SF Trope: Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi) – "Stories centered on climate collapse, resource wars, adaptation to extreme environments, and societal breakdown due to environmental disaster.” PLUS Reality Blurring – “Deep dives into advanced VR, simulation theory, and the philosophical questions of what's real versus simulated (e.g., The Matrix but with more nuance).”
Current Event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upload_(TV_series)
Zhi Zonghan Li found himself laying on his back, shivering.
For several moments, all he could do was blink, unable to move his arms or legs. He tried, but he couldn’t even move a finger. Abruptly, he felt extremely tired. He tried to stay awake, but even though he felt more than one of his fingers move, he fell asleep.
Zhi Zonghan Li found himself laying on his back, sweating. It pooled in his navel. It dripped maddeningly down his sides. The droplets slid into his eyes, and even though he blinked repeatedly, some of the stinging sweat stung enough for him to squinch his eyes tightly. He tried to talk, but all he managed was a wheezing rasp. He fell asleep again.
Zhi Zonghan Li found himself laying on his back, breathing slowly, calmly, and no longer naked. He didn’t remember noticing that his first two times waking up. He moved his hands. The fingers worked fine. He curled his toes and found they also worked just fine.
Then he tried to sit up and found he was strapped firmly to a table – a surgery table, he was fairly certain, based on the straps around his wrists, across his chest, at his waist, and thighs. He was also naked. He didn’t remember being naked before, though he was fairly certain he’d been dressed in something before.
A face suddenly appeared above him and said something in English. He knew he didn’t know much English, though he’d worked somewhere in the Solar System where he’d spoken English as a matter of convenience. He tried to respond, but the hand of the body attached to the face smiled while placing the hand gently over his mouth. They spoke, the voice oddly asexual, “Don’t move. You’ve been in suspended animate for the past few months. Don’t try and talk either, give your vocal chords a chance to warm up. You could damage them if you tried to use your voice like to talk…or scream. Look up then down to tell me you agree, Zhi Zonghan Li.”
He wanted to tell the face that they could call him Zhi. All of the English-speakers he’d worked with used the abrupt truncation of his name as a matter of convenience. He went along with it because they usually mushed his name-sounds into a Western rush to speak. The face said, “You’ve been sleeping for several months. You were put under because your skills in climate designing were deemed too important to allow them to die with your body.” He must have widened his eyes because the voice said, “Don’t worry. The climate disaster was averted while you and most of the rest of the wealthy world slept.” The face – he realized what he’d recognized as a female face – was actually that of a very young man.
Zhi Zonghan Li found his voice, albeit a bare whisper, “Solved it?”
The face grimaced, looked around then leaned closer and whispered, “Not exactly…”
Name: ♂ China
Image: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/C2nVRtyWKDsGheTkefwup8-970-80.jpg.webp
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