Silk Stasis
Aisling knew nothing but silence these days, but she appreciated it. When she hummed, it was like the entire world was listening to her. She moved through the large corridors of Ozymandias with her slippers, making no sound as she passed through the polished deck plates.
Ten thousand humans were on board, all except her suspended in perfect preservation within a monolithic plinth of translucent biopolymer. Aisling passed by them, all standing upright in a perfect grid.
She hummed a folk tune as she worked, a mournful melody which reminded her of the planet they had left behind. Diagnostic readouts started to stream into her vision but she ignored them. She preferred to focus use her eyes first. With the microfiber gloves covering her hands, she ran her fingers over the surface of one plinth. The texture was glassy, with a slight warmth of life radiating from within.
She wanted to check for any signs of problems, like the accumulation of dust or any problems with the humidity. Thankfully there were none.
Her job was officially titled Cryo-Stasis Maintenance Technician, but preferred to see herself as a curator of a collection of people.
The plinths were a miracle of modern bio-engineering that finally unlocked the secrets of long-term human preservation for generational space travel. A silk-fibroin hydrogel could replace the body’s fluids that turned into an amber-like solid which preserved every molecule in place. The body was fundamentally frozen and could remain that way for a thousand years. There weren’t be any ice crystals or cellular damage, or any of the other thaw-sickness horrors that became sensational stories in the media. More important, the system was completely silent.
She tapped on her forehead to activate the diagnostic readout again. This was subject 402, Captain Halloway. He was handsome, despite being frozen in time. She couldn’t stop staring at his chiseled jaw and the way his eyes seemed so alive. He was like a hero, or rather a plastic model of one. The only thing that seemed amiss was a touch of dust.
“Let me get that for you, Captain,” she whispered as she leaned forward with her cloth.
As her gloved hand touched the body, she felt a tremor. At first, it just seemed like a shudder coming from the ship’s fusion drive or something further on the deck. Or maybe it was the feel of her own pulse? She held her hand still and waited. Nothing else. She let out a sigh of relief. She had been alone for too long. She was just imagining things.
But then she noticed a flicker from the corner of her eye. Did his pupil just move? But that was impossible. Feeling paranoid, she tapped on her forehead again to bring up a more detailed diagnostic readout.
METABOLIC RATE: 0.000%
CELLULAR DEGRADATION: 0.000%
FIBROIN MATRIX INTEGRITY: 99.998%
BIOPOLYMER TEMPERATURE: 20.01°C
STATUS: OPTIMAL
Okay, the silk was fine, and biochemistry had been halted. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling something was off. Two oddities were too much for her to ignore. She tapped through the interface into a sub-menu she had never used before, to check bio-electric activity in the brain. There wasn’t a reason to use it, since everyone was definitely in stasis.
A calm flat line appeared in the HUD, a chart that represented electrical activity. As she expected, there wasn’t any activity at all. It was just her imagination.
Then the line spiked. The waveform displayed a strong burst of neurological activity, a shocking increase that was even out of a place for her. She stared at the readout, trying to make sense of its chaotic pattern. The activity was intense.
How could this be?
No.
The silk. It had to be the cause. The realization sent a chilling shiver down her spine. It stopped every chemical reaction. Every metabolic process. Every heartbeat. But it didn’t stop the electrical impulses through his brain.
As the silk filled every pore of his body, his neurons were firing with fear. The suffocating panic hadn’t faded away when he was placed in stasis. His brain was stuck in an endless loop of terror.
She dropped the cloth and stepped away. She could feel her own pulse quickening. They were all like that. All of them were trapped in their own personal hells, reliving their last claustrophobic moment over and over.
As this newfound truth sank in, she turned and ran. Her hand flew to her mouth to hold back sobs that were building inside. When she reached the master control console, she gripped it tightly and tried to steady her breathing. She had to do something, but what?
Her eyes shifted to the primary mission clock.
TIME TO DESTINATION: 383 YEARS, 9 MONTHS, 11 DAYS
Their screams would continue for generations.
This story was inspired by an essay on the future of silk.
