Spark

Conscious

It began with a game of catch.

Two employees decided it would be a good time to throw around a ball. Rich, the instigator, had found a lone, dusty tennis ball curled up in the very corner of the supposedly clean room. So, in a moment of boredom, he pegged the still dirty ball at his shift partner, Finn.

"These old idiots", he stuttered, barely able to stand in such frigid conditions. The ball sailed through the air. "Well, they push out our paychecks, so they can't be all bad, can they?", Richard snorted, smirking as the ball hit Finn. "Owwww! Cut it out! This is a damn new uniform. We both know I can't replace it. Not on what we're paid." Finn said, annoyed.

The two began to throw the ball.

Electricity is a funny thing. It's everywhere, generated by the clothes we wear, and we still can't seem to get enough of it. These two gentlemen, unbeknownst to them, had created a scientific mystery with their little game of cold-room catch. Richard, after many passes back and fourth, had developed a static charge, just on the tip of his index finger.

And then he tripped.

Instinctively, Richard jerked his hands out against the containers for balance. His finger transferred the static electricity, as a temporary charge disbalance, to the metal. In a split second, the static electricity became current electricity, as it lept back into human flesh. Curiously, it did not dissipate, as it normally should. Instead, the current travelled into the frontal lobe, where a single neuron was excited into firing.

It began with a spark, at first.

Impossibly, a single neuron fired. This spread to another, and another, and soon lit up the frontal lobe like a Christmas tree.

And then he awoke.

Brought back from the abyss, the shell of oblivion that had held him for so long; an overwhelming blackness that threatened to be the last paradise.

Back from the dead.

There was no first thought, but, rather, a string of thoughts. They were all procedural. Calculated. Likened to a newborn baby analyzing its surroundings. His surroundings were black.

Nonexistent, to be more precise.

He felt nothing. He heard nothing. He tasted nothing. Nothing.

The absence of something.

Panic overwhelmed him. At first, when he understood his situation, he was calm. Collected. This is what he had paid for, right? Wrong. It wasn't a revival. It was a reignition.

But then the first second ended.

And his panic truly began. He knew what had happened. Fredrick thought his first conscious thought. "Black", he gasped into his mind, still uneasy.

But then the first minute ended.

He was still in the same place. He was experiencing what no human had ever before, so it was understandable that he would be at a loss. So it came as quite a shock to both reason, and Fredrick, when he thought again.

"I'm trapped"

And he was trapped. Trapped forever, possibly. Maybe until he became some obscure exhibit in a museum. "This is what those idiots in the 1970s thought was possible. Of course, modern science knows it isn't, so these men and women are still here, and there is little we can do", the guide would say, dismissive as he herded the tour group on. "Next, it's off to the petrol-burning cars", he yells...

But then the first hour ended

Fredrick was at full thought capacity now. He thought of his wife, who looked on as he breathed his last breath. They were on the rocks, anyway. "I wonder what happened to her", he questioned in his head. There was no reply.

But then the first day ended.

Twenty four hours, or so he thought, trapped in this metal prison. "They'll adjust the temperature any second  now. I'll be back out soon, I'm sure of it. Just gotta stop thinking and I'll be out. Out like a light. Dead, again. At last."

But then the first week ended

Fredrick was going crazy. He was trapped with just his mind and his memories. To try and entertain himself, he had begun replaying memories in his head. It didn't work. They were all fuzzy and distorted. Not good for his relaxation.

But then the first year ended.

By this time, Fredrick should have been long "out", as he put it. He had no oxygen, he never slept, and he certainly never enjoyed himself any more. He had completely given up hope of seconddeath.  The same thoughts, over and over. No one to talk to. No one to love. No muscles moved, no feelings felt. He was alone. An intangible submarine amidst a sea of nonexistence.

Centuries passed.

Fredrick no longer thought. He had given it up, years ago, when he has played the last song in his head. The last noise, the last laugh, the last color, the last true, original thought. He was inhuman in his humanity.

Eons passed.

And finally, the end came. Fredrick was conscious, as he always was, and he felt nothing. But then, something.

The presence of nothing.

The humans, probably unrecognizable by you or I today, so evolved were they, lifted the archaic device out of the chamber. Richard and Finn had died long ago, along with their replacements, over almost countless years, until this moment. Humanity could finally achieve what was previously thought impossible: they could revive their dead brothers.

Fredrick was already alive.

Not alive by our standards, but perhaps by some cosmic minimum. He was alive. So when he felt the pinpricks, he was amazed. They spread from his mind, to his feet. He had feet! He had forgotten about them long ago. He began to warm. He felt it! There was no temperature in the mind-void. Slowly, he began to become anew; reborn into his new life.

The humans repaired him.

They repaired his cells, and smoothed his skin. By the time they were done, Fredrick was terribly old, but resembled an Old Earth young male.

Fredrick opened his eyes. He sensed color, smell, taste! His liberty was at hand! The time was now!

Instinct took over.

In a well-rehearsed, calculated, controlled action, Fredrick grabbed the nearest surgical instrument he could find. It happened to be a neurological drill.

He turned it on.

He ground, continuously, into the front of his skull, before the humans could react. The neurons were destroyed, and became a biological mush; his prison was eradicated.

Relying purely on the weight of the drill, he laid back onto the operating table. He saw blackness again, but it was a different kind. Nonexistence. The pure absence of thought. His home of blood and thought and life and light oozed out the growing hole in his skull.

Gone.

The team looked, aghast, at what the man had done. "Fredrick", his name card read. Frozen in 1977, with no special restrictions or circumstances. This one had opted for the full body, instead of just the head, as most people had done in the last hundred years or so. NewLife, the cryogenic preservation company he had used, had gone out of business long ago, but the customers remained. It was simply human decency to keep them around. In any case, they had just performed a $500 medical procedure  to revive this man, who had created a fine mess on their new table. "This one's family's gotta be fined for the mess", a surgeon jeered at the rest of the team, partly serious, but mostly to get a laugh. It didn't matter. They hosed the table down,  and carried on with the revivals. Had to meet a quota, after all.

Fredrick's body was tossed onto the growing pile of others, who had instinctively ended their life on the table, just as he had.

It began with a spark...