The time sleeper 1st chapter (IMPORTANT UPDATE)

[Spaceception]

In 2051, Doctor Lucas Collins travels into space to test a cryostasis chamber that he plans to put him into hibernation for a hundred years, he steps inside, and wakes up a hundred years later.
In 2152.
Expecting fame and glory when he wakes, he's shocked to find out most of humanity has died out. Desperate for supplies, he deorbits and finds himself in the middle of a slave camp, ruled by ruthless dictators willing to kill anyone without remorse.
With no possible way to travel back in time, and the remnants of humanity on the verge of a war, which could wipe them out for good this time, he must join a resistance team and fight back.

Or risk Nuclear annihilation.

Chapter 1:

Spoiler

“And behind me is Dr. Lucas Collins, known for his work on suspended animation, today he will be giving us a brief look into his technology before next months launch.” said a reporter, walking backwards towards Lucas as he walked to the arena. She nearly slipped on the sidewalk from the heavy rain.

Lucas Collins walked down the walking lane towards a large campus at CalTech, he listened to the rain falling on his umbrella as he walked, while going over the speech in his head. College students were chatting loudly to each other, and some were walking inside of the arena where he was talking, when he got inside, he was mildly surprised it was packed, media outlets were crammed in the front, while the students were in the back, he guessed there were at least ten thousand people based on the seats filled.

Lucas put on his microphone, and walked up to the stage, “Hello everyone,” he said, waving off the applause, “Thank you or being here,” he waited a minute for everyone to quiet down, and continued.

“The work I will be sharing with you is a culmination of almost eighteen years of study and research,” he could feel all eyes on him, “I will not be taking questions until the end.” he said, eyeing the reporters. “Suspended animation,” he continued, “A means of freezing the human body, to the point where we could sleep for months, years, even centuries without aging a day.” the room was quiet, save for the occasional click of the cameras.

“When I first got into biology, I had the overwhelming feeling of wanting to solve the problem of cryostasis, it was the main focus of my work, and the reason why I pushed so hard for my PhD.” he cleared his throat, “But enough about that,” he clicked a button on a small remote, and brought up a slide, a picture of his experimental pod, “This was the first pod I ever built, back in 2042, that was nine years ago. It was an elaborate project I did for my Masters degree, I remember my professor laughed his head off when he saw it, and told me that he could’ve assigned a 2 page paper, and I’d show up with some sort of model instead,” he said grinning, a small laugh washed over the crowd.

“But how does this work?” he asked them, walking across the stage, “Well, the easy part is freezing someone, waking them back up? That’s the tricky part. Do it wrong, and best case, they could have minor brain damage. Worse case, which is more likely, could mean certain death.”

Lucas could here the scribbling of reporters from where he was standing, letting his sentence sink in. “What I’ve done, is to do it slowly. It wasn’t that simple, obviously, but slowing down the process makes it less dangerous, and removes problems. Such as bursting blood vessels. When I go into the pod, it will go down to a low temperature, and wait until my body has reached a state of natural hibernation. Once that has happened, It removes my blood, and replaces it with a solution of my own design that freezes the body without expansion, meaning my blood vessels, arteries, all of that, won’t burst, or become damaged.”

Lucas watched several students writing down what he was saying, “Then, once all of my blood is replaced, it will be cryogenically frozen and stored.” he brought up the next slide, which was a picture of a capsule, “This is what I will be going up in. Technically enough room for three people, but only I will be going up. It has enough stored air and water to last me a couple weeks, but I’ll need to get back down to the surface quickly, so the heatsheild will be covered until reentry so it doesn’t get damaged over my ‘nap’ I guess you could call it.” one of the reporter raised his hand, but Lucas shook his head and continued.

The goal is to stay up there for around a hundred years. Hopefully by the time I wake up, we’ll have gotten our excrements together, and have starships and cool stuff like that.” he got a hearty laugh from the students this time, he grinned along with them. “You can read the full research paper once I enter orbit, all you need is some engineering and medical experience, as well as a few hundred million. So, you know, it’ll be a tad hard to obtain.” he said, holding two of his fingers together, awhile, squinting at it. Some of the students laughed again.

“I’ll be going up in about a month, so do good work down here, I hope that all of you make a difference. Thank you,” he said, giving a small bow, the students stood up and applauded him, a few minutes later, it died down, and reporters started shooting questions at him. Lucas could barely make any of them out.

“One at a time please,” he shouted out, pointing to a woman in the front.

“What happens if the pod fails?” she asked.

He shrugged, “I die, hopefully nothing happens, but I’ve got the most sophisticated equipment on-board, and have taken every precaution known to mankind, so I’ should be fine,” he said.

“Will there be control from the ground?” asked a man in the back.

“No,” replied Lucas, “There’s an advanced AI system on-board however, and if anything goes wrong, it will alert them, otherwise, it’s a completely closed system.”

Lucas continued answering questions for the next few minutes, until they just started repeated what he said. He turned off his mic, and left the arena, shaking hands with some of the students. He quickly left, and took a car to the airport, so he could prepare for the coming launch.

 

One month later

 

Lucas walked on the ramp and into the capsule, with the flight crew walking behind him to get him secure. Normally it would’ve been cramped, but it wasn’t, underneath him was the cryostasis chamber, with the seat and dashboard near the top. It was brightly lit with white LEDs.

“How does that feel?” asked Carl tightening his straps, while Annette checked his moniters.

“Fine, no excess pressure or anything,” Carl nodded and twisted on his helmet, it was wide view, meant more for interior viewing rather than extravehicular activites.

“Are you all good?” Carl asked,Lucas nodded.

“Let’s do this.” he said, giving the flight crew a cocky grin. Carl gave him a curt nod and sealed the hatch. Lucas dropped the grin, and looked up at the monitors, which gave him exterior views of the rocket. Cold gas hissed out the side as the last of the fuel pumped in.

Lucas listened to the background chatter from mission control going through the checklists, “Doctor, are you go?”

“Yes flight, I am go.” he replied, watching the countdown. Less than five minutes, he thought. He took a glance at his vitals, they were reading nominal, everything was in the green. They had trained him well.

“Four minutes, flight,” he heard someone say.

Lucas leaned his head back, he was surprised that his heart wasn’t beating faster, in less than eight hours he would put himself to sleep for the next century, all the wonders he would possibly see. He was going to be world famous.

“Three minutes, flight.”

His parents visited him for the week leading up to the launch, they knew he wasn’t going to die, but they would never get to see him again, they went through box after box of tissues that week, and his parents made him his favorite meals.

“Two minutes, flight.”

Lucas wondered how easy it would be to find someone when he woke up, he guessed at least someone would be interested enough in him, he was a step up from an outcast, pretty much the only thing he ever talked about was his work. When he woke up, he promised himself, he was going to be living easy.

“One minute, flight.”

Lucas’ heartrate started to speed up now, he watched the strongback fall away, and heard a click that signaled the rocket was now under its own power.

He heard someone begin the countdown, and his seat began to rumble a few seconds later.

“Three, two, one.”

The rocket slowly lifted off the pad, a huge cloud of smoke coming up from the pad as it lifted into the air, Lucas felt himself increasingly get pushed against the back of his seat. The external camera was showing him he was several kilometers high and rising quickly.

About a minute later, the first stage engine cut off, and there was a momentary laps in micro-g, before the second stage kicked in, preparing to place him into a parking orbit. He looked out the small window, and barely saw the glint from the pale blue atmosphere

“How are you doing Doctor?” asked the flight director.

“It looks beautiful up here,” replied Lucas in awe.

“Sounds good, we’re you’ll be in a stable orbit shortly, then we’ll wait a few minutes before the second burn.

“Copy,” said Lucas.

 

Over the next two hours, the spacecraft pushed Lucas’ spacecraft into it’s final orbit, high enough so it wouldn’t need any burns between now and his scheduled wake up time, and low enough that it wouldn’t take too much to get back down. When mission control reported he was in his final orbit, Lucas unstrapped and floated to the cryochamber, where he stripped down, and got into a thin white garment.

Computer, set the wake up date to 2152,” said Lucas, floating just above the glass panel, the computer beeped in response. He ran a full diagnostics on all systems and ran them through mission control, when they were confident enough in it, he opened it up and laid down inside, it was cold, goosebumps rose on his skin, and he shivered.

Straps flew across him, and pulled him down, before he heard the whirring of medical robots, and felt a small prick on his neck.

The world went blurry, and Lucas closed his eyes for what he hoped wouldn’t be the last time.

 

The robots got to work quickly after he fell asleep, draining his blood slowly, while replacing his bodily fluids with a chemical solution that would freeze his body, at the same time, the chamber chilled down, letting his body go into a natural state of hibernation. All of this took less than an hour, when it was complete, it froze his body at similar temperatures to liquid nitrogen, Lucas Collins was now, under most circumstances, dead.

 

UPDATE July 4th, 2017

Sorry to rain on your guys' parade, but I'm afraid I won't be able to post any more chapters here, I PM'd Red Iron, and he said it'd be too political, so it won't be posting it.

Not to mention it's pretty dark as well.

I will continue posting word count/draft updates, but I will not post any more chapters here, nor will I be posting external links to Wattpad or anything.

Sorry guys

However, If you guys are fine with fictional politics and a dark story, @ me here, and I'll put you in a PM group where I'll give you the chapters in exchange for feedback/critiquing

Edited July 5, 2017 by Spaceception
Important Update

[Bill Phil]

Cool. Nice idea. But I do have a question...

Why would anyone let him do that? We didn't let von Braun in space on rockets he helped to design. People don't send up their top scientists, that's what the test pilots are for. And why go into space? That just adds complexity to the system. And why a hundred years? If he's trying to prove an unproven system, it should be weeks or months with testing personnel. Then you test years. And maybe get it flight qualified and use it for Mars or something like that.

But we can ignore all that for plot reasons.

Maybe an alternate premise is exactly that... a Mars mission, but then someone hacks it or something and the ship stays in a highly elliptical orbit, and none of the crew wake up. No one saves them because Fallout happens, and then, a hundred years later, for some reason, one of the crew wakes up. Maybe he's the ship doctor, or he was an expert on the stasis systems, so they took him along. He wakes up, and then manages to return to Earth all the while being amazed at how well the ship held up.

I think your story is good. My only issue is the premise, but then again, it's a very small issue. I can't make you change it, and if you want to write the story with that plot, then don't let me, or anyone, stop you. 

And I do see some grammatical and spelling errors. If you want, I could help edit, but then again, that's up to you.

Good luck with your story, man.

[Spaceception]

@Bill Phil Thanks! And it is a first draft, everything is subject to change, so thanks for the feedback

In my head, I pictured him as somewhat arrogant, and egotistic, full of himself, and he wanted to be world famous (I did hint at that part a little though), so in the next draft, I'll write in those details so it hopefully makes more sense

And the reason for going into space, was that it was much less likely he was going to be perturbed, it would be much harder to compromise a spacecraft without any transmissions vs. a ground pod. I'll make more reasons for it later.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Spaceception

[Spaceception]

Read the OP for updates

 

On 7/3/2017 at 6:11 PM, Bill Phil said:

Why would anyone let him do that? We didn't let von Braun in space on rockets he helped to design. People don't send up their top scientists, that's what the test pilots are for. And why go into space? That just adds complexity to the system. And why a hundred years? If he's trying to prove an unproven system, it should be weeks or months with testing personnel. Then you test years. And maybe get it flight qualified and use it for Mars or something like that.

Maybe an alternate premise is exactly that... a Mars mission, but then someone hacks it or something and the ship stays in a highly elliptical orbit, and none of the crew wake up. No one saves them because Fallout happens, and then, a hundred years later, for some reason, one of the crew wakes up. Maybe he's the ship doctor, or he was an expert on the stasis systems, so they took him along. He wakes up, and then manages to return to Earth all the while being amazed at how well the ship held up.

And I do see some grammatical and spelling errors. If you want, I could help edit, but then again, that's up to you.

2

2nd round of thinking I'll make a list of alternate openings, I agree with you though, it would be unlikely, and I could at least come up with a better way of doing it. The Mars mission thing sounds like a cool possibility, but it also sounded like the situation the guys in Planet of the Apes were in

And I'd like that, not grammar error fixing though, as this is the first draft, so it'd be pointless, but telling me what I tend to mess up would be helpful, as well as general feedback

[cratercracker]

Sad 

[Spaceception]

55 minutes ago, cratercracker said:

Sad 

Yeah, but I don't want to break the rules.

And when it does eventually get published, you can get it then