Immortality Code

Chapter I

Chapter I:

Awakening. Experimenting. Cycle. Repeat.

I wake up.

Present tense.

I wake up, as per many times before.

To the same scene.

Every time.

Without fail.

My hands, they are tied. I am crucified.

How poetic, how ironic, that it does not hurt.

After all, I fell asleep like this.

Most of me anyway.

Impressive really.

My head hangs, my chin rests on my collar. Skin-to-skin, as I am stripped to the waist. My eyes stay down.

Should I lift them?

Glance upwards?

Why bother? It is the same scene every time.

White square panels. A type of plastic, they tell me. They are cold underfoot, and a metre each edge.

I have counted them. There are twenty of them across the room, and another twenty along its length. Four hundred in total across the whole floor.

Two thousand four hundred across the whole room.

A cube room. A cube-shaped room.

But it is not twenty metres cubed. It cannot be.

Lines of dark grey divide the white panels. Narrow lines. They are warmer, but they do not tell me why.

Because I have not asked. Why bother?

The room is larger than twenty metres cubed. This cube-shaped room.

Perfectly isolated from the outside world. Shielded.

Zero interference.

They tell me I am deep underground. A mountain, probably. Nature's own little fortresses of solid rock and ore.

Hollowed out and made accessible as per whim and need and want. If I listen carefully, I can sometimes hear the rhythmic blasts of the miners' machines from deep below my feet. They are like drums, and I sometimes hear them still when I dream.

No rest for the wicked. Even less for the damned.

Perhaps I am being too harsh.

Let me get back to facts.

While I sleep, I am subjected to a “Wash Cycle” along with the rest of the room. I am part of the room, and clean as it is.

The air is still and sterile. It has no scent, and only moves in response to me.

A lonely king in a world of white.

God that sounds sad.

I'm exaggerating this, surely.

It's true that I don't smile in this room, but who would?

I see nothing to smile about. I sense nothing to smile about.

But I hear.

I hear ticking.

The ticking of a clock.

It is close. Within the room.

On the far side. Up on the wall.

I look up.