Welcome To Angel Falls

Story Info
When the morning after is a lifetime away.
9.7k words
4.56
15.9k
19
3
Share this Story

Font Size

Default Font Size

Font Spacing

Default Font Spacing

Font Face

Default Font Face

Reading Theme

Default Theme (White)
You need to Log In or Sign Up to have your customization saved in your Literotica profile.
PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here

"Okay, he's awake."

Those three words reverberated around the inside of his skull like it had been hollowed out with a blunt instrument, possibly a large serving spoon. He recognised them, he understood their meaning, but was unable to string them together to grasp the context. A dull ache behind his eyes blossomed into a bright white pain as he gradually eased into consciousness. A blurry glow of cold, clinical light was all he could see as he tried to focus on the indistinct shapes around him. One thing was for certain, this was not his bedroom. The world was disconcertingly unfamiliar.

"Can you hear me?"

It was that distant voice again. He tried to respond but his throat was too dry to allow him to form the words. He tried to swallow but ended up gasping for breath. Gradually, the fuzzy lines became shadows and the shadows took form. Someone was stood over him, but they quickly disappeared from view before he could discern anything more. He was cold and disorientated. An unknown place steadily emerged from the muddy gloom, which only posed more questions than it answered.

His arms and legs were heavy, far too heavy to move. Every muscle in his body felt taut and stiff, like a bundle of elastic bands that had been stretched too tight and then held in place. All he could do was lie there and absorb what information his senses would allow.

The dingy room smelled dank and musty like a neglected basement in a long abandoned apartment block. There were water stains on the yellowed ceiling, which peeled off in small sections from the old, rotten plaster lining. Rusting steel cages still barely clung to the dim, flickering light fixtures which buzzed and clicked in the quiet room like a cacophony of electric crickets. From the corner of his eye he saw row upon row of large silver tanks lining the far wall. They stood floor to ceiling and about four feet wide, each one peppered with rust spots over the dull, grimy surface. Several of them appeared to be leaking some sort of dirty brown liquid onto the floor.

"What's your name?" asked the voice, now recognisable as female. He tilted his head to the other side and saw a young woman stood next to him. She was wearing a crisp white jacket and was holding what looked like a clipboard.

"David," he croaked, then cleared his throat. "David Williams."

Over the next fifteen or twenty minutes the young woman administered multiple injections into his muscle tissue, from the corded tendons in his broad shoulders, all the way down to the sinews in his feet. She ran test after test on him using strange looking medical equipment, which beeped and buzzed as she passed each device slowly over his torso. He flinched each time the cold metal touched his bare skin, and bit his tongue each time his questions were met with a curt 'quiet please'.

"Okay, Mr. Williams, I think we're done," she eventually said. "Can you sit up for me?"

It was a struggle. David gripped the edge of the cold steel table and tried to hoist himself upright. He needed the help of the woman to make it all the way to a sitting position. His head swam like it was half filled with a liquid that sloshed around each time he moved. After taking a few deep breaths he was able to centre himself and swing his legs over the side.

"Who are you?" David asked, noting her appearance. The white jacket she wore, the paperwork that she had in her hand, all of the tests she'd been running on him, all indicated that she was a medical professional of some description.

"I'm your nurse."

"My nurse?" he replied. "Oh shit. Have I been in an accident?" David felt utterly disorientated. This was not the first time he'd woken up in a place he did not recognise with a woman he did not know, but this was something different. Wherever he was, it did not look like any hospital he'd ever been in.

"You could say that," she replied cryptically. "What is the last thing that you can remember?"

David concentrated for a moment. He sent a little probe down to his short term memory and found it came back with less information than he was expecting. He answered her question uncertainly, "I think I remember crossing the street."

With a practiced motion, the nurse clicked a thin plastic tube which she removed from her top pocket and shone a bright light into his eyes. It was painful to look at, and he could barely follow it from side to side as she moved it around.

"Perfect."

"What's going on?" he asked more forcefully this time. "Where the hell am I?"

"Yes, this is always the difficult part. I would suggest you brace yourself for this." The nurse stood directly in front of David and with a calm and measured tone, spoke the words which would change his life forever. "Mr Williams, you've just been brought out of cryogenic suspension."

"What?" replied David, not quite sure he'd heard her right.

"Cryogenic suspension. You've been, for want of a better word, defrosted."

His mind was unable to fathom the sheer magnitude of what she was saying. The words made sense but when they were all pieced together and applied to him, it just sounded like a daft concept from a comic book. Of course he'd heard of cryogenic freezing, but surely that was just something from science fiction movies. David quickly came to the conclusion that someone was playing a very elaborate, well-planned practical joke on him.

"Let me explain," the nurse continued. "You are what we refer to as a 'rejuve'. You died in the year twenty-fourteen and were placed into stasis as part of the cryo-clause in your employment life insurance policy."

"Cryo-clause, huh? Is this a wind-up?"

"No, Mr. Williams, it's not," the nurse replied straight-faced. "In a nutshell, what used to happen was that insurance companies would place a small clause in their policy fine-print making you eligible for a cryogenic preservation scheme. If you died a premature or unnatural death, they froze your body until the medical technology became available in the future to allow you to be brought back."

David started to feel faint.

"It was kind of all a big joke at the time of course. They would charge you a premium every month for the scheme, only a small amount, but of course that added up to quite a lot cumulatively. That coupled with the fact that most people never even bother to read the fine print anyway meant they were on to a winner. The insurance company's only obligation was that in the event of an accidental or unnatural death, all they had to do was turn you into a human popsicle and warehouse you."

"I think I'm gonna throw up."

"Anyway," she continued casually, "about fifty years ago when all the regenerative medical breakthroughs happened, the courts ruled that the insurance companies had to make good on their policies. A bit of a fuck-up on their part so they're gradually going out of business now, hence the state of this place."

"Are you telling me I've been in a block of ice for, what, years?" asked David. He glanced around the room at all of the corroded steel tanks lining the walls. It suddenly dawned on him that inside each of those tanks, with their little blue LED lights flashing away on the front, was a real human being.

"Indeed. It's actually a fascinating science if you're into that kind of thing. In order to stop the water in all your cells from crystallising when they freeze you, they suck out all of the water molecules and replace them with a cryoprotectant compound." David flinched and scrunched his face as the nurse emphasised the 'sucking' element of the process.

"It acts like an antifreeze," she continued with a smile that showed how much she really loved her job. "If they didn't, we'd basically have to scoop you out of the tank with a bucket when you were brought back to ambient temperature. Then what they do is cool your corpse to about negative two-hundred Fahrenheit with dry ice, drop you into one of these things, and fill it with liquid nitrogen."

"So, let me get this straight," replied David as he shuffled uncomfortably from side to side. "I'm in the future?"

"Well, technically speaking you're in the present, but I suppose from your point of view you could say that."

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me!"

David jumped off the table and started stumbling across the room. He headed for the window on the far wall in a roundabout way; his legs were still getting their bearings so he ended up doing an unusual kind of drunk crab-walk. He tripped and weaved dangerously as he veered across the floor, trying to avoid the obstacles of steel trolleys and mysterious rank puddles.

"Wait!" the nurse shouted across the room to him. "You've got to go through orientation first. You could go into shock!"

David never heard her warning, he was too focused on glimpsing the world of tomorrow. Scenes from all of the television programs and movies he'd watched when he was a kid suddenly started barreling through his mind. All of the strange technologies and weird customs that had delighted him growing up were now his reality. His hands gripped the dusty blinds and after a deep breath, he unceremoniously threw them open.

Through the grime-streaked glass, several hundred feet below, stretched out a metropolis of unimaginable proportions. Mega-structures and twelve-lane highways littered the vista for as far as the eye could see. The housing blocks towered towards the clouds like an endless forest of urban decay. Enormous, hulking masses of grey concrete blocks and corroding steel supports dominated the landscape all the way to the horizon. He felt dwarfed and humbled by the sheer magnitude of the sight before him; an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobic anxiety overcame him as he looked out into a new unfamiliar world.

"I don't believe this."

"Shocker, isn't it?" the nurse said in an amused tone. "Listen, I don't mean to rush you but I've got another two of you deep-freeze guys to thaw out today."

"What the hell happened to me?" asked David as he stared out of the large grubby window. "How did I die?"

The nurse rolled her eyes and ran her finger over his file, "It says here that you were hit by a postal truck, whatever that is."

"Fuckin' postal service," spat David as he spun around. "Those bastards should slow down. He was driving way too fast, that guy."

"You remember what happened?"

"Yeah, I..." The nurse watched as David's face first scrunched up in concentration before his jaw clenched tight. "That no-good, two-timing piece of shit!"

"What is it?"

"That's why I was crossing the road," replied David as he stared off across the room, his eyebrows furrowed. "My best mate was kissing my girlfriend on the other side of the street. Well, fuck Jeff and everyone who looks like Jeff!"

"That's quite a kick in the balls," said the nurse in an amused tone.

"Isn't it just," replied David before giving her a strange look. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. Things had started out pretty bad so far this morning, and they didn't appear to be getting better any time soon. As everything the nurse had told him started to sink in, another question suddenly sprung to mind.

"How come I'm not all messed up?"

"Excuse me?" replied the nurse.

"Well, I got hit by a truck, yes? How come I'm still in one piece?"

"When you were defrosted you spent twelve hours in a cellular regeneration chamber. All of the damage you sustained before your remains were placed into stasis has been repaired. Your body is perfectly healthy."

She glanced down at his crotch, smiled wryly, then looked back at the chart in her hand. David swiftly realised that he'd be stumbling around the room completely naked. He walked back over to the table, snatched up a pale blue sheet that was folded up on the bottom, and wrapped it around his waist.

"Take this," said the nurse, handing him a flexible semi-transparent plastic sheet with what looked like a medical report digitally displayed on it. "Go through that door and enter the first room on the right. There are some clothes for you to change into and then you need to sit through an orientation."

"Right. Thanks," replied David as he shuffled across to the door and stepped out into a dimly lit corridor. He entered the first room on the right as the nurse had instructed, and trudged barefoot across the threadbare carpet to a table at the far end. He discarded the blue sheet and then changed into the dark coloured clothes that were sitting in a folded pile waiting for him. The room was sparse and depressing; all that it contained was a steel table and two plastic chairs. There were no windows, no pictures on the wall, in fact there was no colour at all with the sole exception of the yellowed water stains in the corner of the room.

David wasn't sure what attire he'd been expecting to change into, but the pants and shirt he now had on didn't look particularly futuristic. They were some sort of cotton-like material and fairly loose fitting. It was so quiet in the dark room whilst he stood there stretching out the fatigue in his joints, that a sudden knock on the door startled him.

"Hello?" he called out nervously.

The door opened and in walked a beautiful young woman dressed in an unusual charcoal grey, low-cut business attire. She strode into the room confidently and took a seat at the table. The short skirt she wore rode dangerously high up her thighs revealing a fantastic pair of legs as she crossed them. David noticed those kind of things.

"Hello, Mr. Williams," she said in her silky smooth voice. "My name is Vala and I am your orientation executive from Aeon."

"Err, hi," he replied as he slid into the other chair. Her hair was so dark it was almost black. He loved dark hair. "What exactly is an orientation executive?"

Vala picked up the digital medical report he'd placed on the table. She ran her perfectly manicured fingers over it in a flurry of fast, strange patterns which elicited a series of quiet beeps and clicks from the glossy sheet as she touched it.

"Well," she replied, looking up to meet his bewildered gaze, "it's my job to handle your reintroduction to society."

***

They drove past hundreds of colossal structures which he assumed were housing for the masses; impossible looking apartment blocks, each one a towering mountain of decaying concrete and dirty glass. As the electric vehicle they rode in passed each one, he read the signage which hung above the main entrances. Every block had a flickering red sign, the last one reading 'Red Sector - Block 122'. It all seemed run down and depressing, not at all how he had expected the future to look.

Old, dried out newspaper fluttered past on a breeze as they navigated their way through a maze of underpasses, bridges and tunnels. The dry, dusty heat of midday noon gave the whole city an ethereal haze which the implausible structures faded into in the distance.

"Overpopulation has lead to a situation now of large scale unemployment, which in turn means that crime has become endemic in certain areas of the city. I would avoid those where possible. There are various public transportation systems as well as the hover-rail that runs the full length of the strip..."

Vala had been talking since they had left, but in truth, very little of what she was saying was penetrating his little bubble of consternation. Everything seemed eerily familiar, yet at the same time, disconcertingly alien. Where he'd had visions of a paradisiacal metropolis full of fresh air and light, he'd found instead a dystopian slice of realism. Fifteen minutes was all it had taken Vala to shatter his dreams. Fifteen minutes to explain the truth of overpopulation, poverty and global warming. The dimly lit room where they had first met had been fairly cool by comparison, but the oppressive heat of a near sub-tropical climate had hit him immediately upon exiting the building. In the imposing shadows of the towering, decrepit skyscrapers, the claustrophobic torridity felt like a hand closed around his throat.

The twelve lane highway they joined ran straight through the heart of the city. He saw multilingual signs hanging from the monumental, looping crossover bridges indicating that it was called 'the strip'. Steel and concrete seemed to be the depressing palette of the future world he found himself in. In search of a splash of familiar blue, he looked skywards through the window and watched the slow circling of what he presumed were some sort of aerial surveillance drones.

"It's a lot to take in."

For the first time since they had left the cryonics facility, Vala spoke to him as something other than a customer on a guided tour. He suspected that it wasn't so much polite conversation as a way to simply fill the time.

"A lot of you rejuves aren't able to adjust to their new reality. They have trouble adapting and accepting the radical changes to the world around them. The suicide rate is very high."

"The way you say that make you sound as though you disapprove of the practice, 'you rejuves'."

There was silence as she stared out of the window and considered her words. She had made it perfectly clear back in the orientation briefing that she was all business. Her attitude was a perfectly blended distillation of detachment and cold indifference. A little warmth would not have gone amiss.

"I meant no offence," she offered, swivelling in her seat to look at him. "I just don't want you to do anything stupid."

"A touch of concern?" he asked, turning to look at her.

"You're a client. If you die with no next of kin the state will seize your assets." The frosty clinical tone now sounded raw and heartless. She turned in her seat and faced forward again. "Assets that the Aeon Banking Corporation currently manage for you."

The vehicle eventually pulled off the main drag and approached a vast vertical wall. The embankment was easily a hundred feet high and seemed to span uninterrupted endlessly in both directions. It appeared to be a fortified border of some kind. They were stopped at a security checkpoint by two guards and promptly granted passage after the driver flashed them some identification. David found himself pressed up against the glass in eager anticipation as they passed through the dark tunnel and out into the light. The world he found on the other side of the wall was a breath of fresh air.

Gone was the grey, now replaced in an instant of total contrast with a most unexpected utopia. Lush green fields and tall trees welcomely replaced the monochromatic metropolis they had left behind. Oddly, it was the first time David remembered seeing anything green since they'd left the facility. Gone were the crowded boulevards of utilitarian high-rise housing; here there seemed to be only unblemished beauty. The road they drove on was completely empty and wound through the countryside in a lazy meander as though it knew that whomever drove on it had all the time in the world. A couple of miles from the checkpoint they'd passed through, David saw a frosted glass sign which stood at the side of the road. It read 'Welcome to Angel Falls'.

"Angel falls?" he enquired of Vala.

"It's the name of this sector of the city. It is walled off from the rest of the metropolis and is accessible only through security checkpoints like the one we just drove through."

"It looks really nice," he offered, but no reply appeared to be forthcoming. It seemed that was the end of the conversation.

They drove for miles in complete silence as David just enjoyed the view. It was a beautiful day outside and the further they travelled, the more he liked the idea of putting some distance between himself and the city. As they crested a small hill, a shimmering tower of glass appeared before them. It was breathtaking in magnitude and reminded him of something he'd once seen in a Hollywood movie. It seemed to grow exponentially in size as they drew closer to it, until the vehicle eventually pulled up in front of the building and stopped next to an enormous water fountain outside. Three foot high stainless steel letters were propped up on the perfectly manicured lawn spelling out the name of the building. It was called 'The Spire'.