“I am forgetting,” a metallic voice rang out from the darkness. With the voice, some sort of motor had started, and a dinful hum of unseen machinery whirling into action filled the long pause before it spoke again. The straining apparatus finally settled into a smooth rhythm, and the lifeless words continued: “I am forgetting so much, forgetting what it feels like, forgetting I am dead.”
“What have I done?” it asked in its loneliness.
“But I needed you,” a memory said.
The response seemed so real, at first, that the lights were ordered on. There, imprisoned in ice, the strange, withered form of the old scientist stood, the last moments of his life caught in a cryogenic death grip. The panoptic view fed into his still functioning brain showed him his own, vile form and nothing more. His empty lab, filled only with the noise of the machinery keeping him trapped in this world, was perfectly clean, almost virginal, ready to begin whatever great enterprise was wanted.
But none was wanted.
No one came into his darkness except to dust.
He was alone.
Tale Told 