Stasis

Eric shot up in bed, a burning pain searing across his forehead. He took a few deep breaths, waiting for the pain to pass. It increased in intensity for a while longer before fading away. Eric had been having these pains for the past month, and had found the best remedy to be calming himself and waiting for it to pass.

Looking over at his wife, he found her to be fast asleep, oblivious to what had happened to him. He hadn't told her about these pains yet, for fear of worrying her. She would always fret over the smallest of things, but he loved her nevertheless.

He laid back down, pulling the blankets up over his shoulders until only his head stuck out. He welcomed the warmth the sheets brought to him. He had felt vulnerable and detached from the world since the beginning of his periodic bursts of pain, and the blankets reassured him.

Finding comfort in his bed, he soon forgot about his most recent episode and drifted back off to sleep.

_-_-_

Eric's life was slow and repetitive, but it was also calm and uneventful. He'd never truly experienced anything he could consider a hardship, and he was almost forty. He had a family which included himself, his wife, and his three children. All of whom adored him. In a way, you could say Eric's life was perfect.

“Good morning, Dear,” his wife, Helen greeted him as he walked into the kitchen. His children, ages eight, twelve, and sixteen followed their mother's example enthusiastically.

Eric groggily half-waved at them before sitting down at the table. His breakfast had already been prepared for him, and he was eager to get at it. He was useless to anybody before he'd eaten, anyway.

Helen opened the curtains as the children roused themselves to full alertness, their conversations getting more boisterous with every second. Eric retreated from the commotion of the kitchen into his mind, a place he often fell into when he didn't quite want to experience reality. Pulling himself back into his thoughts always seemed to solve any problems, not that there were many in his life.

His thoughts traveled to the day's plans. He worked for a prominent electronics manufacturer as their executive marketing director. A position he'd earned through hard work after years at the bottom of the corporate ladder. He'd never worked for anybody else, scoring a factory job at sixteen, he rose through the ranks to where he was today.

Customers had stopped buying recently, and he racked his exhaustion-dazed mind for a solution. Marketing was always the first to get blamed when the product failed to deliver.

He stopped short as a familiar tingling on his forehead grabbed his attention. Eric held his breath, waiting, but the pain never came. He held back a sigh of relief, and continued on with his breakfast.

_-_-_

Eric grabbed a quick kiss from his wife as he left the front door of his house and got into his car. He drove an old car he'd kept from his youth: an old, blue, Pontiac GTO. The car was his pride and joy, restored by his own hands after it began to fall apart three years ago. Another perfect piece to the puzzle of his life.

Traffic was slow that morning. Usually around the time Eric had reached the freeway, the whole road was at a crawl. This morning, however, there were only three other cars around him that he could see. It seemed strange to him, but he'd learned not to complain about things like that, and to just take advantage of them while you can.

It wasn't until five miles later that Eric realized he hadn't seen another car aside from the three driving around him. More curiously, each of those cars were the same Make, Model, and Year as each other. Eric stared at the three cars, trying to see if he could identify the drivers. An attack from his forehead tore his attention away from them.

Voices poured into his head, speaking about some sort of danger. A power surge was the most dominantly shouted threat that he heard. Eric gasped as the pain left him. He looked out the window to his left, and did a double take. The door of the car next to him had disappeared momentarily before returning.

He shook his head, certain his mind was playing tricks on him. The road began to fill up with more vehicles, this time more diverse. With that, Eric continued driving, pushing the thought out of his mind.

_-_-_

His meeting with the CEO and the rest of the Marketing Department went relatively well, one of his subordinates thinking of a clever solution with some assistance from the others. The CEO even applauded their teamwork, which he was always ranting on about.

He discussed the plans for the day with his secretary as they descended the elevator, confirming a few more things he needed to accomplish that day. A product concept had been finalized, and he was set to begin looking for a studio to make a commercial.

As he watched his secretary's mouth, he stared on in horror as her face was grossly distorted. His vision flashed black, with several blue lights, and returned to normal. What he returned to disturbed him even more. The East wall of the elevator, and his secretary's face, were flat, static images.

In shock, he pushed himself against the safe wall of the elevator and watched helplessly as the world around him faded into static. He could no longer hear the woman's speech, she had been continuing, oblivious of what he'd seen.

The voices from his car ride returned. “Dammit! Sedative, now!” yelled a panicked, yet authoritative voice.

“He's already conscious!” came a fearful reply a few moments later.

Eric opened his eyes to find himself floating nude in a large glass tank. The man who's voice he'd heard earlier slammed his hands down on the desk just outside of his glass prison.

“I told myself I'd never let this happen again,” the broken man said between sobs. The woman next to him grabbed him to comfort him.

“Professor,” she said. “You're probably scaring the man. He has no idea what's going on.”

Steeling himself, the Professor rose from his chair, and with a few button presses, the water in Eric's tank drained. The shocked Eric fell to the floor, his muscles aching as if they'd been commanded for the first time. Another man rushed into the tank and injected him with an off-white chemical before handing him a set of clothes, which he quickly donned.

For the first time in his life, Eric felt scared. He realized at that moment that he'd never experienced fear before. That concept scared him even more. What had happened to him? Where was he? Who are these people?

The man who'd given Eric the clothes beckoned for him to follow. Seeing no other option, Eric obliged, and was led to a small, comfortable room, before being sat down in a big, comfortable chair. Feeling comfortable in the room, Eric gathered the courage to ask, “Where am I?”

The man sighed. “It's not my place to tell you that. Someone will be with you in just a moment.”

Eric could only wonder what was happening as the man left him in the room. Something about this whole facility felt close to him. Like no feeling he'd ever experienced, he felt alive. That feeling was soon put into check as the Professor from earlier and a tall, pleasant looking man with a genuine smile entered the room.

“Hello, Eric,” said the smiling man. “My name is Doctor Ramirez. Are you feeling alright?”

“Sort of,” he replied. “This place feels comfortable, but I'd really like to know what's going on. Do you know where my wife is?”

The Professor choked back a sob and covered his face with his hands.

“Eric?” asked Doctor Ramirez.

“Yes?”

“I have some news for you that is going to be hard to take, but I need you to trust that what I say is true, okay?”

“Okay.”

Ramirez sat down opposite Eric, and with the kindest, most sincere smile he'd ever seen, he began to speak.

“Eric, your life up until this point has been a fabrication.” The man let those heavy words sink seep into Eric's head before continuing. “Several hundred years ago, a humanitarian organization founded this, and several other facilities where the majority of humans are introduced into a fabricated world created by devices such as the one you were floating in moments ago. This was to save Man from the suffering of living in the horrible, imperfect world we live in. Only a few remain outside of permanent stasis.”

“That can't be,” Eric said, experiencing anger for the first time in his life at the man's statement. “You're lying! I demand to speak with my wife.!”

“She doesn't exist, Eric” Ramirez said coldly. “She never existed.”

The two men ascended and beckoned for Eric to follow. He reluctantly followed, and was led to a closed window.

“You weren't supposed to wake up, Eric,” the Professor said. “I'm sorry. For the pain you've been experiencing as of late, and for not being able to fix it before you regained consciousness.”

Doctor Ramirez opened the window, and raised the steel shutters behind it, revealing a barren wasteland that none could ever consider hospitable. That was Eric's new world.

For the first time in Eric's perfect life, he felt sadness.