Brave New World

Waking up from coldsleep is always a pain.

Lieutenant Roy Beaumont knew this. While he had never gone through the process before, his instructors had been very clear on this point during his training: coldsleep was to be considered only as a last resort, once a soldier's options for both survival and carrying out his duty had dropped to absolute zero. And all those who had done it almost wished they hadn't.

Now he knew why.

When the lid of the coffin-like coldsleep capsule had closed itself over him, he had been screaming. Coming out of an explosion with most of your intestines hanging out of a gaping belly wound does that to you. Trying to keep his bowels together with both arms, he had somehow made it to the cold-sleep capsule, managed to get himself inside, and succeeded in pushing the button, screaming all the while. By then he knew there were no other survivors left in the little outpost where he was stationed. There had been six green conscripts (kids, really, with no more training more than four weeks of basic) and three civilians. The remains of two of these were strewn across the flour. The others had been in the back room, in place of which there was now a huge smoking crater.

So he had pushed the big red button, and everything had gone away.

Now things were different. But not better. Certainly they were not better. The pain was no longer just in his stomach. It was everywhere. He tried to scream. He couldn't.

He couldn't scream! What was going on? He tried to open his eyes. Nothing happened. He tried to move. Nothing happened.

Fear set in. Had the coldsleep coffin failed? Or was this death? He tried to move again.

Nothing.

Fear turned to panic.

"..coming up too soon! Stabilize..." a voice said in the distance.

And everything went away.

* * *

The second time it was better... And worse. The pain was now just a dull ache. He ached all over, but at least it wasn't the searing pain he remembered, and for that he was intensely grateful.

But now he was cold. And he still couldn't move.

The panic returned. It was stronger this time, and it leaped at his throat like a big, black beast, and he could feel its teeth sink into him. The darkness was full of dancing spots of light...

"..sedative... ...coming up again!" the same voice said. It seemed to come from miles away. The voice sounded very urgent.

"..in trouble... must have felt the injection..." a female voice answered. This one seemed closer, but still far away.

The pain slowly disappeared. So did the fear. He felt himself floating on a thick, pink cloud. Drifting, drifting...

"..losing him!" the male voice said. It sounded worried now, really worried.

Roy briefly wondered if he should be worried, too. But it didn't seem to matter. He felt himself sinking, deeper and deeper...

"..not going to work," one of the distant voices said. "..EEG... ...catatonic..."

Were those voices talking about him?

"..only think of one thing to try..." It was a different female voice this time. "..removing... ...the neural block to his genital area."

The what? In his what? But it didn't seem to matter. Roy continued to sink. The voices seemed even further away now.

"..pelvic region is still in bad shape..." the male voice seemed to say. But it didn't seem important.

Suddenly there was sensation. He could feel a part of his body... But which part? He tried to move his legs, but nothing happened. What was going on?

"..at least that's good... ...erectile reflex..."

Vaguely he realized that he could feel his groin. There was warmth, there was tension...

"..good..." one of the voices said. "..fully erect..."

The sensation increased. Suddenly he felt it: someone touched him.

Someone had touched him! That was good. Or was it? If only he could think more clearly...

Slowly the awareness increased. What was that? Fingertips on his skin... But it felt weird. There was warmth, pressure, tautness...

And then he realized what was going on. The fingers had touched his cock. His hard cock.

But why? And how could he have an erection and not feel the rest of his body?

Suddenly there was another sensation, soft, warm, wet...

Had Roy been more conscious, he would have felt many things: concern, embarrassment, excitement, fear, pleasure. But in his current semi-conscious state all he could muster was a mild curiosity.

The sensation became more familiar now. What was that? Oh yes, of course... He knew that feeling. It had long been one of his favorite ones... Or had it? If only he wasn't so confused...

Slowly he realized that what he felt was a mouth enveloping the head of his hard cock. Why? He had no idea, but somehow he was neither curious nor worried.

He could feel it more clearly now. A soft hand was holding his rigid shaft, gently stroking it, and a luscious, warm, wet mouth slipped down over his swollen head. It slid up and down, up and down, the lips gliding across the crown, and a tongue skillfully played across the underside of his head.

"..EEG seems to be stabilizing..." a female voice said, much closer now.

The mouth began to suck.

He had never felt anything like it! Not only was the mouth extremely skillful, but all he could feel was his cock. There was no other sensation. Somehow his cock had become his whole body, even whole universe.

"..let him have an orgasm?" a woman asked.

"Him hmm." It was a female voice, and he felt it humming on the tip of his cock, so she was obviously the one with her mouth full. Roy briefly wondered what she might look like, but it didn't seem to matter.

The mouth continued to do incredible things.

"Shouldn't he have climaxed by now?" the male voice asked.

"Don't forget he's a natural." It was one of the female voices he had heard before.

The fingers pumped his shaft, gently but insistently. The mouth continued to suck, the lips sliding across the rim of his head.

"..rather small..." a woman said. "..more stimulation?"

The mouth increased its delightful activities. He felt the familiar pleasure beginning to pool at the base of his cock.

"..EEG shows he must be close. Reesh?"

"Him hmm!"

The mouth (Reesh?) continued to suck. The pleasure built, built... And he realized he was going to cum.

The mouth pushed down on his shaft, sucking, sucking, pushing him along as his pleasure rose... And then it pushed him over the edge, and he came.

Ye gods, he came! He came like never before. Pleasure exploded inside him, soared right through him, and suddenly the sensation in his body returned, but there was no pain, only pleasure, and he felt himself ejaculate, and the mouth took it all and swallowed, sucked, swallowed...

Slowly the pleasure ebbed, and he felt himself relax and sink back into the twilight. But it was different this time, and slowly he drifted, floating, floating...

"..seems to have done the trick, Reesh," the male voice said. "EEG looks stable."

"Reesh is very, very good at this," a woman answered.

"I know," the male voice replied. "Are you free tonight, Reesh?"

But the voices no longer seemed to matter. He drifted further, and finally slipped into black unconsciousness.

* * *

Waking was a slow, slow process. But now at least it seemed more like waking and less like a feverish dream. Gradually he became aware of his body. He could feel his arms, his legs... They felt very heavy. Why? His head felt like it was stuffed full of sand.

"Don't try to move yet," a woman said.

Blackness.

* * *

He woke again. Once again it was different this time. His arms and legs no longer felt like they were made of lead. He tried to move his hand. It felt stiff and sore. But it moved. Only a little, but it moved.

"Try to keep still," a woman said. It was a voice he'd heard before.

He tried to open his eyes. Eventually something seemed to happen, and he slowly became aware of a dim light. Everything was blurry.

Something moved in the blur.

"Can you hear me?" a woman asked. The sound came from the general direction of the moving blur.

"Yes," he tried to say, but it came out as a soft gurgle.

"What's wrong with my eyes?" he tried to ask, but "Unh..."was all he managed.

"Don't try to speak just yet," the woman said. "You are recovering from coldsleep. You will feel groggy and confused, your eyesight is most likely very bad, and your arms and legs will feel stiff and heavy. You will almost certainly be sore all over, and you may feel dizzy or nauseous. But I want you to know that all of that is normal, and it will go away."

He closed his eyes again.

Blackness.

* * *

He drifted in and out of sleep for what seemed a long time. Each time he woke things seemed a little clearer. When he finally opened his eyes again his vision was still blurred, but not nearly as bad as it had been. A fuzzy blob gradually resolved itself into the shape of a woman.

But what a strange woman! What was wrong with her? Roy's groggy brain wondered about that for the longest time.

When he woke up again she was standing closer to him. Even with his vision still blurred he could see that she was very beautiful. But there was something strange about her... Something very unusual... What was it?

Oh yes, of course... She wasn't wearing any clothes, that was it. She was as naked as on the day she was born.

And she smiled at him.

"Can you hear me?," she asked.

"Yes...," Roy whispered, his voice raspy. It was the first thing he had managed to say, he realized dimly.

"Good," she said. "My name is Reesh. I'm taking care of you. Don't try to move yet. You are still recovering from coldsleep. I know you will have lots of questions, and they will all be answered, but first you have to be stronger."

"Unh..." Roy managed.

"I'm going to give you a massage now," Reesh said. "Try to relax."

That was easy. He felt completely exhausted. He closed his eyes.

Then he felt her hand on his skin. She rubbed his arms, then his legs, gently but firmly. Slowly the heaviness in his limbs receded, and he began to feel slightly more human. But something was... weird. What was it? Oh yes... She was naked. Buy why? Why would a doctor or a nurse be naked?

"What...?" he managed, his voice a hoarse whisper..

"Ssshhh... Relax..." she said softly.

And he felt her hands on his cock.

Reesh! Of course. It was Reesh who... But hang on... Wasn't that just a dream? But if it was, how did he...

She continued to stroke his cock, gently, and then the inside of this thighs. And he felt himself begin to harden under her touch.

"Reesh?" he rasped.

"Yes?"

"Did you..."

"Did I do what?"

She moved her hands back to his swelling cock, brushing his balls with her fingertips.

"When I was out..." he muttered. "Did you..."

"You remember!" She sounded pleased. "I didn't think you would."

"I heard... voices..." he whispered. "And then..."

She bent down and put her lips on the head of his now fully erect cock, and let the head of him slip into her mouth. She caressed him with her lips and tongue, and then gently sucked. He moaned softly.

"And then I did this?" she said, her fingertips on his throbbing shaft.

"I... think so..." he rasped. "But... Wasn't that a dream?"

"Oh no, not at all. That was real. We were afraid we were losing you. Your neural activity was dropping rapidly and we had to boost it, but there was no way you could have survived any form of direct artificial stimulation. So this was the only thing I could think of to keep you with us. And it looks like it worked."

"But..."

"Sssshhhh..." she said. "Don't worry about anything right now. You need to recover, and I'm taking care of you." And with that, she bent down and put her mouth on the swollen head of his hard cock again.

She let her luscious lips slide down around him, and he felt her tongue play around the crown of his head as she gently sucked him. She moved her lips up and down across the head of his cock, and her fingers caressed his balls. The sensation was incredible, the pleasure exquisite and intense.

She took him to the very brink of orgasm, and then, somehow, she held him there, held him there, for the longest time, while his pleasure became almost unbearably intense... Until, finally, the dam burst and pleasure erupted from his cock as he came in her mouth. His cock pulsed as he pumped his hot cum into the warm wetness of her mouth, and she swallowed it all, until he had no more.

When it was over he felt himself drift away into a delicious drowsiness.

"Now you must rest," she said, and she put her hand on his forehead. "You will feel better soon. Sleep now."

And he did.

* * *

It felt as if he woke from a long, deep sleep. He lay there with his eyes closed as consciousness slowly returned. Gradually, bit by bit, memories began to drift in, memories of pain and pleasure, of drowsiness and confusion and a beautiful naked woman.

Strange dreams he'd been having.

Dreams? Maybe not.

He opened his eyes. His vision was still blurry, but at least it was improving. And he felt a lot better, too. He tried to move his left arm, and it worked. When he slowly turned his head, his neck hurt. His whole body felt stiff and slightly sore, as if he had been sleeping for too long in an awkward position. But he could move. Gods, he could move!

He looked around the room. To his left was a smooth, blank wall and a bank of what looked to be medical equipment. He was lying on a bed, his body covered with a white sheet that seemed to be made of a strange, thin, somewhat shiny material. Several tubes and wires extended from underneath the sheet and disappeared under the bed. The bed felt weird under him, and he felt strangely weightless, as if his body wasn't lying on the bed but floating just above it.

He slowly turned to his right, and saw a featureless gray door set in the center of an equally featureless gray wall. Reesh was standing next to the bed.

She was naked.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

Roy could only stare. He vaguely realized that he shouldn't, that it was impolite, probably immature, and wrong in many other ways, but he couldn't help himself. He just stared.

And for good reason. She was a vision, an adolescent dream come true. She was tall. Her heart-shaped face was flawless, accentuated by half-long blond hair, and on one side of her face she wore some kind of golden, softly glittering cosmetic that accentuated the line of her cheek and jawbone. Her eyes were deep pools of green. Her neck was slender and her breasts full, lush, perfectly shaped and proportioned, and they seemed to defy gravity. Her nipples were pink and perfect. Her waist was slender, her hips curvy, her buttocks smooth, tight and curvy, her legs long. Her pussy was hairless and beautiful.

"I..." he finally managed. She looked concerned.

"Can you tell me your name?" she asked. "Do you know your name?"

"Roy..." He swallowed, then tried again. "Lieutenant Roy Beaumont." His voice felt a little stronger now.

"Good. That means your basic memory is intact. Everything else will sort itself out in time."

He looked around the room again. It looked strange. What...? Where...?

No. The most important question was not what or where, or even why or how. What he needed to know more than anything was... when.

He took a deep breath.

"How long?" he whispered.

She hesitated. "Well, Roy..." she began.

Her words seemed to confirm his worst fears.

"How long?" he repeated, stronger this time.

She sighed, and her face took on that expression that people use when they are about to deliver some really bad news.

"Just tell me... I have to know. How long? Just give me the figure..." he said. His chest felt heavy.

She took a deep breath. And she told him.

"As far as we can determine, Roy, you have been in suspended animation for just over four hundred years."

It felt like the bed dropped out from under him. He plunged into the abyss.

* * *

She stayed with him. For the next two days she never left his side, while he digested the fact that his entire world was gone forever. Four centuries separated him from everything he had ever known, and there was no going back. Ever.

Never mind the fact that he had had little or nothing in the way of family. His parents had died years before. He had had no brothers or sisters, and eight months into the service his fiancée had decided to move on with her own life, which no longer included him. Since then his world had been little more than the service. Which meant regular, carefully propagandized news about the war, lots of boredom, and the occasional R&R and the casual pleasures of the flesh, but not of the heart, that came with it.

None of which was a great loss. But never mind all that. Those four centuries put a bigger gap between himself and everything he remembered than light-years of distance ever could have done.

Gradually, though, over the course of the next two days, the shock wore off to the point where he could think again.

"What happened?" was his first question. He noticed how his voice continued to grow stronger.

Reesh stood up. He noticed the strange design of the chair she'd been sitting on. It looked almost... molten, without any sharp corners or straight lines.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

Roy closed his eyes.

"Numb..."

She put his hand on his forehead.

"For a shock this severe, you're taking it rather well," she said.

He sighed. Quite frankly he wasn't sure how he was taking any of this. He stared at the featureless ceiling, idly noticing how there seemed to be no light fixtures, neither up there nor anywhere else in the room. Where did the light come from?

"What happened?" he repeated.

"Quite a lot. As I'm sure you can imagine," Reesh said. "But let me start with the basics. We recovered you from the ruins of what looks to have been a small military base with little or no offensive or defensive capability. An intelligence gathering post perhaps?"

Roy nodded feebly. "Comms... And a listening post."

"Most of it was apparently destroyed by conventional explosives," she continued. "There was extensive cratering, but one side effect of the bombardment seems to have been that your suspended animation unit got buried under twenty feet or rubble and soil. We detected it by the neutrino output given off by the power cell. And a good thing, too, because it was on its last legs. You were badly wounded before you entered suspended animation, and you had spent much longer in that unit than was ever intended. In all honesty, you were a bit of a mess."

Roy slowly nodded. "I think it was a missile hit. I barely made it into the coldsleep coffin. But... The nanotech..."

Reesh shook her head.

"The nanotech units you were injected with before you were deployed were primitive to begin with. But more importantly, they were designed in the same way as the suspended animation unit. Which is to say, they were just a rough-and-ready solution to keep you alive until help arrived. But in your case that help never came. Neither the unit nor the nanotech was ever designed to last for more than a year or two at the most. When we recovered your body, your abdominal wounding was the least of our problems. The biggest job was getting the defunct nanotech out of you. Those nano's were intended to keep your tissues from deteriorating, but by now they had lodged firmly between the cells of your body, so they just got in the way of introducing our own nano's to restore those tissues."

She took the sheet that covered him, and pulled it town a few inches. When he looked down he could see part of his chest. It looked awful. The skin was splotchy and had a cadaverous, yellow-white color with purplish-black spots.