by J Noland

Slowly Karl stepped into the strange viscous fluid, fully aware that in less than an hour he would be at least fifteen years -- at the most who knows(!) -- into the future. But right now he was interested in finding a way to bypass the next eight minutes or so.

It was tepid, which made him nervous and slightly sick to his stomach. This strange, remarkable fluid that had been invented to kill but had been transformed via the miracle of Accident into a life-sustaining near cure-all was going to be used in a cryogenics experiment which would, barring nuclear holocaust, take fifteen years to complete. The equipment was designed to be very durable and it was well hidden, who knew what would happen if the looming threat of war became reality while he was in there.

'I suppose that it has to be this temperature to prevent shock or something,' thought the nervous and slightly ill. 'Only a mild comfort considering the shock that will undoubtedly take place here in no time.'

He looked his last look around this one room, his final clear sight in this timeframe and for some odd reason happened to notice that it was 5:26 before inhaling deeply -- how stupid, but how instinctive -- and submerging himself beneath the translucent-ish, vivifying gluck. He knew it would be harder on him this way, but all of his training couldn't make him back out on his natural intuitions.

An ominous malaise overtook his conscious mind and there was the dull thud he had anticipated. Now there was only to wait a little while; he felt himself touch bottom and remembered to move in such a way that he would not do such again. He opened his eyes, necessarily working against the untrue knowledge that gluck would sting, just as all gluck and gluck-like substances had done before.

Swimming before him were the queer coagulations of this marvelous gel, and beyond there, somewhere, was the room he had left. He knew fully that it existed because he could see a partial darkness directed through the liquid, which was obviously the technician in front of the glass cage he had entered -- aptly nicknamed "the jar".

Suddenly it was upon him. He scrambled up and into the rubber mesh fastened a full foot-and-a-half from the top of the jar so that he could not push open the top, which he -- of course -- was now making a mad attempt to do. He knew that if he let go of the precious air in his lungs it would float up through the mesh and become unretrievable, although he knew that it wouldn't do him any good to keep this useless precious air in his lungs any longer either. BUT, and this was important, he knew against knowledge that he wouldn't asphyxiate when he inhaled the supernatural gluck.

'It is inevitable,' he abandoned himself to the great Accident. Inhaling did burn, burned his lungs all the way down to his kneecaps and he went rigid for a moment or two, only the horrible negative reinforcement of "do NOT touch the bottom of the jar" saving him from that bane. They said he would not be able to tell when the fluid froze, but he was suddenly cold. Cold, and, he noticed, breathing the fluid; on fire inside. His brain caught the fever, though this was more like a sharp tingling he had never known running through him like electricity and leaving its mark as an acid or a pure base. It seemed he could feel every synapse, his senses became acute; it felt strangely good. He felt amazingly well. And there was a thud.

That technician outside had his hand full on the glass -- a definite no-no. He could see through the haze and make a clear outline there. The tech leaned heavily and the shadow swayed and ducked. Another thud, a fixed frame of light so impossibly bright as to sear the tech's full outline starkly and plainly in Karl's mind. Seared and frozen in that moment, for a minimum of 15 years, barring nuclear holocaust. There had been some doubt concerning the safety of this mission.