Tube Cult 2

I turned to sprint to the back room housing the stasis chamber and slipped on the pool of coffee nearly falling to all fours. I clambered to the security door and fell against it looking for my security card. I found it and slid it wildly through the card reader until finally the door opened and the smell of stale sweat and incense poured out of the room.

It was dimly lit with candles whose light barely overcame the neon blue glow of the stasis fluid inside of the chamber. There was no scientific reason for it's color, the fluid itself was clear; Miranda said she just thought it looked awesome. Miranda looked awesome now, bathed in that neon blue light, suspended as if levitating, and completely naked. She was inside the chamber which was a clear glass tube about three feet in diameter and eight feet in height.

I was stunned, standing there contemplating what is must be like to be in stasis. Every physiological process in Miranda's body was virtually halted, with the exception of higher brain function. She wasn't breathing and her heart wasn't beating except for what could rightly be described as random signals "escaping" from the brain stem. Before the first human trials, for all we knew the chimpanzees were completely unconscious up until the point we drained the stasis fluid and administered the injection to wake them.

These thoughts continued to race through my mind while I slowly scanned the room and saw the source of the smell. Around the base of the stasis chamber, intermixed with the ring skinny white candles, were incense burners silently smoking. Around the ring of candles and incense there was a ring of nude students prostrate and whispering - their lips almost touching the floor. I recognized the four males as students from around campus, but the three females were strangers.

The hum from the equipment in the room suddenly turned into a din of beeping and buzzing, but above all I could hear the naked students on the floor wailing. I think that must be what it sounded like when Pharaohs died. Suddenly Miranda twitched briefly in the fluid as it began to drain into the floor of the tube. The volume of the wailing increased, and I could finally make out words, "It's time! Miranda's here! Get the syringe!"

By this time I was backed up against the wall as if the floor were crumbling from the center and was about to  give way underneath my feet. I watched the females of the group scatter about the room. The thin brunette ran to the controls and ran the program to raise the glass tube into the ceiling. She continued typing rapidly to confirm that Miranda's vital signs were becoming stronger as expected.

The heavy brunette strode to the glass cabinet on the wall and began preparing the syringe to wake Miranda, and the blonde took a large wad of sheets and towels from a closet and quickly formed a bed extending from the stasis chamber out into the middle of the floor.

The males collected Miranda from the metal grating at the floor of the stasis chamber, who was now crumpled up like a rag doll. They laid her out neatly on her back in the makeshift bedding. The heavy brunette administered the shot, and the group reformed their circle around Miranda. They rocked back and forth on their knees praying. Miranda started shivering violently and suddenly stasis fluid began to flow from her nose and mouth. Now she was coughing and expelling the fluid in short geysers. The crowd started wailing again.

The strength slowly drained from my legs and I slid slowly to the floor. I leaned against the wall unable to do anything but watch in awe.

Miranda was now catching her breath and her hands weakly went from one student to the next, touching their heads as they wailed. When she had touched every one, they were suddenly quiet. Miranda's mouthed opened and then stayed motionless for a moment before quietly saying, "My children."

The heavy brunette clasped her hands together and put them over Miranda's navel, and without raising her head she asked "Where did you go? What did you see?"

Tube Cult 1

I was thrilled at the prospect of finally getting off the road and away from the scrutiny of HD cameras and studio lights. I was exhausted from answering the same inane questions at every stop. Univision questioned the impact of our invention on immigration. Fox News accused us of being godless scientists out to prove some crackpot theory, consequences be damned. CNN dropped our recorded segment and instead ran a trending cat video.

How fucking humiliating.

Finally, after nearly a year of touring, Miranda emailed me saying that she needed me back at the lab at MIT urgently. That kind of message was typical of Miranda, so I wasn't worried. To the contrary, I rushed back home as fast as possible to get back to our now famous research developing what we refer to internally as "stasis chambers." It was Miranda's enthusiasm which inspired us, honestly. She believed that if we had stasis technology ready now, then that could enable space travel to distant galaxies today.

Sadly, all stasis chamber prototypes thus far have only enabled up to several weeks of stasis. Even state of the art technology of year of our lord 2012 could only get one stranded in 6 weeks, not to another galaxy. Six weeks plus 60 years of your life wouldn't even get you to the nearest star. Nevertheless, we believed our research would be vital one day, and it looked like the American public agreed.

Before I was volunteered for the position of Chief PR Liason, we were designing our first human trials to be conducted on student volunteers. Miranda had already compiled a roster and contacted the test subjects as I flew off to my first stop in New York. No information on those trials had been released yet, even to me.

The Monday after arriving home, I showed up to the office with my laptop bag and my coffee excited to hear the scoop from Miranda. I couldn't find her. The lights in her office were off. Her desk looked like he hadn't used it in weeks.

I swiped my card to enter the lab and turned on the lights inside. Everything was quiet. Papers were stacked neatly on the matte black counter tops. The 3x3 bank of computer monitors that display sensor readings for our latest stasis chamber prototype were black.

"Slackers." I flipped the switch to turn on the monitors and grabbed the latest status report from the top of the stack and began reading, proud to be the first one doing anything useful that day.

I sipped my coffee over the report. "Subject 14 reported the same continuous dream scenario. In stasis for 6 hours but has recollection of one continuous dream that seemed to last for months in which Subject 14 was involved in drug trafficking for a troupe of mimes from Bolivia."

One dream that seemed to last for months? Wild stuff.

The report continued, "Assuming that human subjects can endure the entire 6 week safe period of stasis, the subject could live through years of dream experiences. Tomorrow is the big day."

Unprofessional shit, leaving personal memos in your status report. I glanced up at the monitors and back at the report. My brain was still slowly processing what was on the screens as my grip loosened on the coffee and the scalding black liquid ran down my legs.

Somebody was in the stasis chamber at that very moment, and their life signs were faint.