To many, Storage represented a way to escape reality for a time. Worldshaper suites built into every facility provided a Store-ee an endless cornucopia of virtual experiences to choose from, or in some cases not choose. To others, it provided the perfect means to focus on a particularly complex task, be it science or art.
But there was another reason that so many facilities like Sleepers in Azure had been constructed across the aeons of Shiplord existence. Sometimes people didn't want to continue living in the world where they now found themselves, whilst also not being ready to die.
There were many reasons that one of your people could make the choice to abandon reality, and though many laid out complex schemes of trigger conditions to awaken them, perhaps no more than twenty percent ever expected them to be fulfilled. At least that had been the figure at the time of your Storage.
All of that crossed your mind in the instant it took to realise that you were, quite suddenly, awake again.
Citizen Taldor. Trigger clauses three and five of your Storage agreement have been met.
Try to imagine it. Text in the blackness in front of you, as you realised that your eyes were actually able to see something. A moment later, the realisation that you were standing on something, recognition of a virtual construct, the one you'd been told would be waiting if they ever brought you out of your endless sleep.
It was an endless black void, in all directions. Closer to your virtual presence there were signs of muted colour, but only that. It had been something about avoiding overstimulation as your mental processes adapted to reactivation. You blinked, feeling the weight of years and the sudden quickening of life in the same instant as you shifted your body within the construct.
It felt the same as it had…how many cycles had it been? More text followed the first, as if its source had been listening in to your question.
It has been two million, six hundred and twenty-three thousand, two hundred and eight-two cycles since you entered Storage.
Two and a half million cycles? It took a moment to process that number. To process that your age had more than doubled since last you saw anything. What would- you forced the question away. That had been another of the instructions. Focus on the reason for your reawakening.
You'd known some sleepers who'd put together lists containing hundreds of different possibilities. You hadn't been one of them, but that did nothing to stop the surge of focused energy that shot through you as you read the numbers again. Three and five.
Five.
How had- no, not important. Not right now. You forced the tension down, the desire for answers that would only lead to more questions. You had to focus on the bigger picture.
Clause three meant that your people had encountered an enemy that threatened to match the dangers of the Sphere. What that meant to the Authority at this point, you hadn't a clue. But you'd written the clause to require Central Intelligence to consider the threat warranted, too. They, you'd trust.
And if they thought war was coming, you were only one of millions who'd be experiencing this wake-up call. You spared a moment of sympathy to the poor Storage facility techs. There'd never been enough of them before, you couldn't imagine there were now. The strain they must suddenly have found themselves under…
A war, then. A real one. You'd have to ask questions, reach out, reconnect. Figure out what sort of world you'd found yourself in. If the murmurs since the War of the Sphere had been properly quashed, or if…things had taken a different turn.
But if they had, clause five's activation meant there might just be hope. You'd helped write the scenario that Warden Kicha had intended to install at the Third Sorrow - gods willing it'd been the last. You'd tried to break it for years, all to no avail. Clause five had been written to activate if someone found an answer.
But more than two and a half million cycles for anyone to succeed? How much must have changed.
More questions, you filed them away for when you could actually get answers, though one still remained. Did you want to?
You'd gone into Storage to try and escape the blood on your hands, the terrible victories that so many had hailed you for. You'd led the Fleet through the hell of the Burning Line, broken the Sphere in a holocaust of stellar death, but after it was done you'd just wanted to rest. Did you really want to go back, just to another war?
The last one had ended with billions of lives lost, all because your people had believed themselves secure behind the intangible presence of the War Fleets. Grown complacent, on your watch. Contact had torn themselves apart over the ultimately catastrophic introduction they'd given the Sphere, but they'd not been the ones responsible to defend the galaxy from the monsters they'd found.
That had been your duty. One you'd failed.
Those ghosts had driven you to leave the world behind, once. Now they did the opposite. There was no gain in fighting them. No matter how long you spent here, they'd eventually win. Maybe if it had just been the war…
You looked up again, finding the last piece of text you'd been told to expect.
Do you wish to exit your hibernation sequence?
"Who are you trying to fool, Taldor?" You muttered into the black. Your voice was barely more than a whisper, touched by an age that your body would never feel. "If Kicha's hope has actually succeeded, you owe it. And not just to her."
Nothing answered. The question just sat there in the air, waiting. Hate flashed through whatever was left of your soul, hot, sharp and utterly insufficient to the task of survival. It sputtered and died in the emptiness of your heart, and you felt the nanoshell around you start to change. Becoming the uniform that had been yours two and a half million cycles past.
Do you wish to exit your hibernation sequence?
"I do." You told the expectant silence. "Wake me up."
