Hibernation
The Technology that Transformed Humanity
You can’t blame people for not seeing the magnitude of this breakthrough. After all, the Hibernator, which filled the auditorium with it’s vast tanks of liquid helium, the labyrinth of tubes filled with cryoprotectants snaked across the floor, and walls lined with advanced monitoring and power supply systems, was seen only as a scientific experiment. This $120 billion project, a three-year relentless collaboration between government and the private sector, was the birth of the technology that one day would redefine the boundaries of human existence.
Julia Frost, after having been diagnosed with Alzheimers at the age of 66, became starkly aware of her mortality and inevitable decline. Her illustrious career as a scientist and entrepreneur had not only amassed considerable wealth through groundbreaking advancements in nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems but had also equipped her with a unique blend of skills and knowledge. This foundation became the bedrock for her most ambitious project yet: Project Morpheus.
In 2025 Julia helped launch Project Morpheus, an endeavor aimed at building the first viable human Hibernation machine. Driven by desperation she poured every ounce of her time, intelligence, and substantial financial resources into the actualization of this technology. After years of hard work, collaboration, and anticipation, on March 21st, 2028 Julia’s hopes crystalized into reality. She became the first person to ever successfully enter Hibernation.
Spanning two hours, the test provided ample time for her body to transition in and out of the Hibernation state and for the machine to prepare for the rewarming. The test went flawlessly, with Julia emerging from the suspended animation with only minor disorientation. The few spectators anxiously observing the spectacle — curious scientists, engineers, and most intensely, the chronically ill — erupted into an exuberant fervor seeing the success of the Hibernator.
However, the initial burst of enthusiasm quickly dissipated. Coverage of this monumental achievement was sparse, receiving no more attention from a handful of newspapers and reporters than the announcement of a new pharmaceutical. In fact, the invention's reception among the small segment of the public it reached was mainly one of distaste. Many perceived the Hibernator as a luxurious escape hatch for the affluent. The disruptive nature of the Hibernator went by unnoticed.
Julia entered Hibernation.
Robert couldn’t sleep. He laid in his bed staring at his ceiling, the advertisement he saw earlier that day plaguing his mind. For a while the Hibernator has only been used by the terminally ill — occasionally the upper echelons of society as well — but now there’s been a change.
Over the years the Hibernator device saw many iterations. As the technology matured it became smaller, cheaper, safer, and more accessible. Until this point Hibernation was still seen as a desperate escape. A technology for the sick and old. The advertisement now changed that perception. The Hibernator is a portal to the future.
Robert’s life was pretty ordinary for a recent college graduate. He worked his entry-level job in software development, had some good friends, and recently took up a new hobby of dance. Although nothing was particularly bad — in fact, many would consider his circumstances to be well above average — Robert felt a deep longing for a better life. Everyone knew that progress is inevitable, so why shouldn’t he teleport himself to that future?
For the next couple of weeks these thoughts haunted him, pushing him into lonely solitude. He began shying away from his friends, ignoring his family’s calls, and having a more irritable disposition. His capacity for happiness with his existence seemed to fade with the knowledge of a vastly improved future within his grasp. Without telling anyone he went to the local Hibernation clinic.
Robert stepped into the local Hibernation clinic, a palpable tension filling the room mirroring his own feelings of anxiety. When the technician called his name his anxiety swelled up inside of him. He began whispering his mantra to himself, morphing his anxiety into excitement. But he couldn’t tell if this excitement was a delusional mirage he constructed or whether it was his true feelings. As he stepped into the Hibernator he gazed one final time at the world he was leaving behind with a mixture of intimate connection and profound distance. “To a better tomorrow,” Robert whispered to himself, as the machine began to hum and his body surrendered to the Hibernator’s cold embrace.
Dr. Adrien Maxwell had a problem. As the new head of the Temporal Sciences and Hibernation Agency (TSHA) he was responsible for guiding technological progress and drafting policy to regulate the use of Hibernation and other technologies relating to temporal control. And frankly, the path society was currently on was shit.
Hibernation technology was progressing promisingly until it became a trend among the healthy, fundamentally altering societal dynamics. Some three decades after the initial wave, the Awakened found themselves in a world that was radically different from the one they left behind. Society had evolved, leaving them to navigate a maze of cultural dissonance and technological obsolescence. The jobs they knew had vanished, replaced by automation and new industries that demanded skills they lacked. Economically displaced and socially isolated, they struggled to find their place in this foreign world. Personal relationships were strained or lost, as loved ones had aged or passed away, amplifying feelings of isolation and alienation. Despite societal advances that, by all measurable standards, indicated progress, these Awakened individuals faced an existential crisis, questioning whether the future they had longed for was truly worth the personal cost.
Beyond the struggles of the Awakened, the modern populace felt abandoned and betrayed. The leaders once driving scientific and technological progress began resenting the Hibernators, as their efforts paved a way to a better future they would not themselves benefit from, while the Hibernators bypassed the present struggles in anticipation of reaping those future rewards. As they watched the Hibernators rest in pleasant stasis, untouched by the passage of time, the feelings of inequality rose to extreme heights, pushing many of the elite to join the Hibernators. Riots destroying scientific and technological facilities became attacks aimed at annihilating the grand future that the Hibernators longed for, leaving resentful destruction in it’s wake. In this climate of disillusionment and anger, the call to action was clear: the benefits of progress must be equitable, or else the very foundations of progress itself would be challenged.
Tasked with the daunting challenge of aligning Hibernation technology towards future progress amidst the societal rifts, Dr. Maxwell recognized a radical shift was necessary. Blanket bans and band-aid patch solutions do not quash problems at this scale, they only delay and exacerbate the issues. On a walk aimed at identifying the root cause of the struggles, Dr. Maxwell came upon an important insight: the rampant use of Hibernation technology, once celebrated as a technology to delay mortality, has inadvertently exacerbated those fears rather than quelling them. The stagnation in longevity technology advancements, a consequence from the shifted attention and resources towards Hibernation technology, was to him not a minor setback but a fundamental oversight in addressing the core of humanity’s fear: the fear of aging, functional decline, disease, and ultimately, unwelcome death. Hibernation technology itself was being used as a band-aid.
Equipped with this realization, Dr. Maxwell set out to bridge the widening gap between the glorious future and current societal upheaval. He envisioned a grand project, one that would redefine how people view the Hibernator and other temporal technologies. His proposal, the Genesis Project, aimed to channel resources into a concentrated effort to break new ground in longevity and health technology, addressing the underfunding and talent shortage that had plagued the field. The actualization of such technology would create a tangible future that can be universally shared.
Not everyone was enthusiastic by this audacious gambit that Dr. Maxwell proposed. Critics, lead by the Awakened who felt society owed them immediate reward and blind to the advancements in technology, rightly pointed out that by reallocating too many resources to Project Genesis it can exacerbate the present issues in ungrounded hopes for possibly unachievable results. Others highlighted the all-in nature of such a proposal, fearing too much was being risked. Public debate raged over the proposal, weighing the merits of other immediate relief programs with the more drastic long-term potential solution. Dr. Maxwell, persuasively guiding the discourse of these debates, gathered a large following over the ensuing months, possibly out of well-grounded reasoning, but most likely out of sincere desperation and desire for extreme change.
The decision to proceed with Project Genesis came to a pivotal vote. Although public opinion seemed to be leaning towards pursuing the proposal, no one knew what the outcome of the vote would be. They waited in apprehensive anticipation while the votes were tallied. Dr. Maxwell soon emerged with the decision in hand; the vote was 76 to 24 in favor, approved in overwhelming fashion. Project Genesis would begin immediately.
Nova was Awakened for her scheduled status report update with Mission Control, a critical protocol designed to ensure both the crew's safety and the mission's ongoing success. She has been Hibernating for the past 100 years of Earth time, and every century each member of the technical crew would be Awakened for a status report, both on technical diagnostics and on personal wellbeing. This was the Nova’s second such report.
The Celestial Voyager Mission, humanity's audacious attempt to venture beyond our solar system, aimed to explore far-away stars and potentially habitable exoplanets. As one of the mission's System Diagnostic Engineers, Nova played a crucial role in monitoring the spacecraft's vital systems, specializing in structural integrity, ensuring the vessel remained inhabitable for the extended journey.
As she was assessing the damage to the vessel from the space debris, Nova found herself marveling at the surreal feeling of venturing a century into the future in the blink of an eye. She remembered learning about the Genesis Project, it’s remarkable, although delayed and costly, success in bringing humanity to a post-aging future. She also thought about the tragedy of the ensuing holy war, launched by a collection of many of the world’s dominant religions, fervently opposed to playing God and cheating death. The bloody war was fought for decades, until the religious fell to the technological advantage of the opposing side, and they went off to live in more remote, isolated parts of Earth. The compromise reached was that they can repopulate Earth once everyone else inevitably retreated to distant planets across the galaxy.
After the war Nova was happy to see that Hibernation technology was no longer contentious. Rather, it’s uses in surgery, recovery, preservation, and chronic disease management revolutionized medicine, the military and catastrophe preparedness’ teams made humanity far more resilient, and most importantly to Nova, it made possible the mission she was currently partaking. Hibernation allowed for humanity to venture to the stars.
As she went about her tasks, these were the thoughts swirling through Nova’s mind. After careful diagnostics reporting and damage assessment, Nova completed her technical status report and sent back her findings to Mission Control. Now it was time for her wellbeing report.
Her physical assessment, with her feeling at full strength and energy, demonstrated the exceptional advancements made to Hibernation technology. Upon being asked about feelings of isolation Nova pointed out that although she feels as though she only blinked her eyes, the extraordinary distance between her and Earth did make her feel a bit of unease at the reality of her disconnect from humanity in the solar system and her nonexistent return. She envisioned her and the crew as a new civilization, evolving from the one they came from, paving the way for a new era for humanity. In this moment she came to see that she no longer felt responsible to the humanity that sent her and the crew, her connection with them was starting to fade, as her allegiance stood with the crew. She omitted that thought from the report, instead reporting back that she felt wholly connected and responsible to humanity dwelling in the solar system.
As Nova settled back into the embrace of her Hibernation pod, her mind continued to wander to the vast expanse of human endeavor surrounding the technology nestling her. From its humble beginnings as a beacon of hope for the terminally ill, through the tumultuous waves of societal upheaval, to its pivotal role in unlocking the cosmos, Hibernation technology has evolved in an unforeseeable path. Starting as a method of postponing death to redefining life itself, to it’s role in human progress, an idea that Hibernation technology both challenged and championed, Nova couldn’t help but marvel at the evolution of the technology.
With her allegiance intertwined with her crew and the unknown that lie ahead, she saw them all as pioneers of a new chapter in human history. They were both a continuation yet also divergent from the humanity they left behind. As Nova closed her eyes, ready to bridge another century in an instant, she found peace knowing that she and the crew were pioneers on the unending human voyage of discovery.
The Hibernator whirred back to life as Nova fell asleep, ready to once again journey through space and time.