Strange Awakening

         When Cameron woke up, it took him all of three seconds to remember why he was staring at a frosted piece of glass inches from his face. He'd been a volunteer for this ludicrous project. Ten years in suspended animation. Of course it wasn't, really, much of a choice. It was that, or thirty years in prison. Never mind the fact that he was innocent. The judge hadn't seen it that way, and the days of juries were long gone. He was thankful to have a judge who was forgiving enough to allow a choice. Typically, the crime for jaywalking was execution.
         Cameron could remember reading about a time when "cruel and unusual punishment" wasn't allowed. But, to him, being executed for jaywalking seemed perfectly sensible. After all, you could get hit by a car, and while the Dynaflex bodies all vehicles were made out of any more were light, they offered nothing for impact protection. There wasn't really any point. They were all automated. Every vehicle on the road, as well as the road itself, was linked to the central command module at Dyna Towers, where the experiment he was taking part in was being conducted. So, the vehicles could safely travel at nearly two-hundred miles per hour. There were no such things as crashes...except when someone jaywalked. Then, the chance was there. If a crash happened then, it was always fatal. So, taking one life to prevent the loss of multiple was entirely reasonable.
         None of that was Cameron's main concern right now, though. Now that he recalled that he'd signed up for the experimental project, he was eager to be done with it. He was trying to remember the words the man in the lab coat (Cameron hadn't bothered remembering his name.) had used before putting him in this oversized tennis ball tube.
         The man seemed entirely confident as he spoke. "The concept of suspended animation is really no different than cryogenics. Everything will be fine. Your wakeup is scheduled. There'll be someone here when you regain consciousness. It may take a minute or two, but we'll be there to get you out of the suspended animation chamber."
         Cameron stared at the glass while he waited for the promised attendant to come open his tube. There wasn't, really, much else to look at. It was a tight fit inside that little chamber. He couldn't move his head more than an inch or so forward without tapping the glass, so he couldn't look down. So, he tried to make out something, anything, on the other side of the glass. It was impossible to see anything. He guessed the lights were off in the room, because the little light that sat somewhere above his head illuminated his little chamber just enough to where he couldn't see anything on the other side, like trying to see a dark lawn out the window of your house at night.
         It seemed like the attendant was taking an especially long time to come open his tube. Actually, he didn't even hear anything on the other side. He knew they weren't soundproof. He'd been able to hear muffled conversation when he first got into the contraption. Now there was nothing. The possibility of not being let out for some time crossed his mind. What if they scheduled his wakeup wrong, and they weren't expecting him to be awake at this time? Maybe it was the middle of the night and nobody was on duty at the moment. Worse than that, what if it was the start of the weekend? He wasn't about to be stuck waiting there for two days.
         "Hello?"
         Nothing.
         "Hello!?"
         Silence.
         "Is anybody there!?"
         Still no response.
         Cameron started feeling around the inside of the tube. There had to be some kind of emergency open switch somewhere. His hands had a little more range of movement than his head, but they were still limited to how much he was able to move his arms. Eventually, his left hand did brush a few controls. He tried one; his tube went dark. He flipped it back and the light came back on. That was just too dark for his comfort. He tried another; a fan beneath his feet kicked on, circulating air through the tube. He left that one alone. It was a nice change of pace. He tried the others. One ended up being an alarm, one an intercom to an unmanned control board and one that just seemed to click with no purpose.
         "Ten years." Cameron reminded himself. "I've been in this thing ten years. What's another couple days?"
         It didn't take long to answer himself. "It's two days of being awake while waiting, that's what it is!"
         He figured he didn't have a whole lot to lose, at this point. He readied himself as much as he could, and kicked at the glass, hoping to break it. His foot hit a switch. The glass released its seal and slid off to the side. Cameron sighed and rolled his eyes.
         "Figures." He huffed. "Whatever, it's open. Time to get out of here."
Sitting up, he discovered the room to be just as dark and empty as he thought it to be from the inside of the suspended animation chamber. His tube had been positioned in a way so that it sat like a bed on the floor, so he had to crawl out of the thing. The moment his feet hit the floor, the room sensors registered his presence, and the lights came on. Or rather, the one light that wasn't burned out came on. It offered a dim view of the room, but that was all he needed.
         Cameron's jaw went as wide as a snake's at mealtime. The room was not only empty, it was abandoned. He moved around the circular room, dodging large scraps of metal and hanging wires. While swiping away at countless cobwebs, he noticed several other suspended animation chambers sitting around the room. Most were empty. Some had been broken into. The bodies of those inside such tubes had petrified long ago. One had its light on, and the commotion in the room had alerted whoever it was inside.
         "Is someone there!? Please let me out!" It was a woman.
         "Uh, yeah I'm here." Cameron answered as he moved closer.
         "Open this thing up! I have to get out of here!" She was clearly desperate.
         "Uh, well I don't know how."
         That didn't make her happy, at all. "What do you mean you don't know how!?"
         "Well I just got out of one of these things. There was a switch in front of my right foot. I just kicked and I hit it."
         ~Thud.~ The woman kicked at the inside of her chamber. ~Thud.~ Again. ~Thwack.~ The third try met with success. The tube slid open just as it had with Cameron's. It was at that moment he remembered one of the requirements for taking part in the study.
         "Clothes aren't alive." The man in the lab coat had explained. "So they won't be affected by the suspended animation. We'll put your stuff in a cryo-drawer below your chamber."
         Knowing they would both be nude, he turned away before he saw the stranger, ran back to his own tube, knelt down at the side and opened the cryo-drawer. He threw on the frigid clothing as quickly as he was able, and then got up and turned around to see a brown-haired woman draped in a simple robe standing by the other tube.
         She smiled and walked over to him, holding out her hand. "Hi. I'm Samantha."
         "Hi, Samantha, I'm..."
         "Cameron, I know." She interrupted.
         He was dumbstruck. He wanted to ask her how she knew him, but he simply couldn't find the words. It wasn't necessary. She answered his question, anyway.
         "The suspended animation project had been all but abandoned shortly after it began. The galactic wars forced all new and ongoing research projects to be halted. When the wars started, your automatic reawakening time was changed. They didn't want you waking up in the middle of a war. When they were over, the doctor who started this project had died, and most of the suspended animation chambers looked like they do now. Nobody else knew how to start the awakening process."
         "I'm confused." Cameron finally managed to speak. "What does this mean for me? And why are you here?"
         "When the wars ended, what was left of the research team came back, and found this place looking like this. They didn't know how long they were going to have to wait for you to wake up, and there was no funding for them to continue. All they could do was link another chamber to yours, so when you woke up, whoever was inside it would wake up, as well." She kicked at his machine. "The stupid things were supposed to open automatically."
         He pointed at her. "And the linked chamber? That was yours?"
         Samantha nodded. "Exactly. I volunteered to be here for you when you woke up."
         "So then how long was I asleep?"
         She shrugged. "Let's find out."
         She moved over to his chamber and hit a few buttons. The display popped up and she whistled in amazement.
         "What?" He was anxious to know what she saw.
         "The year is 3596 AD. It's over seven-hundred years after you first entered your chamber."
         Cameron felt like he was about to lose his mind, but he noticed how calm Samantha was. It helped keep him cool. He looked at her curiously.
         He had to say something. "You don't seem all that upset about it."
         She shrugged, again. "I'd been given the run-through of all the possibilities when I signed up. Besides, I didn't really have a whole lot going for me, anyway. So, here I am."
         He nodded. "Alright, so now what?"
         She smiled, gently grabbed his hand and led him to the door. She punched a code in and the door slid open, revealing a poorly lit hallway that would lead to a world Cameron knew nothing about.
         "Now, Cameron, we see what the future holds."