 |
| The
cryptic schematic guided them down to deck 12 and through a maze of
increasingly narrow walkways, to a dead-end that did not appear on the
route. Closer inspection revealed one of the bulkheads was false and
functioned as a concealed door. Just as the schematic had been received
unexpectedly, the door screeched open on corroded runners and they
warily entered a stale-smelling chamber, the place
crammed with cogitation banks and control stations, all faintly lit by a
congregation of diodes and three dim auxiliary lamps. The coolant mist
lingering in here enveloped Iola as she respectfully approached the
damp, bulky object which formed the center-piece of the dormant
apparatus. Despite the cryo-casket's age, a man slept within it, sealed
in timeless suspension beneath its frosted canopy. Iola engaged the casket's binary channel and it responded by opening one of its panels to present its interface port. She inserted her cranial plug into the machine and it chattered lazily, it's spirit sluggish from years of inattention. It took several seconds to compile the preservation report she requested. Being the oldest machine Iola had ever melded with, the cryo-casket made her uneasy, its coding an obscure form, markedly different from the modalities required to program and command the mono-task units back on Scintilla. Final calculations shuddered and rattled through its innards and it relayed the results via the link: bio-signs indicated that what remained of the man inside it was alive and in stable hibernation. |
