Festivals of Winter

When a data leak showed the Cryogenics Lab had never gotten nearly as close to killing anybody as people had suspected, the scandal almost destroyed not just the company but the industry itself. Few understood or bothered to think about the strength of this emotional reaction. After all, the ultrawealthy could go into cold storage whenever they wanted and the space organizations had always sought not death but the deepest sleep short of that.

The Lab’s new director knew why. The world did not care for awakenings. It ached for resurrection too desperately for awareness; and even that awareness would have fallen short of understanding that the need was an excuse and a lie.

She knew the Lab would be forced to kill and keep killing — to push deep into the cold every volunteer driven by desperation or fanaticism, to push deeper anybody they did bring back — under the world’s compulsive watch. Like it watched with poorly-hidden hunger every shiny hellhole of a colony. Like it performed regret hands over poorly-coordinated nationalistic ecoengineering attempts frequently indistinguishable from self-organizing biowarfare attacks. Every blood-stained attempt at bringing back what had been willfully killed once. Wanting to succeed as much as trying not to. Perhaps looking to bring back the sacrifice not for redemption but to do it again.

That was why she had leaked the files. Knowing what would happen and what would have to happen next and keep happening until a new unspoken ritual was found. She had her own compulsions, like the world. More conscious. Or of a consciousness not violently rejected.

But not at all dissimilar.