prompt: pause, title: what dreams may come in misc. flash fiction

“Elective Cryogenic Hibernation”. That’s what the scientists called it. They’d theorized about it for generations, slowly evolving from whimsical fantasy plot-device (what was Rip Van Winkle other than “frozen” by trickster spirits) into scientific fact. Even then, at first it was so expensive that it was only available in the most extreme of situations and for the extremely rich, that most extreme situation of all, expendable wealth. Only when the cost came down to a point where it was a mass-application affordable to what was left of the middle classes did it finally cement a much pithier nickname in the electronic press: “The Pause”.

There were all kinds of stories in the first few generations. The sad tale of that woman frozen in anticipation of a cure and her healthy lover who chose to stay by her side in that deep-freeze, not wanting to live free until she did too. The scion to billions who iced himself in his twenties so he could wake up legally thirty-five years old and run for president, only to wake up on trial for his numerous sexual assaults before he was locked away for freshness. Never mind those thousands who died in the back-alley discount operations that weren’t all that much more than abandoned restaurants’ walk-in fridge and some Jacob’s Ladders for show.

Some people took The Pause because they hoped that when they woke up there’d be the tech to turn into human-animal hybrids or have reproductively-functional sex changes or with a date in mind for a prophesied end-time so they could be present for the big show. For others still, it was just a less guilty form of suicide, a way to just, well, Pause. Blank out. Make up some maladies, save up the bucks and check out, hoping to wake up in a world so radically different they could make a fresh start or just not wake up at all. Less stigma than walking into a busy highway but infinitely more profitable for those running the hibernation industry, of course, so it was legal.

Myself, I did it to go to the stars. The quarter-light-speed sleeper ships autopiloted to the planet Azure-Centauri, to no longer be just a tax preparer, wake up thirty years later a pioneer on a new planet. Start over. Make a difference. Turns out a year into my journey, they invented quantum-stabilization drives that can get Earth to Azure in a little over a month but they lost our trajectory somewhere along the way and when I woke up, the new colonies were already humming along. Cities and everything. But it was just my luck, they told me the new H.R. Block in the capital was opening, there’d be work for me here after all. Great. Thanks. Wonderful.

We all think we’re chasing something or being chased, I suppose, but in the end just stand still on a treadmill of our own desires and delusions. All in all, I mostly just want to go back to bed.