I woke up, unable to see or think properly. I had just been in stasis for over a century. As my vision slowly returned, I looked around the room. It was frigid and musty, and it seemed nobody had been here for a very long time. The room was illuminated by the yellow glow of an old LED bar placed in the middle of the ceiling. There seemed to be about two dozen other stasis chambers. Some looked excellent, while others had been damaged. Inside a damaged chamber I could identify the remains of someone who had been dead a half-century. I climbed out of the chamber 
and walked to the only door in the room, but I found it rusted shut, so I went to check out the other people still in stasis. Out of the two dozen or so chambers only about half a dozen were still operational. I didn’t know how to operate a stasis chamber so instead of injuring someone I decided to see if I could get any info from my chamber. The information I gathered brought memories flooding back. I remembered that I had gone into stasis in the year 2036 at the CryoLab center in Tallahassee, Florida. The date I was supposed to be woken on was January 1st, 2150, but I had overshot about one hundred and fifty years as the current date displayed was July 18, 2406. As my recent discovery sunk in, I explored the room a bit more. Along one of the walls I found what looked like a deformed crowbar. I decided that I might have a chance of breaking the handle on the door, so I walked back to it. I pounded the door with the crowbar, and a hole appeared. It had been so long that the rust had eaten away everything but the shape of the door. I hit it a few more times and it fell out of the frame. Behind the door was a staircase landing. I looked up the stairwell and saw at least a hundred floors above me. Either I was on the ground floor of an exceptionally tall building or I was very deep underground. I started walking up the stairs very slowly as I was concerned, the stairs might be as weak as the door, but it turned out that they were in relatively better shape. After a few flights of stairs, I came to a door. This one had been left open, as if someone had left in a hurry. Inside were rows of monitors. Some just a bit dirty while others were in irreparable shape. I wondered if any of them worked and thought it would be worth a try. I made my way over to a monitor and tried to turn it on, but as I suspected nothing happened. So, I went back to the stairwell and continued up the stairs. The next floor looked like a science lab. It was jammed with lots of rusty old beakers and vials. Since it would require days to inspect every room in detail, I just peered into most of them. A lot of floors were labs, while others were offices like the first floor I encountered. My assumptions about the place changed when I found a room about 80 floors up with a semi warm cup of coffee along with working computers in virtually perfect condition. The lights were brighter, and the paint on the walls looked much fresher than the previous floors I had encountered. As I explored the room, I found many items unknown to me. All technologies discovered after I had gone into stasis. Only seconds after I started moving back towards the door, I heard footsteps. Out of fear I hastily hid behind a desk. The person looked to be some sort of security guard. He was on the older side wearing a standard looking uniform, a walkie talkie, a pair of handcuffs, and military grade rifle slung across his back. I observed him do something on a computer and then grab his coffee and leave. I didn’t move for at least fifteen minutes after that. Once I felt secure enough to move, I gradually crept across the room to the computer the guard used. Fortunately, he had left it on. The only tab open turned out to be a CCTV feed. Only the cameras were not inside but outside. What glimpse I got of the outside was horrifying. Not only were all the buildings crumbling but every bit of land I could see was covered in cracked and dry dirt. Something terrible had happened while I was asleep. I ran to the door and bolted up the stairs as fast as I could. After about five minutes I had made it to the ground floor. The stairwell door was locked but through a narrow window I could see groups of people in lab coats rushing around to places. As I tried to open the door or get someone’s attention, I felt a small prick on the back of my leg. I looked back and saw the guard. He had shot me. When I reached down to feel the wound, I felt a small dart. My vision started to blur, and my body felt weak. I stumbled around trying to shake the feeling, but my legs gave out under me and I fell into a deep slumber. I awoke in a hospital room with the constant beeping of the heart monitor. The room was exceedingly modest. It contained a bed, side table, and a chair near the door. Nearly everything in the room was white except for the silver handcuffs that felt as if they were eating at my wrists. Why had they handcuffed me? And why did that security guard shoot me? Those were just a few questions among hundreds I had to get answers for.
After what felt like hours, a doctor finally came into the room. I asked her why I was handcuffed to the bed and her only response was “I’m not supposed to talk to you.” For at least two days it was like that. A doctor or nurse would check in on me every few hours. They would unhandcuff one of my hands and provide me some food to eat and a glass of water to drink. It was only on the third day that someone other than a doctor entered the room. He was wearing all black except for the lab coat he wore over his shirt. I watched him take the chair near the door and sit down next to me. “Name?” he asked me. His eyes hovering over the clipboard. “Uh, Frank,” I replied. It had been over three hundred years since I had heard or even thought about my name that it seemed fuzzy, almost as if it were not even my own. It went on like that for probably two hours. Him asking me questions and me answering. After his final question he said nothing. Just got up and left. After about twenty minutes of waiting the same man came back. Except this time, he smiles at me and unlocks the handcuffs. “Come with me” he states, “you will be briefed shortly”. As we walk down the hallway, I see many doctors exiting and entering rooms. Eventually we come to a fancy looking door. In the center of the door there is a plaque that says President’s Office. Through it is a large room with a big round oblong table in the center. At the end of the table sits a man wearing a suit. “Sit” the man beckons. “We are deeply sorry for the way we treated you. We don’t get many visitors round here” he said in a slight southern accent, “specially from the past.
“What happened to the world?” I ask.
“Long ago an alien race landed on our planet. They started attacking our cities and towns. Our only option was to nuke them” he explained.
“But you destroyed the planet. Was there no other option?”
“It was our planet or our whole species” he said, “and anyways, I wasn’t even around back then.” “What about the other people in stasis? And what about the dead people down there?” I questioned. “Our focus is the rebuilding effort, not a handful of people who don’t even belong in this time. You wouldn’t even be standing here if it weren’t for a malfunction in your stasis pod” he yelled.
After my talk with the president, I was escorted to a room. I was given a timetable and job based on my abilities stated on my info page. Since I was now in the unrestricted part of the building I decided to head to the top of the building. At the top was a small, enclosed watchtower. I looked out into the darkening sky and thought to myself “what will become of me? And what will become of this world…”
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