lancaster ruled, the remaining pods were long forgotten, scattered throughout the world in safe houses, waiting for the arrival of a better world.

And, Quin clapped once and forced a smile. A better world did come, with Baird. He terminated the law that branded pod survivors criminals and eventually, quietly, signed off on establishing rehab centres for the survivors. Some sleepers had family or friends able to resuscitate them. Others, the ones who were forgotten or lost, needed the most help. But with so many being reawakened, eventually survivor rehabilitation organisations had to expand and form re-assimilation programmes. But we also had to find them. The missing ones. People like Madge and me, our work brought us together. We’ve dedicated our lives to the search and rescue of these survivors. I remember one of my first rescues, a young man from Tokyo. He was actually the oldest known pod survivor, asleep for at least fifty-two years. We found him fifteen years ago. He told us he entered his pod the moment he sensed trouble. He’s now fully assimilated into the modern world. Works as a technical advisor for a film company. Very prominent, too.

Quin let the image of the young Japanese man play out in his memory. Those were the days when finding a survivor was like striking gold. The thrill of the find, the adventure in the seeking, the challenge in the rehabilitation. And the reward at the end of a healthy, strong and assimilated person, ready to re-enter the world.

With Madge at his side, Quin helped well over a hundred survivors rehabilitate in the previous thirty years, some in secret and others publicly. But mostly theirs was a work best kept quiet. It had been a dirty and shameful part of history that caused people to shelter in pods, to hide and cower. Conditioned by Lancaster-thinking, most people didn’t want to know, or even care, who these individuals were who chose to hide rather than live. The sleepers were considered outcasts, filthy. Abominations. Quin and Madge’s work, while rewarding, also brought unspeakable dangers from fanatic groups who opposed the use of pods. Who opposed pod sleepers. Who opposed just about everything.

Each pod carried the identity and a brief history of its inhabitant, making identification possible and easier. Surviving family members and friends, if there were any, could be contacted to help with the rehabilitation. The designs of the stasis pods were based on the research, writings, and prototype model of Dr Walter Otoo, a West African scientist. Otoo, according to ancient history, had carried the baton after Dr Peter Bettencourt was murdered, but Bettencourt’s signature on the model was prominent, from the replicated amniotic-fluid-based encasement liquid right down to the thermal reclamation suits the sleepers wore.

The stasis pods had originally been designed solely as a medical aid and not as the fountain of youth numerous hungry corporations seemed hell-bent on getting their hands on. Bettencourt’s mysterious and unsolved death in 2033, the day after the publication of his works, sparked rampant rumours that it had been a government-sanctioned hit to silence him. Others suggested a private-sector hit. Whatever the case or reason behind his death, Bettencourt was dead, but silenced he was not. Otoo, widely popular, well-connected and aggressively brilliant, took it a step further by finishing the prototype with a few alterations and enhancements. Then he used it to perform the first ever in-vitro conjoined twin separation while the mother and foetuses lay sleeping over the course of one year, slowly healing. When they were awakened, the mother went on to complete her full term of pregnancy, and gave birth to healthy twins.

When the dust-covered suspension chamber was unearthed from the dark, damp cellar in Prince Edward Island, it was oddly large and more cumbersome than Quin was used to seeing. He realised immediately something wasn’t quite right with it. Inside the tempered glass lay a haunting sight. A sleeping beauty. Quin remembered how his heart nearly stopped when he took in the floating form of Josie.

She lay there like a sea creature from the deepest caverns of the underworld. Her nails had grown long through the ages, curled in spirals like obscene tentacles, soft and rubbery from centuries in liquid. Her dark hair had also grown long; it billowed, fanning around her body like a spectral sea-fern shroud. Her body was frail and slack, floating in the thick amniotic fluid. She was so ghastly thin, even her once form-fitting medical suit hung like a limp sail. The only sign of life was the low hum the pod emitted, like a chest freezer in the corner of a kitchen, and once every hour the sucking sound of the respirator pumping oxygen in once, and then out.

When Quin realised his discovery wasn’t merely decades old but centuries, his initial reaction was near hysteria. Impossible! Simply impossible. No one could ever survive for so long. Could someone asleep for so long survive?

"I consulted with Madge immediately. She worried resuscitating someone who’d been sleeping for so long might cause more damage than good. From all appearances, it didn’t look as if you could survive for much longer anyway. Your body was already wasting away from the long years. Maybe, if it didn’t work, it would be better to let you die quietly. But if it did work, we owed it to Peter Bettencourt to try. After all, Dr Bettencourt was the founding father of stasis pod technology. It’s from his genius, or his curse, we’re pod hunters in the first place. You are his proof his tech was worth it."

Secreted away in a special encasement at the side of the chamber were the recordings of Dr Bettencourt. Aside from the precise and detailed instructions on how to resuscitate his daughter, there were old discs and thumb drives of images and home movie clips of the Bettencourt family. Snapshots and scenes of memorabilia that made up the story of a family, a life, and living, long centuries ago.

We had to try. Quin stared at Josie. She seemed engrossed in his recount of the events so far. He reached out and gently gripped her hand. "And if it failed, we would still have the recordings as proof that you once lived. But no one could know of what we did. We logged our report and finding, and treated you as a normal pod survivor. If word got out that a three-hundred-year-old pod survivor lay in our clinic… Quin let out a nervous chuckle. Well, all hell would break loose."

Chapter 3

A few days later, my voice finally grew strong enough to form sentences, and my tongue cooperated to the task. The warm honey teas helped as well. I asked to see my fathers’ recording again. After an initial hesitation, Madge placed the smooth oval imager into my palm. To put less strain on my recovering vocal chords, she disabled the voice command options and showed me which button to press to release the holograph, how to use the touch-sensitive projection to access the menu page, and how to pull up the function icons. Before leaving, she warned she’d be back in one hour.

After an hour and a half, I set down the imager and closed my eyes to replay everything again in my head. It came back to me in graphic detail, helped along by what Quin had said and the new information my father supplied in his confession. Details and images that happened mere moments ago in my mind, when in reality…

Dad hadn’t known precisely who was after him. The lines had blurred, whether government or private sector, or some sinister shade in between. But they had wanted his schematics for the stasis pod. When he realised the threat was imminent, and his research and work in danger of being taken away from him by any means necessary unless he cooperated, he staged an elaborate plan to save me. And in a way, it was a testament that his research did in fact work.

From his confession I discovered that, unknown to me, my life was already threatened. Like a bargaining chip to bend my father’s will. A woman I’d thought of as friendly and cheery, who, like me, went regularly to the corner coffeehouse, was in fact more sinister than she made herself out to be. She’d been sending weekly updates to my father, with candid shots of me going about my daily routine, along with a reminder that should my father refuse to cooperate, she could choose any number of scenarios of how I’d be terminated.

The thought made me shudder. Such sinister intents from someone so beguilingly charming. What could I do about it now? A small part of me wryly considered the irony of it all. She was long dead, and I was still alive.

Take that, bitch!

Besides his research partners, I was the only other person he’d confided to, and was no secret since I always hung out at his lab. With Peru already dead months ago, the only hold on Dad now was me. My brother Kellan lived far away on PEI, and wasn’t even remotely associated, so it was a risk my father would have to take. He could only save one. The less Kellan knew, the better. To choose which child to save must’ve eaten Dad alive. I understood completely the dilemma Dad must’ve faced. In that instant, forgave him.

So, by convincing me to put my life on hold for a couple of months, he helped me prepare for the time in hibernation, as he used to call it. Having done so already, merely as a laugh on my part, and to also help my father with his earlier experiments, I knew the procedures. I wasn’t a scientist but, having lived all my life with one, knew enough to know I was playing with fire, especially with suspended animation research still so young and new. To me, it was very simple. My father needed help, and I was there to give it. Thinking back, I’d do it all again if I had to. He was my father, and I would do anything to help him reach the next step in the name of science. And because my father knew me, if I’d known his life was in danger, knew I’d insist he stepped into the chamber instead. I saw his logic now. Why he’d lied to save me. Why he died—murdered.

As I climbed into the suspension chamber, I gave my father a wink, our code for see you later. And absolutely no idea it would be the last time I’d ever see him alive.

For three centuries, I slept.

Three hundred fucking years!

I’d drifted away in a dream-world abyss where time and reality were nothing but a blink. One minute I said goodbye to Dad, the next I woke to a madness of incomprehension.

All those long, quiet years, alone in a dark, dank cellar with nothing but a machine to breathe for me, feed me intravenously the precious nutrients I needed to sustain myself, and an uncomfortable catheter to reclaim and recycle my waste. My father, Dr Peter Bettencourt, thought of everything—everything to make sure his daughter survived for as long as necessary to keep her alive.

Why didn’t Dad tell someone where I was? Why was I left for three hundred years? Surely my brother knew—

I was in his fucking cellar, I muttered aloud and huffed. I must be getting stronger, my fluency with swearing had returned. Looking around, I made sure Madge hadn’t heard. She didn’t strike me as the type to condone cursing.

My brother could’ve woken me. He would’ve figured out how to; it wasn’t rocket science. So why hadn’t he? Unless… A sharp grip of grief and a sudden hate clutched my heart. Unless he was killed, along with his entire family. Knowing someone was long gone and dead was one thing, but to think they were killed—murdered—was another matter.

I couldn’t begin to sort my feelings out. Horror, hatred, rage. A multitude of confused emotions careened inside me, seesawing rapidly with depression, grief and anguish.

What do I do now?

I wanted to die. Kill myself. The immediate answer. End the madness.

Laughter erupted out of me. To think, after everything my father had done to save me, this was how I was going to repay him? Shame slammed into me for even thinking it.

But I did want to die; I’d wanted it since I first opened my eyes. What was the point now of living? Everyone I knew and loved were gone. My thoughts hurtled back to when I was a kid, all alone and forgotten to be picked up from school. After that, abandonment issues plagued me throughout my teenage years. Just when I’d finally got a grip, the icy festering fingers of doubt slowly dug their way into me. The nightmare was returning. It happened only once, but was enough to shatter my world.

I was there again, sitting outside on a stone bench. A cold lump in my throat, watching as all my friends hopped into their parents’ car, or onto the school bus, going home. Leaving me. Smiling bravely, I waved back, but desperately hoped someone—anyone—would come soon and collect me. But as I sat there, even with my nine-year-old awareness, I knew my father had simply forgotten to come for me. Embarrassment swallowed me by the pitying gazes my friends gave me; some even laughed. I was scared of being left alone while they all went home. How could he forget? Until that day, my existence was a perfect rose-coloured world where I was loved unconditionally, smothered with everything good and safe and real. Protected. But that day changed everything. Years later, I knew that day made me grow up, and taught me the world wasn’t perfect after all. But then…until then, I’d never known such fear, such uncertainty. Such crushing emotional devastation.

My father, so engrossed in his work, forgot his most important task for the day. My mother usually dropped me to school in the morning, but Dad was to collect me. Kellan was old enough to take the express shuttle with the rest of his schoolmates, and after, go off to his various after-school sporting activities with designated guardians.

I sat for almost two hours. Forever. Alone. A worried and sympathetic teacher sat with me, making me feel worse than ever, and utterly foolish. She tried to contact my parents, but I knew my mother was at work in the field with her clients, and her afternoon routine. And my father, as usual, probably forgot to turn on his phone. I knew this because we always returned to the lab after he collected me from school, and many times his colleagues berated him for leaving his phone switched off. To my absolute horror, the teacher’s next call would be to the authorities. I remember begging her not to call, insisting my dad would come. As I waited, I imagined being in the lab, helping wash out vials and equipment, pretending to tinker away like a scientist, or simply watching with fascination as he worked, as he immersed himself into his own world. All the while, hoping upon hope he would hurry up and come.

When finally he came, I burst into tears, ignored the teacher, who shouted something about forgetting my bag, and fled straight into his car.

I cried for almost the whole night, my confidence in him, my trust, devastated. Nothing he said worked to appease my hurt. Not even my mother, who screamed at him, threatening to lynch him with the drapery cords, made me feel better. Even the image it sparked in my head, of my father swinging from the thin cords, didn’t help. I didn’t speak to him for a week. He never forgot again. Neither did I, and each time afterwards when someone told me to wait here a sec, I’d have a momentary jerk of hesitation, a hitch in my heart, and all the emotions from that day would come flooding back.

After that day, as a way of gaining my forgiveness, my father and I played a game of promises.

I’ll see you later, my dear, he’d say.

Promise?

I promise. And then he’d wink to seal the deal.

I’d wink back.

It was our special code, our special language.

That simple expression encompassed every episode from that day, every word spoken, every retort made back, every hurt suffered, until we’d fined-tuned to cover it all without actually saying anything.

After listening to Quin, and watching my father again, a familiar squeeze of anxiety clutched at my chest. The fear I thought I’d conquered was back. Tenfold, like a tsunami. Three hundred years later, I was scared beyond anything I’d ever experienced. The kind of fear that builds and builds until borderline hysteria sets in. The room compressed itself onto me, and my breath thinned. Ridiculous thoughts ran through my head like a sickness: If I stay here long enough, surely someone will come for me, take me back. This is the future. Maybe time travel has been invented. Everything will be all right again. I can go back, can’t I? Can I? I want to go back! I want to go home!

A mewling sound escaped as I whimpered. My chest heaved to get air. My heart raced, and each beat thumped like a riot in my ears. I barely heard Madge talking to me, but her firm hands held my face while something foreign was pressed to my mouth. Cool, clean air shot into my gaping mouth while Madge ordered me to breathe slowly.

In…out. In…out.

I slumped back on my pillows.

Exhausted.

Chapter 4

It’s not real.

It’s not?

No. It’s a replica.

But how—what? I mean, the wind… Staring at the window, I must’ve looked utterly confused. From where I sat, it looked real enough, and the gentle wind it brought in carried the light scent of sweet wildflowers.

Madge dived into a lengthy explanation about how it came complete with holographic technology, and ten images in its memory chip. Privacy screens could be initiated, clouding over with white, black, or any colour of choice. A built-in fan to produced wind, and had artificial scent strips—recyclable and replaceable for a maximum of three months. And finally, a sound chip, able to emit anything from birds chirping and leaves rustling to city traffic or ocean waves. The lightweight design made it easy to mount on any wall or area. To prove this, Madge lifted a corner at the bottom and beckoned me to check under it. Sure enough, behind the five-inch relief of the window, the ochre wall greeted me.

So then, I mused, processing this new information while mentally calculating where my room was in the house, that means, the living room is behind this wall?

Madge nodded. And a little bit of the dining room. After I retired and closed my city office, about three years ago now, I turned this room into my office. I had no real use for it other than storage for my junk. So I converted this into a guest room. My sister sometimes comes for a visit.

Madge and Quin lived in an odd-looking, slightly circular house, nestled among trees in an out-of-the-way hillside spot in the country, north of Christchurch in New Zealand. Having just gotten over the shock of being in a different country from where I’d started out from, my next puzzling thought, obviously, was how I was able to have such a lovely view of the countryside if I was smack in the middle of the house. Mystery solved, and a dubious poke to the window to confirm its authenticity, I pounced onto the next bit of the puzzle.

Is the dog real?

Yes, of course she is. Madge lifted a brow to suggest I might also have suffered brain damage.

Possibly. But this was the future. Robotics in my time were about to go mainstream, and every other sentence was artificial intelligence this or that. It was a warranted question. I couldn’t be too sure, especially when the dog stared at me with unnerving grey eyes. Fluffy, the wolf dog was strange. Or maybe not used to seeing ancient beings.

I’d been with the Aguilars for almost five months now, of which the first couple of months was spent bedridden. Once my limbs were more compliant, yoga stretches and meditation were added to my daily routine, which bored me to the point I fell asleep a few times. After, a swim in the pulse pool to build up muscles and stamina. The experience was like being agitated in a washing machine. Drowning seemed like a pleasant alternative.

Food was a high-nutrient mixture of proteins and simple carbohydrates, unseasoned and naturally flavoured. The texture was soft, like baby food.

I also had much time to rest, mostly outside on the garden bench for a little sunlight and fresh air. Madge often played a segment of a history disc to bring me up to speed. Most of it was a dull and boring blur of dates and facts, events and images that flitted across the screen. Instead, my mind wandered constantly, mostly to look around and take in everything. I still couldn’t believe where I was, and what year it was. My mind just couldn’t wrap itself around that fact.

Despite these activities to build my stamina, I ached constantly. My lungs tired easily, which left me short of breath and dizzy, causing my heart to labour from the strain. During the first few months I barely managed to last much after breakfast. The mere walk from the bedroom to the kitchen exhausted me. After dinner, I usually managed to sit up for another hour or two, and this was spent chatting with the Aguilars. I’d ask short questions and receive animated answers from Quin.

While I’d manage to sleep most times after lunch or dinner, usually I’d lie awake staring at the ceiling, or gazing at the fake window. Thoughts and memories tumbled together in a tangled mess, jockeying for position in my head, and again, gaze around and wonder if I should pinch myself harder.

Was this really real?

Curiosity gnawed at me. Despite the angst and fear, the sheer enormity of my feelings and what was happening, I couldn’t quell the mounting excitement and itching curiosity of it all. I was in the future! This was the stuff one only dreamed of. This was science fiction; a super-cool movie. Stuff you read about in a book—a manga book.

Things like this didn’t happen for real. But here I was, living proof it did.

Does, exists.

With technology where it was, what was once only a dream for my father was now a reality—a reality he helped to create. And I was the first. Many had followed afterwards, skipping through vast stretches of time and space merely by closing their eyes and going to sleep. And I wouldn’t be the last to wake. The Retro’s did it. And many more would do the same. Whether to cheat death or prolong it, to save lives or to hide them. There would always be another. But still, Dad and I had started the ball rolling.

We did it, Dad! We fucking did it.

Though you couldn’t tell by looking, I did age, perhaps about five or seven years. Dad said no matter how much you slowed down the rate of cell growth by suspended animation, a person continued to age, like hair and nail growth in the dead. Only I wasn’t dead.

I was twenty-four when I went to sleep on the sixteenth day of September in 2030. Now, technically, I was twenty-eight to thirty, if one were to be completely accurate. Give or take a couple hundred years. But who’s counting, right? The cells in my body, hibernating, slowed all metabolic processes to a tiny fraction of the normal rate. The much-coveted fountain of youth had been discovered, and here I was, living proof. I still felt twenty-four, but I also felt even younger, and petrified out of my mind, like the proverbial fish out of water.

If skipping through time didn’t consume my thoughts, the advancements in technology did. The Aguilars home alone held many wonders, from amazing gadgets to their mobile phones. Even the cooking range looked incredible.

There were hydro-vehicles, air-cycles, and personal walkers were everywhere. Even shoes with mild anti-gravity capabilities for those suffering from back problems. And light aircraft shuttles or air-buses to passenger liners that all flitted from one end of the street to the next, and from one continent to the next, at extreme speeds and zero turbulence.

And space travel! It was a common occurrence now.

And then there was the new and deadly range of arms and weaponry, too numerous to list, and too violent to imagine. But from what Quin said, most of these advancements had only been made during the last twenty years, after being put on hold from the previous century. Now they flourished. He said: violence begets violence.

In the same brush stroke that painted these colourful shades of advancements, a good dollop remained where things hadn’t changed. Food was still food, not a pill, like people imagined it. Some were synthetic or imitations and, news-flash, organic, free-range, and chemical-free were still as popular and pricy as ever. People took great pride in antiquities, revering objects of art and lifestyles of days gone by.

And then the bad. The Aguilars held my attention with lengthy stories of crime and violence, new drugs and addictions, new levels of poverty and riches. The extremes were more polarised now. Countries rose and fell, catastrophic economic disasters ruining whole nations and their satellites in one swift and furious blow, only to be replaced by countries eager and hungry to lead the pack. The world was like a seesaw, ever changing and ever moving, and the people ebbed and flowed to keep time with it.

Look what it spawned: The Lancaster Rule. That’s what people called it.

Quin had said old man Dane Lancaster was crazy, and speculated he’d suffered from bi-polar disorder. Dane had stamped out the rampant acceleration of technology and modern influences, and installed a reign of old-world values, fashioning them to suit his preferences while hoarding countries and continents like a colonist of old. The dark ages had come once more, but with terrifying consequences.

The regime sparked an underground movement of hate, vengeance and, in the end, war. The war solved absolutely nothing, and only made things worse. Like Quin, people grew scared, sceptical, resigned, and submissive. New levels of terrorism were spawned. Their brutality was unimaginable; the swift and rampant disregard for lives, limitless. The instinct to survive had made people wary and distrustful, and they became skilled and adept at self-preservation…at killing.

Now, young John Lancaster appeared to be restoring order. His rule was described as liberal-minded and fair. But, like his grandfather before, determined and bull-headed, quietly using brute force where necessary to achieve the decorum he wanted. Or so it was rumoured. He was by far the most secretive and private of all the Lancasters, and no one knew his real agenda with any clarity. His governing rule spread across the entire continent of Europe, the Americas, and the better part of the Pacific Rim.

The Aguilars told me each country still held its indigenous identity, but an elected minister reported directly to Lancaster and his Cabinet Ministry. The ministry was based in the Citadel, in Switzerland, constructed sixty-five years ago by John’s grandfather. Those not part of the Lancaster alliance were neutral territories and ignored the Lancaster government, but continued to watch fearfully from the side-lines.

Whatever the case, or wherever you stood, the world had changed, but not by much. The Lancasters were just a few more tyrants marked in history as the world evolved. This became clear to me when taken out of emotional context and watched through a video screen. Like a crash course in history lessons, I watched a continuous spiel of narratives and images unfold, telling me what had gone by through the ages. From the beginning of time, it had always been the same. Who wants to rule the world, and who wants to stop it, who discovered what, and who destroyed what. Never-ending in its repetitive cycle, going on and on into the next millennia.

I reflected on what I’d learned of the future so far, and immediately felt very old and drained. Three hundred years was a very long time, but very short in the sense of the world events and development. So many things achieved, and so many destroyed. Hate, rampant as ever, and love desperate to bloom amid its stench. War would never die with hate alive in all of us.

A weary breath left me. Would it ever end? I suddenly didn’t want to be in this new world. Three hundred years and the world still hadn’t learned anything. Life was pretty much as I left it.

But despite my underlying gnawing depression, I looked forwards to sitting with Madge and Quin, sharing stories and listening to what was happening around the world. Quin made history exciting and interesting. In turn, I supplied the Aguilars with answers to their questions, mostly about how people lived in the twenty-first century. Or they’d giggle like children when I told them about what communications were like back then—old land-line telephones or television, the beginnings of interactive TV and virtual reality, cars only just mainstreaming to solar, electric and hydro power, planes, and the primitive space shuttles.

What blew my mind and sent a surge of adrenaline through me were the space stations. Not those experimental stations where astronauts lived for a few years running tests, but gigantic space station colonies. As the Aguilars said, they were the norm now, and with enough money anyone could afford to travel to visit them. Getting the visa to go was another matter. Strictly regulated and monitored by the Lancaster government, the space station headquarters, located in Greenland, controlled and operated close to twenty space stations. Several orbited the moon and Earth, while others, scattered far into the deep, dark realms near Venus and Mars, were mostly research facilities and space exploration command posts.

The closer space stations were either strictly for pleasure, with off-site, tax-free gambling establishments and entertainment houses, luxury hotels and residences for the very affluent, or research and off-planet farming facilities to help subsidise the growing demand for food on Earth. A few were privately owned by mega-conglomerates, providing everything from off-planet manufacturing factories to exclusive entertainment venues.

Space travel was no longer a novel experience, and though the far reaches of the solar system were still unexplored, every day more and more exploration shuttles and ships were constructed and launched. I sat and listened in awe, unable to fathom the changes, the advances. Many times, I wondered how, whether from luck or misfortune, I was here now. Whatever it was, a traitorous part of me looked forwards to living in this future. In fact, I couldn’t wait until I was strong enough to travel and explore the world for myself. Go into space!

Patience, Madge kept telling me. Patience, and a little time, then she and Quin would take me wherever I wanted to go. Point the way, they’d say, and we’d go. I got the sneaky suspicion the Aguilars treated me like the daughter they never had. They protected me from the world at large, yet encouraged me to open my mind and understand what was happening. Though far from ready to re-enter and assimilate into the world, day by day, I grew stronger, bolder, and curious. The stark shadows of those I left behind, and the raw grief constantly blanketing me, still sent me into a dark gloom. Many times, I’d drift off into the past, taking my mood with me, growing sullen and distant for a few days.

Chapter 5

April strolled in and with it, the bite of winter, casting a bracing chill over New Zealand. The world south of the equator was upside-down, even its seasonal weather. It fit my new lift to a T.

Two weeks into April, I was helping Madge make jam. I’d never made jam. Ever. Having grown up in an age of plentiful conveniences, one simply got jam from the supermarket. Madge religiously followed a recipe handed down to Quin by his grandmother’s grandmother.

The past six months had been long and taxing, on all of us, but I finally felt alive, ready to take on the world. I wanted it, craved it. Like a gust of winter chill, a zest for life bloomed inside me. Though still dreadfully underweight, my stamina and outlook were stronger. Seeing my reflection in the mirror was difficult, my face had changed a bit, becoming sharper and angular. Correction, older. My cheekbones were more prominent, my cheeks sunken, mouth wider.

My hair now skimmed my jawline, a little longer than how I normally wore it. Before. It used to be a light shade of brown, a sable colour, but the years in darkness had made it turn a deep, chocolate-brown, and with it, blazing streaks of bronze and copper from days now getting fresh air as per Madge’s orders. I wasn’t used to seeing myself with darker hair, but if I looked closely, the fine light brown wisps were still there, a spray of them growing close to the hairline on my forehead. Normality was returning. Either that, or I was prematurely greying.

I wondered if, when I turned fifty, as Madge explained, I’d be brave enough to shave off my hair and tattoo my life history on my scalp? This was the trend, a fashion statement in the current generation. To my twenty-four-year-old mind, fifty seemed a lifetime away.

A tattoo of my life. Now that would be interesting. How would one depict sleeping away three hundred years? Lately, I’d been putting thoughts like that away. I had enough trouble living in the present. Twenty-five years from now was something unimaginable. Well, maybe not that unimaginable. I did jump through time. That’s pretty hard to beat.

But, everything else on my face, thankfully, remained the same.

My general appearance still took some getting used to. Every day I spent an unhealthy amount of time just staring at my naked reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was ghastly pale. It wasn’t just the paleness that horrified me, but the sickly bluish-white cast found on corpses. The skin I’d shed hadn’t helped matters in the least, making me sporadically flaky and dry-skinned, and itchy. Madge explained the submersion in amniotic fluid for so long made the outer layers of the dermis turn to jelly. Once out of it, the skin dries and all the dead layers slough off like a bad case of dandruff. I don’t remember experiencing any of this, but Madge assured me she’d applied copious amounts