Deep Sleep

Denma doesn’t want to remember her last Conflict. Maybe she should try to remember it.

Deep Sleep


A Short Story

Written By

SpaceFaction

Suddenly, Denma sits up in her Healthcare Sleeper on the Healthcare Orbital, floating just above the planet Kegon with a shocked look on her face and her eyes almost popping out of her head. Her head starts moving from side to side as though she’s trying to avoid something hitting her.

Just as suddenly as she wakes up from her Deep Sleep, Denma’s head snaps back as though something has hit her in her forehead. She falls back down onto her Sleeper. Denma closes her eyes again in front of three Healthcare Orbital Professional Assistants and their fifteen Professional Assistants-To-Be standing around her.

“Has Denma returned to her Deep Sleep again?” One of the Assistants-To-Be asks.

“I don’t think so,” answers one of the Professional Assistants, Ockivia. “She has been doing this a lot lately. I think she’s about to come out of her Deep Sleep once and for all.”

Another Assistant-To-Be, who is also looking at Denma like everyone else there, with Ockivia. “I know Denma isn’t the first Conflict Victim to go into a Deep Sleep, but the other Conflict Victims haven’t been in a Deep Sleep for almost thirty years.”

#

The fifteen Assistants-To-Be are still in the same Sleeper Chamber Denma is in, but they are staying away from Denma while the three Assistants are checking out the now awake Denma. Another Assistant turns and looks at the fifteen Assistants-To-Be. “Come closer. You can’t learn to be an Assistant from back there.”

“I know this is your first day as Assistants-To-Be, but you can’t learn unless you watch what we are doing.” The other Assistant returns to checking out Denma with Ockivia, and the third Assistant, as the Assistants-To-Be start to surround Denma’s Sleeper.

“Why am I here? What happened to me?” Denma looks at three Assistants individually while she keeps asking them these questions.

Suddenly, the three Assistants stop looking at Denma. They look at each other and nod their heads yes once. It’s Ockivia who looks down at Denma. “That’s what we were hoping you could tell us. We have checked you out, and we don’t know why you have been in a Deep Sleep for so long.”

“How long have I been in a Deep Sleep?” Denma asks.

Ockivia looks at the other two Assistants before she answers Denma. “It has been almost thirty years.”

#

“I can’t believe I have been here for that long.” Denma is still in her Sleeper Chamber, but she is now in a seated position. “I know you don’t know why I have been here for so long, but what can you tell me?”

“If you asked us that around twenty-eight years ago, we couldn’t have answered that question, but because you have been in your Deep Sleep for so long, we have learned a lot about you, including why you are here.” Ockivia and the other Assistants are also standing around Denma.

Denma looks at the other two Assistants, who are also there with Ockivia. “What happened to me? Why am I here?”

“You are here because you were in one of the biggest Conflicts on Kegon,” answers Ockivia. “We weren’t Assistants when you were brought here, but from what we have heard or have found out, you were hurt very badly.”

“The Assistants and the Assistants-To-Be back then didn’t think they could help you,” continues Ockivia. “None of them thought you would be living for too much longer.”

Denma keeps looking at Ockivia. “Did they put me into a Deep Sleep to save my life?”

#

Ockivia enters the Sleeper Chamber, where Denma is. “You asked us several hours ago if the Assistants and the Assistants-To-Be back then put you into a Deep Sleep. We didn’t know the answer to that question until now.”

“They didn’t put you into a Deep Sleep,” continues Ockivia. “It was you who did that.”

“I put myself into a Deep Sleep,” says Denma with a shocked look on her face. “Why did I do that?”

Ockivia looks at her other two Assistants. “We don’t know why you did that, but from what we have found out, we think it was because of what happened to you in your last Conflict. Whatever happened to you, you started to get worse until it was your absolute lowest point in your life. That’s when you went into your Deep Sleep.”

“Only you can answer what happened to you in your last Conflict,” continues Ockivia. “We think we can help you to remember it, but it has only been done a few times before, and none of them survived doing it. If you are lucky, it may put you back into a Deep Sleep you may never come out of.”

#

A small Land Mass, with fire blazing, trees covering most of it, is in the middle of a large Water Mass for as far as anyone can see. On the surface of this Land Mass, a Conflict is happening between two sides. This Conflict is happening among these blazing trees.

The two sides of this Conflict are the same, except for their clothing. Denma is on the side with a red top and a blue bottom. She and about twenty other Kegons are fighting against Kegons with blue tops and red bottoms. The side that Denma is on is losing this Conflict. One after another, her Kegons are dying.

Denma is using two of these blazing trees to cover her fight against the other side in this Conflict. These trees are almost on top of her crouched position. Suddenly, a Kegon on her side is killed, but he doesn’t die from the killing. He dies screaming from the flames surrounding him.

“NO, NOT ANOTHER ONE. I think I’m the last one left to die in this Conflict.” Denma drops to the surface of this Land Mass and rolls away from getting killed, and the flames before one or both kill her.

###

Denma is rushed into the Human Repair Room on an unseen flat platform. She’s awake and twitching wildly from head to toe as the Assistants start checking her badly burned body and blood coming out of a large hole. The Assistants-To-Be are helping the Assistants as best as they can.

The three Assistants and the fifteen Assistants-To-Be try to help Denma. It doesn’t take them long to stop her from twitching wildly. Next, they stop Denma from bleeding out. After stopping the bleeding, they start looking at her burned body. It doesn’t take them too long to get her burned body almost back to normal. At least normal for her.

Overall, it takes these Assistants and Assistants-To-Be about two hours to help Denma get healthy again, but they like what they have seen so far after checking her out. “I think that she will be okay,” says one of the Assistants.

Denma opens her eyes and looks at the Assistants and Assistants-To-Be staring at her. “I have been listening to everything you have been saying to each other, and I know what happened to me, but I don’t know what happened to the rest of my group.”

#

“You are the only one who came out of that Conflict alive,” says one of the other Assistants. Only the three Assistants are with Denma right now.

“I’m not just talking about your side in that Conflict. I am talking about everyone on both sides of that Conflict,” continues that Assistants. “You are the only one who is alive after that Conflict.”

Denma looks at what is left of her burned body. “Do you call this being alive. I don’t.”

“It’s not that bad,” says the third Assistant. “We still have a lot more healing to do before you are yourself again, especially your burned body.”

Over the next three months, the Assistants and the Assistants-To-Be healed Denma. At least they heal her body, but her mind is a different matter. Slowly, she starts to get worse until she is at her absolute lowest point about two months later. Now she doesn’t do anything except stare at her Assistants and her Assistants-To-Be.

Suddenly, Denma closes her eyes. She is now in a Deep Sleep. The Assistants and the Assistants-To-Be don’t know why this has happened. “What happened?” All three Assistants ask in their own way.

#

“I think I know why Denma went into her Deep Sleep,” says Ockivia to the other two Assistants and the fifteen Assistants-To-Be in the hallway outside of Denma’s Sleeper Chamber. They all keep glancing at Denma while they are talking to each other about her.

“It’s because she is the only one who lived through her last Conflict,” continues Ockivia. “Everyone else on both sides didn’t live through it. I think she went into her Deep Sleep because she feels guilty about being the only one who lived through that last Conflict.”

Everyone except for Ockivia is now looking at Denma. Ockivia has her back to Denma. “I still don’t know why she has been in a Deep Sleep for almost thirty years, but I do know why she did it.”

“Now, the big question is, what do we tell Denma?” Ockivia starts looking at her other two Assistants and the Assistants-To-Be individually. “Do you think it will help her or hurt her if we tell her why she has done it?”

“I think we should tell her,” says one of the other two Assistants. “Denma should know why she has gone into her Deep Sleep.”

#

Only the three Assistants enter the Sleeper Chamber where Denma is. The fifteen Assistants-To-Be are looking at the Assistants and Denma as the Assistants talk to Denma. “We think we know why you went into a Deep Sleep almost thirty years ago,” says Ockivia.

“We think it’s because you are the only one who lived through the last Conflict you were in,” continues Ockivia. “You feel guilty about living while everyone else on both sides didn’t.”

“You blame yourself for being the only one who survived that last Conflict.” Ockivia continues to walk around the Sleeper. Denma is on. Denma is watching her everywhere she goes. The other two Assistants there are also watching her. “That’s why you went into Deep Sleep originally.”

Denma sits up in her Sleeper. “That may explain why I went into a Deep Sleep, but it doesn’t explain why I have been in it for almost thirty years.”

“We still don’t know why you have been in your Deep Sleep for so long, but we think that maybe you will be able to remember why. You need to tell us what happened to you after you survived the last Conflict,” says Ockivia.

#

After rolling away from the flames slightly above her before the flames kill her, Denma is hit by six small red balls. Any one of them can kill her. Two balls hit her on both sides of her head, on the top of her shoulder. One more barely enters her back, just to the right of her head, and one enters her front just below her chin.

Denma should be dead, but she isn’t. Instead, she stops rolling in the middle of a group of trees. The other side continues to try to kill her. Since she is out in the open, she should be easy to kill. She is nearly hit several times, but none of these balls hit her.

Instead of dying yet, Denma starts fighting back. After rolling in between two large trees with flames barely above the height of her head, Denma crouches between these trees and starts trying to kill the Kegons on the other side of this Conflict.

As the flames get closer, Denma starts using her two hand weapons wildly. Denma starts killing the other Kegons. Besides, the constant pain she is feeling from the balls hitting her, she kills all of the other Kegons before the flames kill her.

Word Count = 1,977