There is no need to fear. Yes, nuclear war is a possibility, and yes, we are doing everything in our power to avoid this. But, we must face the facts and must prepare for the worst. Currently, there are 325 bomb shelters spread across the nation that can withstand a nuclear attack and that are prepped with the basic necessities for survival- food, water, and so forth. However, this press conference is to discuss the rumors that the United States government has enacted research into Cryogenics. Now, being the 56th president of this great nation, I will tell you the truth; the rumors are true. These efforts, however, are not based in the science fiction version of Cryogenics. The two head scientists on this project, Mr. and Mrs. Corto, inform me that they are working on inventing a serum that when injected into the bloodstream will freeze the body at a cellular level and leave the human body in a maintained state of homeostasis. Please keep in mind that these efforts are only for a worst-case scenario…

This was the President’s last speech before this miracle serum was  finished and 45,000 pods built to continuously inject the serum for 250 years. One day after the speech, those pods were filled with people.
I am one of those people.
And I just woke up.
My eyes flutter open, but I don’t see much. My vision is hazy, my mind cloudy, and there is a numbness stretched out through my entire body. I can’t see, I can’t think clearly, and I can’t move—the lovely side effects of an experimental serum being pumped into your veins for 250 years. Five minutes pass before I regain control of my body.

When my vision clears and the fog in my mind dissipates, I observe a view through the smudged glass of my pod that sends a chill down my spine. In the column of pods across from my own, everyone is asleep. I can see the tubes pumping the purple serum into their arms and look at my own that is pumping nothing. Why am I not receiving the serum anymore? Something is wrong.

I look around the pod and push, using all my strength, with my hands against the dingy window and my back against the cool metal of the pod. Nothing happens. Something is seriously wrong. The back of the pod is supposed to flip open and free us from these locker-sized freezers, but I’m trapped in here.
I’m going to die here.

Good. I will finally get what’s coming to me. I don’t deserve to live while he’s not here, while he’s dead, while his absence is my fault…
I lean back, close my eyes, which my dad always said were as blue as a mountain spring, and let the guilt wash over me. My eyes start to water and tears break the dam of my eyelids and leave streaks down my face. A peep doesn’t escape my lips as I silently cry and my guilt eats my insides away as if they were the grand Thanksgiving feast. It’s my fault.
Suddenly, a thought crosses my mind and my eyes pop open. My parents. What if they woke-up like me? They might have invented the serum, but they didn’t make it perfect. They’re between the ages 45 and 50 and, therefore, need to be injected with a gooey version of Tums within 15 minutes of waking up or else their organs will turn to pudding. If they’re trapped like me, then they may have about 10 minutes before their insides turn into the dessert at a picnic.
I have to get out of here.

In the tiny, cramped space, I push harder against the back of the pod to try and trigger the flip-back feature. Nothing. I run my fingers across the glue along the edge of the glass where it meets the cool metal of the pod. Slowly, I pull the needle out of my arm and use the strong, elongated portion of the needle to pick away at the glue and drive a wedge between the glass and the metal. Adrenaline is pumping through my veins, but my hands are as steady as a surgeon’s. I might have sent him to his death, they may never forgive me when they find out, but I have to save my parents—I don’t think I can handle being responsible for another family member’s death.
After 5 minutes of scraping and shoving the needle into the glue, the needle breaks through and I’m able to push the glass away from the pod. As the glass crashes onto the floor, I pull myself out of the pod as if I were leaving a car through a rolled down window. When my shoes touch the cement ground of the corridor, the glass cracks under my feet and I begin to head to the column full of pods three away from my own. As I pass the pod directly next to mine, I run my hand over the glass of the empty freezer that would have been his…
Just when I’m about to break down in full-blown sobs, I turn away from the ominously empty pod and run to my parents’ cylindrical stack of pods. As I get closer, my heart beats faster. What if they’re awake? I hope they’re not; if they are, then they’ll find out what I did and hate me more than I hate myself.
I round the curve of eerily sleeping people in their own green-tinged, metal pods. It’s as if I’m looking into their coffins at their funerals. I see strange face after strange face until I come to the faces of my mom and dad still asleep and looking as dead as every other person. Through the grimy glass, I can see the purple sludge continuously flowing through the tubing into their arms. A sigh of relief escapes me. They’re alive. They’re still asleep, which begs the question: why aren’t I?
Maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me, “you deserve to die.” There isn’t any food or water here, which means that within a week or two, I should be dead.
Good.
I leave my parents; I don’t want to die in front of them. That would be an awful way to wake-up after 250 years, to wake-up and see their daughter’s decaying carcass strewn across the floor. I won’t do that to them. Unable to think of anywhere else to go, I head back to my own pod where I notice something I didn’t see before. Next to the empty pod, and the pod after that, and the pod after that, all the way around the column to the pod on the other side of my own: people are awake.

When they see me, they all start to scream and pound on their glass. I can’t hear them, but I see their mouths form the word “Help!” Adrenaline starts pumping again. They’ll starve to death in there. They’ll starve to death out here—only one problem at a time though.

One of the perks of being the daughter of the wacky scientists that invented these crazy contraptions, is that I know how to work them. Quickly, as if a fire sparked inside me, I run to the opposite side of the column where a solid metal, rusting door stands. It has a wheel to unlock it like on a submarine. With a few turns, I’m inside the column where a monstrous humming machine sits before me. Well, that explains why we’re all awake; the cylindrical glass tube that held the purple serum is empty. We ran out of freeze juice. Starting at my right, I manually unlock the back of every pod, which flip open to create a metal bed. With each pod I unlock, a new person is found lying on their metal slab as if they are awaiting an examination by the coroner. I unlock the pod with Danielle etched in it—mine. I even unlock the pod with Tommy etched in it and part of me hopes that when I flip his pod open, he’ll be laying there with his matching blues eyes wide open and he’ll say, “Sissie!”

I remember it as if it were yesterday—well, for me, it was yesterday. The war was reaching its boiling point and there wasn’t a lot of time until this militaristic war turned into nuclear war. Mom and Dad still hadn’t figured out their one anomaly: children under 10 and adults over 50 would die a painful death after they stopped receiving the serum. So, they would either die miserably, or stay frozen forever. Then, Mom and Dad got the call to load the selected people into their pods. I was at school when Mom and Dad called me to pick-up my brother and head to the mountain. My brother was 5 years old. My parents were optimistic and thought he would be the one to survive the unknown anomaly and had a pod reserved for him. I was not so optimistic. On the way to the mountain, I stopped at a bomb shelter and dropped him off. My heart broke to leave him, I wanted to stay with him, but someone had to lie to my mom and dad that he made it so they didn’t go looking for him themselves.
I only hope his death was quick.

“What’s going on? What happened? Is it time? Why are we awake? Why didn’t our pods unlock?” The questions of the other 18 awakened people reverberate through the small room. I’m surprised the 45,000 other people don’t wake up from all the ruckus. This last question catches my attention: why didn’t our pods unlock?
They were placed on a timer to unlock 250 years later. I check the timer on the machine and it all makes sense. It’s only been 50 years; we woke up 200 years too soon.

  I steal this moment of chaos to leave the raging room. Once in the corridor, I pass hundreds of columns with their own frozen pods until I reach a metal double door with a glowing green exit sign above it.

I begin to unlock the immense doors when a voice startles me. “What are you doing?”
Quickly, I whip around to see the mob from inside the room gathered behind me. I have no idea who asked the question, but they all looked at me expectantly. What were they expecting of me?
“I’m going outside.” I hear the collective gasp as I turn around and start to unlock the door. “There’s no food and no water in here.” Click. One lock done. “Our best chance is outside.” Click. Two out of three done.
“It’s suicide!” a voice calls out. They’re right; it is suicide. The world is nothing but a wasteland after the nuclear war. I’ll probably be dead from radiation poisoning within 5 minutes. But, that’s not why I’m doing it.
“Someone has to do it.” Click. The final lock is unraveled and I push the doors open revealing the decontamination chamber that leads outside. I stand there for a minute, waiting for another volunteer to accompany me, but the 18 scared souls just stare at me with fear of the outside painted on their faces.
“What are we supposed to do?”

“Wait for me to come back,” I smile and say as I close the doors, separating me from the crowd of lost people. With a quick swipe on the keys, I unlock the doors that lead outside. With a whoosh, the airlocked doors open wide to reveal a surprising sight.

My jaw drops. It’s so beautiful. The pure blue sky mixed with the moss green trees makes a feeling of serenity and peace spread through my entire body. The air is so brisk; it’s a sucker punch of fresh air to the face. I step out of the chamber onto real dirt. It’s brown and bounces under my shoes. I walk for an hour in silence, listening to the sound of birds singing and taking in all the beauty. It’s overwhelming. I near a cliff that overlooks a blue lake that matches my eyes. Next to the lake, though, is a city. From this distance, I can see towering, pristine skyscrapers and the bustling of cars, buses, and trains. The bombs never dropped.

I just stand there letting this discovery wash over me. I’m so lost in thought that I don’t notice the 15 men with guns behind me until one of them barks at me to put my hands behind my head. They are dressed in all black, wear masks over their faces, and are covered with gear from head to toe. Fear strikes my heart. I comply and put my hands behind my head. One of the armed men approaches me and cuffs me. This can’t be happening. I can’t get arrested; I need to help those 18 people still in the mountain. They turn me away from the cliff to where I face all of the men pointing loaded guns at me.

The situation gets 10 times more confusing when one of the military men steps out of the line up and approaches me. He stops right in front of me where he takes his mask off revealing grey hair and piercing blue eyes that match my own.

The man looks at me in disbelief. “Sissie?”