Chrysalis

Chrysalis

Michael Asselin

Reed watched as the others made ready. He sat, feet dangling just above the cold metal floor. He ran his fingers over the edge of the capsule, the thing was angular, ugly, all hard lines and jagged edges, a design of utility, not beauty. And it would be his home, for what would amount to almost five hundred years on earth.

He had been told that when he came back…if they came back, things could, would be vastly different. The films they had been shown were intended to provide comfort, to give them purpose, but they didn’t. That they were there for the future of humanity. It was nonsense, humanity had no future and instead of getting to spend what precious little time life afforded, living with his wife and daughter he was going off…For humanity. Such aggrandizement as the future of humanity would mean little to his daughter Sarah or his wife Claire. They would know only that they would never see him again.

It was a safe home, gone. A warm bed with only one parent to tuck you in. That is what it would mean to his daughter, a memory that with time would fade, a father barely remembered. He wasn't her father anymore, he had to accept that. It would not be him that raised her. It would not be him that guided her into the world.

Would Claire remarry? He had tried to discuss it with her, to tell her that it was alright, to tell her that he would understand. That she would be lonely, that she would need comfort and the…

A lump grew in his throat and he swallowed hard, trying to push it down, trying to not think of another man holding his wife, of another man raising his daughter. Anger flitted through him and he wanted to scream, to rage at the life he was losing, at the life he was being forced to give up. He knew Claire would find someone else, as well she should, she didn’t deserve to be put through this, she didn’t deserve to be alone.

An alarm began to sound. It was an insistent cacophony that pounded on his ears like a child beating symbols together, his pulse must have quickened. A technician hurried over to him and gave him an exasperated look. His heart rate was to be kept low, at resting, until they were put into the stasis capsules. Chrysalis.

That name he thought was strange, Chrysalis. Was he a caterpillar, he certainly was not going to become something so beautiful as a butterfly. He would however, emerge changed, he would arise a twisted creature, atrophied beyond recognition, it would take years for him to gain back what he would lose, muscle and sinew would be nearly gone. He would have to endure years of therapy to come back even to where he had been. He would be born again, but not better. He would be born again, but it would not be fresh or clean as a newborn baby coming into the world. He would remember, he would know what he had left behind and he would resent those that had forced him to do it.

Coffin. That would be a more fitting name for the thing. For that’s what it was, a tomb, where his life was going to end, where his wife and daughter would be forever out of reach, but forever in his memory.

The stasis would be dreamless, a small mercy, that he might not dream of them for long centuries frozen, waiting, hoping that one day he might awake. That one day he would be free and maybe just maybe he could find meaning again. Maybe.

Another alarm sounded, this even louder than the first. More technicians ran over to him. The other passengers, looked on. Was it pity in their eyes? They weren’t being forced to give up families, they weren’t being forced to leave behind a life filled with love and hope. It wasn’t fair. Why had he been the only one with a family. Why had they chosen him?

He tugged at a cluster of wires and tubes that ran from his body. Pain shot up his arm and he screamed. More technicians ran over, one grabbed his hand, pulling it away from the wires.

“Why me? Why me?”

He cried it over and over again until his throat grew hoarse and his lungs burned. Another needle slipped without preamble into his skin, but what was one more among the dozens that already penetrated him. What was one more to pollute his body?

The technicians were shouting. He didn’t listen to them. He thought of his wife and his daughter, why did he have to go, of the multitudinous masses that swarmed over the earth why had he been chosen.

There were at least a dozen others, maybe more, that could’ve taken his place, that could’ve done the job just as well, but it was him. It was his honor to be a standard bearer for humanity as it reached out from a dying earth. As it reached out with hands already cold, but even yet refusing to acknowledge their own end.

The lump rose in his throat, this time he didn’t try to swallow it down, this time he let the tears flow. One of the technicians was pushing the plunger down on a syringe filled with what he wasn’t sure, he didn’t care.

The effect was instantaneous, a wave like a warm summer breeze washed over him and everything was…ok. The guilt, the fear, the doubt, the anger, were all washed away and like so many sandcastles, melted into oblivion. Forgotten as though they had never existed, not even a trace left to remind him that they had ever been there.

Maybe, he would be a butterfly. Maybe, one day he would be beautiful. Butterfly. The white and black masks that covered the technicians faces began to fade, the warm haze comfortable as he fell deeper, deeper, butterfly. He would be he decided, beautiful. He would be a butterfly and soar on the warm breeze. Beautiful, beautiful, butterfly.