Not Worth It

Sacrifice, the researchers had said. For the greater good of humanity.

Robotic, observing, uncaring. They were blunt, I’ll give them that. They told me that the chances of surviving are slim to none, and that pain could possibly follow.

I knew what I was getting into. I had nothing to lose. No family, no money, nothing important. The other 11 volunteers probably felt the same.

Volunteering for a project with little to no scientific support was stupid, but damn was the money good.

…Although now that I think of it, the scientists probably didn’t expect anyone to survive. 10,000 each for any survivors with 12 volunteers, they’d be broke. Maybe they were even hoping that we would die so they wouldn’t have to pay up.

Rude.

Waking up was nothing dramatic, though seeing no familiar faces was a bit of a pain to deal with. Other than that, my treatment was systematic, and I was scheduled for a full release into the ‘wilderness’ that is society within a year, after I caught up to standards on the state of it.

Honestly, I would say that it was a bit anticlimactic, but I do know that knowing something, and seeing something with your own eyes makes a world of a difference.

So within a month into my treatment, I had asked to be given a week to see the world outside, and permission was granted, with the condition that there would always be at least 5 people monitoring me, although I most likely wouldn’t know where or who they were.

Walking down the streets of New York flooded with people, I couldn’t help but think that my spot in the experiment should have been taken by someone else.

I didn’t know how to react.

An experiment into stretching the lifespan through cryostasis should have used people with things to lose. If this system is to be implemented in real life anyways.

A normal person would probably be anxious, crying, or have locked themselves in their own room upon waking up. Everything was different, and everything would have become a reminder of what they lost. Or perhaps they would have reveled in the convenience that the technology of the future provides, who knows.

Me? I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I was technically decades older than the grey-haired man sitting over there at the bus station. I didn’t care that not a single thing surrounding me matched my memories.

I didn’t care that I had lost what little I had left, the small cafe around the corner that I particularly liked, or that barber shop down the street which always smelled like mint shaving cream that I was fond of. I didn’t care that I would never see it again, nor did I care that the people that would hand me an extra scone at the cafe are most likely dead.

I didn’t care. But realizing that, realizing that I had not considered what was left for me worth it, realizing that I didn’t care, wasn’t worth the 67 years that I had given up.

And no amount of neon lights and concrete buildings and futuristic thingamajigs will ever change that fact for me.