The Traveller - 1

 

Shaheer Hussain woke up slowly from his hyper slumber (1), his mind blurry after a period of dreamless sleep. His old body was aching after such a long time. His mind slowly woke up, once the sleep chamber started injecting necessary drugs into his veins. He was awake after half an hour.

His muscles were kept in shape during his sleep by the electric stimulus, expertly administered by the medical AI, along with all the medicines and nutrients. The science was perfected over the years by space agencies of Pakistan and Turkey, ordered by the Grand Scientific Counsel of Islamic Research. The research grant was based on Sura Kahaf, the famous incident of the people of the cave. Six research bodies from all the famous Islamic research institutes participated including MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, NUST, Indonesian International University and Medina University of Sciences. It was used to take care of terminally ill, for which no cure existed at the time.

Result was a series of technological break through, one of which was the science of Hyper Sleep. This made the deep space travel possible , however world was still not able to reach Pluto, as all the world resources were diverted towards the uplift of poor and needy. 40 years of presence of Isa Ibne Meryam were the epitome of human uplift and civilization, culminating after his death and seemingly still continuing in the right direction. After all, the major diseases have been eradicated including the last covid virus. The poor uplifted all over the world, hunger erased, wars and conflicts also over, what could go wrong now. He felt grateful, remembering the details behind the simple looking apparatus, but wondering why he was in it.

After another half an hour, he was able to move his limbs and look around the room. His mind a bit blank, and had difficulty remembering the series of events. Suddenly, he noticed a small girl was looking at him lovingly, standing in the corner, and smiling. Was he back home? Probably.., it seemed so.

"Dada, I hope you are OK? " , 

"Yes.., where am I ?" , confused , he asked. He remembering parts of where he was before start of deep sleep, but this was impossible, his room was shining with light of sun, and full of sounds from the outside world, birds, bees, some far away traffic, also far way sounds of magnetic suspension cars, and Air drones. The usual suburban noise. How this could be? Something was off. He looked out the window, the scene was surreal, a beautiful Pakistani village in north, was he in Murree? Or Sakardu, he could not decide.

"Dada, relax, and eat your solids, you need strength" the little girl cajoled him. 

He looked at her and smiled, " I am getting old , am I sick? ". 

"No, just asleep, for a long time".

"Ok, but why I was asleep, where am I, what happened?" He felt dizzy. 

"I will tell you once you are ok, don't worry and eat your veggies" the little angle said smiling. 

He slowly started eating. Looking around the room, he noticed a few odd things, the walls were a bit too shiny, there was no clock, and he felt no air movement as well, from the open window. he was suddenly alarmed.

"Little Angel, I can hear the bees outside my window" he hesitantly asked. The girl suddenly grew alarmed, and after a second the sound disappeared suddenly. He looked at her now more closely, remembering part of his training.

 "Please switch off the holographic projection system (2)" he was calm but fully awake now. The bees had gone extinct 50 years ago. He felt sad. The projection was not perfect, AI controlling the view was not trained on real humans. What a pity.. but why?, how was that possible.

"As you wish", she sighed and became quiet. After a second, the walls became transparent, and the view outside was displayed. All black, the sky all around was pitch black with so many stars. So, so many of them. He was quiet for a long time, thinking and remembering now.

He looked all around to search for the Sun, but could not see it. Suddenly he felt sweat over his forehead. He was shaking, with anxiety. "Where are we?" His mind going blank with fear.

"Don't worry, I will tell you all in due course of time, but you need to tell me all about you, I need human stories to learn about you to train myself, to better take care of you".

The room came back again. His mind was racing.

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Next Story - The Rock

References:

(1) Hyper Sleep was not Cryogenics, rather an entirely different means of achieving the suspended animation for up to 300 years. 

(2) Tensor holography enabled the creation of real-time holograms for virtual reality, 3D printing, medical imaging, and more. Work began in Early 21st Century.