[i]Oscar was in a restaurant, a fancy but generic one; the type that made it difficult to remember the name. Red curtains and burgundy carpets and crimson napkins stained the otherwise white décor – that contrast he could recognise. The delicate clinking of cutlery against fine china filled the room, interspersed with the dull thump of a wine glass being placed down with a heavy, ungraceful hand. It was his own.

Lillian chuckled, her smile bright and genuine – had he said a joke? Probably, he reckoned, he did that a lot. Vibrant flashes of a line, 'I'm not a photographer, but I can picture me and you together,' swam into sight and his forehead creased in response. His wife was speaking. “So you know,” she started, catching his attention with just a few quiet words. “You and me are dead, right?”

Did he respond to that? He felt his lips moving and his breath coming short but no sound came out. She replied as if he did with another tinkling laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I know – I'm so morbid... but it's hard to be a war reporter without a teeny bit of all that.” Lillian's words lulled him into a false sense of security, as did the thought of her cherry-red lips. Had it been a joke he didn't understand? “But you don't remember, do you? Is it cloudy? Did it hurt?”

“I'm not dead,” Oscar said, hearing his own words this time. She reached over to him across the fine china, rustling it. It was then that she noticed her fingers were bare of any ring, not even–

Her voice this time was that of an old, dusty memory though Oscar knew it hadn't been in such an establishment that she had – left. “I just can't... I've been having an affair, but so have you.” This time the wedding band plopped into white wine instead of orange juice over breakfast. His jaw locked, his neck burned and–[/i]

[b]”Process ending. Awakening subject now.”[/b]

His first breath was ragged yet devoid of any relief at all. How could there be any? It had – it had all been a dream... Cold hands shoving him into the tube to be packed away like frozen meat in a supermarket aisle.

Fifty years. Fifty years past his expiration date. He felt like sobbing or kicking something, and he chose the latter. His limbs were cold and unresponsive, fingertips barely twitching as in even his best attempts they failed to grab on to the side of the capsule to pull himself out. Rage flooded through him soon enough to heat him up, directed at the scientists, the world, fate, Lillian... 

She was probably some dried up old crone by his reasoning. When they returned home, to Earth, he reckoned he should pay her a visit. Lord his youth over her. That was all that motivated Oscar to stagger outside into the rest of the ship. There were already folk outside, other subjects most if not all of them willing... 

“Wait, a hundred and fifty?” Oscar barely managed to choke out, double checking the calendar of one of the pods. Two hundred years in the future. Even Lillian's tombstone would have rotted away in the wind by now. He clenched his fist – he didn't want this. “The hell's going on?”