Awakening

Eve woke silently from the stasis containment chamber. The machines disconnected from her with a hiss. She looked through the thick glass top at the silent red LED screen and briefly glanced over the numbers that told her about every bodily function she could imagine. She ran her hand over her shaved head and then over her hairless, naked body. She put her hands back at her sides so the cuffs could take them. The VR helmet slipped over her head.

"Good morning, student," Eve heard the VR computer say in her ears. "Today we will learn about history."

Eve sighed. She hated this helmet. She only vaguely remembered the life outside the confines of her coffin. She remembered a preferable warm touch and green and a distant yellow ball that warmed everything around her. As the VR droned about the Final War, Eve remembered putting substances in her mouth with a woman who had flames on her head. a sudden hot wind and the woman screamed. There was a bright bubble on the horizon. The woman grabbed Eve and ran.

"You, student, are the only one left. End of program." Eve remembered men taking her from the screaming woman and then sticking needles into them both. Eve then only remembered her stasis chamber.

Eve dozed off as the VR helmet removed itself and the tube connected to her stomach pumped mush into her and tubes at her urinary tract and anus simultaneously sucked away her wastes. A slow, lilting music played from the helmet's speakers. Electric jolts ran through her to exercise her muscles. She remembered the screaming woman's gentle laugh and warm embrace. She tried to remember the word she gave her. Her eyes screwed shut in her efforts to recall the word. As the word formed itself in her mind, an image formed with it. An image of the most beautiful woman in the world. An image brighter and more vivid than any of the ghosts of the VR. Eve's mouth opened like a forgotten rusty trap trying to form the word her brain frantically willed it to do.

"Mama."

Eve perked up in surprise at the squeaky, mouse-like sound that came out. Her ears burned, yearning to hear it again.

"Mama."

That word, now recalled, raised a question. Where was she? What had happened? Eve pulled at the restraints that held her. She could not get out. Water dripped from her eyes. Sadness! She had not felt any emotion for so long! The glass top and LED display blurred as she cried.

The cuffs released her and she curled up. She watched through the chamber's glass top as the white ceiling was crowded by light blue and green shapes. She had not seen them for as long as she stopped feeling emotion. Scientists.

Eve now felt a new emotion: one that consumed her body like fire. Her teeth clenched. Her eyes bulged. Her limbs trembled in sudden strength. She screamed and tried to break the thick, unyielding glass. The figures scurried around her coffin, and all the control and restraint devices bombarded her.

Another emotion that quickened Eve's heart and breathing and made her sweat took over. She pulled her arm back and smashed through the thick glass. The broken glass cut her body and left a long gash in her side as she climbed out of her chamber.

Eve breathed the ion-scented air. She looked straight ahead. The warm, yellow ball called to her like an evil flame to a foolish moth. Eve spread her arms and ran to the ball. She sidestepped each figure that tried to stop her. A slight resistance and she felt warmth and weightlessness.

The scientists watched Eve fall and burn up in the hot, sun-like air. They turned to see Eve's numerous clones smashing through the glass tops of the stasis chambers. The clones ran to the same window Eve jumped out of, and, like lemmings running to sea, jumped after her, burning in the atmosphere. The scientists looked on sadly as the last of the clones burned away. Their experiment had failed. Eve was the only fertile female left since the Final War. Now that she and her clones were gone, there was no way to repopulate the Earth. After they had died, Earth would then be a second Venus.