Stasis Shock

  Chapter 2

  Summer Faire

  Ethan took classes at Spark Community College, rapidly approaching graduation with one semester to go before the department awarded him an Associate of Science. There wasn’t exactly a degree for computer programming, but the aforementioned title covered most of the tech majors.

  Today was the visitor’s fair for prospective students, and all the upperclassmen needed to help with the booths for their departments. Okay, not all of them, but Ethan volunteered. It gave him a chance to stretch his legs and talk to someone from the outside. He spent more than enough time hooked up as it was, so he decided to mingle while passing out fliers.

  Concerning his major, Ethan developed a few apps in his day, but what drove his interest the most was software integration with personal stasis devices. He purchased a developer’s kit last month and had been hammering away for weeks on end. He found it easier to handle the software side while in stasis because it gave him more time, though he took care not to get too carried away.

  Extended stays in stasis came with some nasty side effects, one of the worst being stasis shock. It was one of the reasons people weren’t using the technology for space travel to places like Mars or the moon. A couple days in one sitting was about the limit of what a person could handle before it kicked in. Hours added up as well, even if not consecutively and each person handled it differently. Ethan tried not to worry about it too much, since his body felt fine … most of the time.

  “Ethan! Over here!” one of his classmates shouted.

  He hustled across a slew of students that for a moment reminded him of the spiders. Eight legs scurrying across the cave and … hold on a second. Ethan paused in mid step, blinking his eyes until he saw teenagers again. That was a jolt, but the scene appeared normal again, so he headed up to meet the other volunteers working at his booth. This sort of thing happened every occasionally, but it was nothing to worry about. Real stasis shock was reoccurring and lasted for hours. These intermittent flashes, on the other hand, were harmless reactions to his time spent in stasis, more like daydreams than anything else.

  “Sorry for being late,” he said. “What’s my job?”

  “Just try not to get bored,” his classmate said. “We can pretty much kill time however we like as long as we keep handing out pamphlets when they walk by.”

  Ethan sized his classmate up. Clean cut and wearing a loose jacket. His slouching posture and overall demeanor seemed to suggest that he didn’t want to be here. Shame that it was. Ethan remembered his face from PASCAL 2200. His type took to socialization like a cat to water. Gavin was his name.

  “Seems legit,” Ethan said.

  He took a seat next to Gavin and kicked up his heels. Gavin shot him a brief glare but refrained from speaking. Good to know. His primary duty today came down to not ticking off Gavin. Ethan couldn’t help but let his mind wander. The air on campus boasted fragrances with the scent of flowers completely alien to his personal world.

  “What do you guys do for fun after class?” Ethan said.

  Gavin looked over and leaned back in his chair.

  “Mostly, I play video games,” he said. “I have a Co-System 500-B. It’s not the pro-model, but it still plays most games.”

  “I hear you. Money is hard to come by,” Ethan said. “I blew two paychecks setting up my game system, and that’s not counting every upgrade since.”

  “At least you can upgrade yours,” Gavin said. “I hate consoles. The only thing I can do is sell mine and buy the better version.”

  “You should check out mine sometime. State of the art.”

  Gavin leaned in closer and smiled.

  “Yeah, I could do that. How far do you commute?”

  Heck yes! Common interest might just have snagged him a new friend, and he managed the task within minutes of eye contact. See, this was the point of getting out and meeting new people. This totally made his day after Merrick bailed on him earlier.

  “Actually, I live a few blocks from campus,” Ethan replied.

  “Cool, I can stop by after class tomorrow if that works for you.”

  “Sure.”

  Ethan sat up straight, grabbed a flier, and passed it off to one of the prospective students. Freshmen were flying in straight out of high school, and he doubted a piece of paper was going to make them any more prepared. He smiled as he handed off another one. At least this was a community college and not some bang up university. He leaned back for a second or two before Gavin struck up conversation again.

  “So what games do you have?”

  “Well, I don’t really have any games,” Ethan said with a pause. “At least not anything like the ones on your console.”

  “A computer’s not that different,” Gavin said. “What’s so special about it?”

  Darn it. He hoped to save this conversation until Gavin actually showed up. Well, there was no dancing around it at this point, so he shrugged his shoulders and opened his mouth until big dumb words fell out.

  “It’s a stasis sim,” he said.

  “Oh,” Gavin replied, frowning. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t play time pits.”

  “It’s not a time pit,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the textbook definition,” Gavin retorted. “You go in, waste half a day and come out no better for it.”

  “But it’s really fun,” Ethan pleaded. “The graphics are better than real life, and the stasis slows down your body so you don’t really age for what you miss.”

  “I like my time in real life, thank you very much.”

  Ethan shrugged his shoulders and shirked back. There was no winning this argument. Guys like Gavin held fast to their opinions, and that was that. He tried to understand the opposition occasionally, but stasis sims held boundless opportunities for improving the technology, and Ethan planned to be on the forefront of the movement.

  Really, it had nothing to do with losing time, although many used the argument. What people were afraid of was stasis shock, the debilitating ailment that came along with using the product in its many forms. Stasis devices worked by slowing down the body’s systems and the brain, leaving just enough synapses to keep the juices flowing and the heart pumping.

  A person could live for a thousand years in stasis if left unattended, but the problem was coming out of it. A body exposed to that new biological condition for a decent duration tended to relapse … and frequently at that. He heard of it happening to people. The body relapses back into stasis, sometimes for hours. For those individuals who stayed for years, such as in certain medical cases, a lifetime lacked the physical longevity to recover. Medication helped, albeit very little.