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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/BainWrites on 2025-11-26 19:57:30+00:00.
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Date: 2424 AD
The room was eternally silent, not even the hum or a whisper arose from the rows upon rows of machines lined up, a resting place for those not quite yet dead, a moment of peace for those trapped inside, eternal respite from the cacophony of chaos and noise that the world was now made up of.
There were tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of humans here, all asleep. Yet that was a poetic way of putting it, as their current state was neither sleep nor death. Tiny blinking lights on each stasis chamber represented a single saved soul, an oasis in the desert of death and destruction that had hit humanity. People had stopped counting the dead. The official toll broadcast on the radios still being run by the AI and uplifts stood at nearly two billion, but everyone knew it was far higher. Attempts to stop the God Plague had failed, all people could do now was either find a rare stasis chamber to try and ride this out in, or pray to any divine beings who may listen as the end approached.
Dr Johnathan Fletcher was not a man to leave fate to gods, which is why he’d made the deal with the devil, why the love of his life filled one of these pods, stacked up against thousands of others, like boxes in a warehouse. He’d lied to her. The last thing he’d said before she was put to an eternal sleep was a lie made of love. Johnathan promised her he’d be safe, that he would be joining her after a little bit of work.
Of course, there was no space for him. Everyone only got one slot, that was the rule, and he wasn’t taking it for himself.
Dr Fletcher left the mausoleum of the half alive, returning to the reality of the half dead, passing through several undergrown corridors, arriving into a giant carved out cavern of metal and rock. Within, countless rows of fabricators all worked on churning out stasis pods at an industrial rate. People were calling this place end’s hope, a last chance for anyone able to earn their way to safety. Once upon a time a slightly deranged Feline uplift by the name of Alexandria had deemed themselves the savior of a prophesied apocalypse of fire and brimstone, and had spent the next 15 years creating a bunker system of fabricators and defenses to lead herself and her ten thousand most loyal followers through the end of times: the end goal being to leave this realm of existence entirely and ascending into a new form of being.
This cult very abruptly ended when their main church, all the way out here in the forests of Vereka, had collapsed on itself. This destruction of a shoddily built facility killed Alexandria and many other members, which was a major blocker to her prophecy: unless she’d managed to ascend via fallen shingles. The survivors scattered, leaving the facility and its many fabricators behind, forgotten by everyone for the next ten years; apart from the occasional low budget documentary revisiting the place.
That was, until an actual end of times happened, when the God Plague descended from the skies, and a friend of a friend of an original cult member vaguely remembered stories of a bunker filled with supplies, cut off from the grid. They went to see if anything left behind was still working as the world behind them burned and collapsed, finding the fabricators and coming up with a plan to build as many stasis chambers as possible.
In a way Alexandria’s prophecy would come true, as the infrastructure she built would end up leading this relatively small group of people to safety, offering a chance at life for anyone who could afford a place.
Jonathan looked over the mass of fabricators printing the parts for stasis chambers as fast as physically possible, the machines working overtime to save as many people as they could. Of course, in this new reality, you didn’t pay worthless money to get your spots, but instead spent your skills and knowledge in order to secure safety for you and your loved ones.
The people who had originally gotten this facility back up and running had quickly learned two truths: That even with all of these resources, there wouldn’t be enough for everyone who needed a space, and that keeping this hastily created project running would take people with knowledge. As each group of people fell to the God Plague, the next in line would need to keep everything going. They’d need people to keep the power running, to keep the fabricators running, to just keep people alive…
To keep the place defended from others.
All of a sudden, money and status had no worth compared with the power of knowing how to do things. And Dr Fletcher knew how to do a lot of things, with several degrees in Engineering and Physics, keeping the fabricators running at their highest efficiency was something he knew how to do. It would be his last task. He’d given his knowledge to the group running this place, and in exchange his wife now was safe.
There were others working with Johnathan, people just like him, making sure the fabricators were continually filled, putting the pieces together or just general maintenance to make sure everyone had food, water and shelter in their final moments.
It was strange seeing the different stages of the God Plague so close together, some like Dr Fletcher not yet showing any symptoms, others walking around half dead with visible tumours. Each ‘generation’ of people had less than a week to learn how to keep this place running and safe. Johnathan was just part of the next group keeping this random attempt at hope running.
And possibly the last group.
The sound of a distant explosion shook the facility, steel beams and various pieces of machinery vibrating and wobbling as something big exploded closer to the surface of the facility. That had been happening more often recently. As more of the population got sick and desperation rose, the number of people who were willing to ask for help had dwindled, compared to those who were attempting to take a spot in one of the many stasis chambers that existed here by force.
The doctor had been one of the last few to enter the facility, and no new faces had been seen in the last three days. In the mere week Dr Fletcher had been here, the surface had gone from a congregation of people trying to get into the aging facility, to a war zone as other groups attempted to forcibly take control of what was here.
The facility was holding out for now, but every weapon and defense built using the fabricators was time not spent pumping out as many stasis chambers as possible, which was a strange compounding problem: To defend what was running required removing resources from saving as many people as possible.
Jonathan gave a sigh as he turned off one of the fabricators and attempted to release the half finished part which had gotten jammed inside the machine. It wasn’t uncommon in the corner of the workshop with the hundreds of fabricators running at full belt, was a pile of half finished broken machinery. The ability to create anything from anything was a relatively new technology, doubly so for these ancient models, early adoptions of the scientific breakthrough created fifteen years ago.
There had been talk of trying to salvage these parts into workable chambers, but with the lack of manpower they faced between protecting the facility from other groups and keeping the facility powered, nobody had had the time to even consider trying such a project with the short time they had left.
Dr Fletcher finally got the part free, stumbling forwards and landing awkwardly on the ground, coughing violently as they winded themselves, a few eyes from others staring in his direction as he launched into a coughing fit, taking a few moments to gather himself, before picking himself up embarrassed. He straightened himself out, before falling to his knees once again, this time coughing up blood as the pain wracked his chest.
—---------------
Date: 77 PST (Post Stasis Time)
Johnathan hadn’t known what to expect from the shrinking tech. The idea had long been theorized and proposed in a variety of different ways, meaning the actual method Annabel would be using was a mystery until he had stepped into the strange device. A spike of anxiety, of wondering if this was all a good idea, had crossed Dr Fletcher's mind as the room sized machine had vibrated and banged as it warmed up, whether being an early adopter of such tech was a smart move.
He’d imagined a lot of different things to happen as the shrinking machine finally started its process. He hadn’t, however, expected it to hurt so much.
Perhaps he should have taken into account the sheer number of warning documents Annabel had gotten him to sign, or the way the small nervous woman kept asking ‘are you certain you want to try this?’, no matter how many times Rux brushed off her concerns. The way the Terran had squeezed her eyes shut before flicking on the machine.
Now Johnathan lay flat on his belly, having just gone through 60 seconds of agony that felt like being squeezed through a toothpaste tube, breathing heavily, throat hoarse from the sheer amount of screaming he’d just been doing.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, are you ok?” Annabel seemed to be freaking out, head in her hands as she paced back and forth, hardly daring to look in Johnathan’s direction. She was panicking hard, a look of sheer terror on her face while the worst case sce...
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