Coldness of Life

There was no sound to hear, no color to see, no sense to feel, no place to be.
I had nothing; even darkness and silence would have been like an overwhelming sensation. It seemed to have been like this for centuries, but with nothing to feel, there was no way of telling any sort of time, so it could have been just a second.
I was completely free, free of anything there might be. Slowly the feeling had risen that I must be dead and this was some sort of hell.
So for me there was only a beginning, but to every beginning there is an end and it took me completely by surprise.
Suddenly there was light, there was feeling, there were sounds, more that I could possibly cope with. Suddenly there was everything and, having been in nothing for so long, I could not see any shapes or make out any single sounds for a while. For me there was just sound and light.
Slowly the light faded to a light blue and there was only a low humming sound.
I still could not make out which way was up, and in front of me there was only this blue light which you might see through a frozen window in a refrigerator. There was another feeling slowly creeping into my body, it was a piercing coldness.
“So did I wake up as frozen food, after reincarnation?” Thinking this, I checked for arms and legs in shock; to my relief I found a perfectly normal human body at the command of my brain. I tried to move my hand and feel what was in front of me. It touched a smooth surface, which was as cold as the air surrounding me. I moved my other arm towards it very carefully, because I had not felt or moved anything for so long.
I pressed against the smooth surface, but it would not budge.
After pushing with my arms for a while, I tried throwing my whole body against it; turning the smooth surface into sharp shards of glass and I fell on the ground, experiencing an old feeling I hadn’t felt for so long: pain.
Now I at least knew where the ground was.
Around me there was darkness now, with the bluish light behind me. I stood up and looked around, seemed like I had been standing in a kind of capsule, the size of one grown man, with a glass front I had just destroyed. There was a whole row of other capsules next to it and behind it and in front of it. I peered into a few of them and every one had a human being in it, they where caught in the same dream without feelings I had been in.
I then felt the coldness again and saw the reason for it: I had no clothes on.
Suddenly the feeling of shock made its way to my brain: I was naked, freezing to death, standing between rows of frozen humans without end.
I walked through the rows of capsules aimlessly, but desperately searching for something to hold on to, something to warm me, something to tell me where I was.
I went on like this for what felt like hours. The cold got to my brain and everything started to get kind of unfocused. I carried on stumbling along in a fever dream for some time before I passed out.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw blue, cold light.
“Not again!” I thought.
But this time I felt warm for a change and I knew which was up, as the blue light was coming from a single light at the ceiling. There was a blanket covering me, which was hospital white, as everything else around me.
At the far end of the white room a door opened and a female face peered in, which I would have described as beautiful then, only for the reason that I had not seen any female for a time beyond measurement.
“Ah, I see you are awake.” She said, with a somehow weird, but nevertheless beautiful smile “How are you feeling?”
“Um…, in fact, I feel hungry.”
“What…? Oh yes, I forgot. You need, …what do you call it?”
“Food”, I said, feeling very, very empty.
“Ah, yes. Well, I’ll be with you in a moment. Clothes are at the side of your bed.” She said, pointing to them.
I looked at her, wondering, until she had left the room.
Next to my bed, on a small table were white clothes folded a little too perfectly.
I put them on, still wondering, what was going to happen now: “Maybe this was heaven now?”
Just when I was finished she came in and told me to follow her.
“Excuse me, but don’t you have to eat?” I asked her, still puzzled by her, as we walked down a white corridor.
“Oh no, it is rather unnecessary for me”, she said, “It is just a minor design flaw we crossed out.”
“A… design flaw? …you crossed out? What are you? Some kind of machine?”
“Yes, that would be a proper description.” She said calmly
“Where are the other humans then?” I asked her, feeling that something was very wrong.
“Frozen, of course, like you were.” She said, “but do not think of these things any more, your food is ready.”
We had reached a white room with a white table in it. On the Table was food, real food! I had expected white plastic stuff by now. I had a weird feeling about all this, but my hunger was stronger, so I dug into the food. Although I could have eaten for hours, I did not finish half of the food laid before me. I felt like someone had hit me on my head, very hard.
I just fell over.
The last things I heard were two voices, far away. One of them said: “I do not understand these pathetic creatures, why do they always come back to life?”
The other, familiar female voice, said: “I don’t know, but there was something in his eyes I had not seen before.”
Then I passed out, and everything was nothing, again.

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