Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3) by John Gold (novel24 TXT) 📕

“I see you’re having fun in here. It’s been a long time since I heard that much cursing.”

It’s only then that I realize the helmet of his suit is open.

“I’m sorry, I have a problem with my head. But if you don’t mind, in the future, let me know ahead of time when something like this is going to happen.”

He moves me to the capsule, and we fly out into open space through a hole in the ship’s hull. To my surprise, my frozen body is flying next to me. Femida apparently had the foresight to imitate my death using a clone.

We’re picked up by an unmarked cargo ship, and the capsule is set to hibernation mode once we’re on board. I don’t know how much time passes or how many more tricks Femida pulled.

I wake up, already changed, in a cabin. Judging by the way I feel, somebody treated me for a little while, and a happy smile spreads across my face.

It’s a one-person cabin, basic medical service is provided, and, judging by the smell, so is food. On a small table, there’s a tray with some grub and a thermos full of hot tea.

The food and clothes are as simple as could be, but I love every second. Bread and soup made with natural ingredients, a piece of some strange, sweet fruit, and tea. I feel strength flooding my body with each spoonful.

I’m barely done, the spoon back on the tray, when the cabin door enters. A girl wearing a technician’s outfit is standing in front of me, her facial features vaguely familiar. I realize who she is before she takes two steps.

“You actually aren’t a fat idiot.”

“Ooph, I would kill you if you weren’t twice dead already.”

Her natural, dark chestnut hair flowing down to her shoulder blades looks blood-red in the artificial light. Her chest is modest, her figure is slender, and her face is pleasant. From her manner of moving and speaking to her habits and tics, she’s identical to her character.

Femida demonstratively crosses her arms over her chest and rolls her eyes. If I didn’t know her so well, I wouldn’t realize that it’s all calculated. My heart quivers, blood floods to my cheeks, butterflies flutter around my stomach, and my pants start to feel tight.

“Fem, you should go.”

“Really that unhappy to see me? We just met, and you’re already kicking me out. Men!”

“My hormones are all messed up. A little more, and I’ll throw myself at you so we can roll around in the bed. Believe me, you’re better off leaving.”

“What if I don’t mind?” She isn’t faking it, but I know her too well.

“In that case, my heart wouldn’t be strong enough to handle the stress. Plus, that would irretrievably ruin our relationship. I just see you as a person now, not as a woman, and I like it that way. I don’t know how to build relationships. Anyway, let’s talk later. I’m having a hard time thinking with the smell of your body this close.”

She leaves without saying something, and I realize that I don’t regret it. I really would have died of a heart attack. I don’t really get what she wasn’t going for, either. What was that all about?

The ship docks, shaking me slightly. A guy wearing an engineer’s suit helps me to the exit from my cabin, and I realize what Femida was talking about as soon as my feet touch real, soft soil.

“Wait, we’re…on Earth?”

“Yes, sir.”

The blue sky, the clouds, the smell of sea air and grass. Wind! Real wind! There’s ground under my feet, not cold metal like at the stations or stone like in Arpa.

Femida was able to get me into the Azure August resort, one of thirteen Lunar runs here. Earth is now a nature reserve nobody over twenty is allowed to. That was Lunar’s method for making sure that the progress the planet’s nature was making wasn’t arrested, as it’s been resting from the influence of people for a hundred and thirty years. It was Armadillo Industries’ job to look over humanity’s cradle at first, with the privilege then inherited by Lunar. They were the ones who built the autonomous complexes used to cleanse the environment of all traces mankind had left there. Without taking money from the UN or sharing their technology, they just got to work restoring Earth’s biosphere. And here I am.

The male nurse who greets me sits me down in an airseat and takes me to a one-person room with a normal bed.

As soon as the door closes behind him, I fall asleep with tears in my eyes. I can’t believe I’m here. Earth! The birthplace of humankind! Practically everyone lives and dies in space, never having seen Earth. But I’m here in one of the resorts, in a separate room with a soft bed and a natural blanket.

A smile on my face, I relax into the tender arms of Morphius. LJ appears in the corner of my consciousness to guard me as I sleep.

It’s a weird feeling, sleeping and not sleeping at the same time. You lose your sense of where you are on the continuum from one to the other. Again, the girl leading me through the flowering meadows appears in my dreams—her white dress, the soft skin of her hands, the pollen that falls on my white pants. My heart hurts, my soul aches, and she’s gone. LJ tells me that someone’s coming.

I wake up with a yell to stare up at the white ceiling with complete emptiness in my head. My heart pounds, tears pour from my eyes, and the feeling in my soul is so rotten that I want to go to sleep forever. I want to sleep so badly. Falling into the half-dream, half-normal sleep world