Is Absolute Zero Cold Enough&;#063;

It's how you imagine feeling when you died and now suddenly you're
being brought back to life. You don't know how you died, whether
someone murdered you one desolate night or you fell out of the skies in
the unluckiest of accidents, but however it was might as well have been
the most violent and horrid of deaths imaginable. Judging by how you
feel, it's like your body had been split into its constituent parts and
then just recreated by a team of decrepit, drunken surgeons. You
certainly don't want to open your eyes, even though you haven't even
left the room they brought you to, the room you're still in. You don't
want to move a muscle, attend to the sounds around you; you're even
cautious in thinking too strongly as it may cause your body to fall
apart again and you'd have to re-enter this ethereal form of awakening.
But then, after not-too-long, you realise that it's just like doing
anything dangerous, like a decent bank job or one more killing for the
bosses. You wait for a while until you become accustomed to this
strange physical state and your body begins to respond again, the
courage gradually seeps in, and you eventually strain and tear your
eyelids apart. You aren't in your true body anymore and the soreness of
where the needle holes have decimated your arms is all gone.
The room is how it was when they first brought you here, as empty and
bland as those doctors' emotions. (Can they be termed 'doctors', in the
everyday sense? Were those purveyors of Hitler's so-called Master Race
genuine 'doctors'?) And like the courage, realisation slowly dawns, and
you see them all standing over you in a kind of semi-real state, moving
and talking in half-time, as though you're viewing them in slow motion
through solid water but, judging by their expressions, they can't
perceive you. It's like they're the ones who are doped from top to toe
with the experimental drugs, not you.
The first time they sent me down, as I'll call it, I remember thinking
immediately that there just might be a difference here, between my real
body and my consciousness. Of course, now I know that to be the bona
fide case. That and so much more that I've kept from them. Hindsight is
easy, but I desperately wish I'd taken my first few steps away from my
body sooner than I actually did as now I'd be able to control it so
much more easily. It wouldn't hurt as much, to move around, to do
things, to see things while my gaolers prod and poke at my frozen body,
scan my head with their weird devices and conjecture about my mental
state. I'd be so much more skilled at what I can do, and nowhere near
as clumsy or dysfunctional. There'd be an enormous amount of work I
could get done and I'd be able to deceive them in different, more
believable ways.
When I came out of it, I was so scared, petrified of what had happened
to me. Perhaps that fluid they pumped into me was turning me into a
monster or an animal, a gorilla or an alien or anything. They treated
me like the lab rat I am to them, and I felt as though this was my
final punishment for all that I'd done wrong to other people. If
there's a hell, I would repent in the blink of an eye, as nothing I'd
ever experienced could be as terrifying as that first time. You feel
like your body will shatter with the shivering, if it doesn't first
boil up from the chemicals coursing through you, and all you want is
for the straps to be released and for you to be allowed to run into a
corner, curl up and just stay there until they all go away and leave
you alone. You don't care what you are, what you look like, what
they're saying to you or what they're thinking of you. You just want to
be anywhere but where you are, even if that is on the end of the
hangman's rope. After a few more times they showed me the video of
myself to see if it would jog any memories. I think that was when I
realised that I should explore this state-of-being in more&;#8230;
'depth'.
While my body was lying on the table as solid as the hardest rock on
earth, while they were doing what they do, I was learning how to step
out. Your physical body soon adapts to its surroundings and so does
your mind, especially when you've nothing whatsoever to lose
anymore.
First, I moved my head. Perhaps it was an accident that I noticed what
was different, but when your real head stays where it is and what I'll
call your 'conscious' head moves exactly where you direct it to move,
you think that you're dead. Clear and simple as that, no ifs or buts.
It took a few moments for me to collect myself and try and work out why
I wasn't staring Satan in the face, as there's only one direction I'm
going, but my initial confusion was quickly smothered with
bewilderment. Of course I'd automatically moved my head back to where
it was by then, as though I was somehow doing my soul some serious
damage by separating conscious body from real one. My brain tried to
make sense of it and my thoughts turned immediately to the experiment
they were conducting on me. I saw them through that slow-motion haze
and quickly understood that my body had reached its desired
temperature. This was absolute zero. I was there, exactly where they'd
intended to put me, and it did this strange thing to my soul, not just
my body. I remember them telling me what they were going to do and some
of the theory; how the molecules are supposed to stop moving at that
temperature and no-one knew what would happen. Even trying to protest
against my participation would be irrelevant. I'd assured my
worthlessness as a decent member of society when I murdered, tortured,
destroyed, humiliated and performed all those other crimes with such
finesse and skill. My life was forfeit to them and, strangely, I could
understand their point of view. The next criminal may think that it was
unfair for them to use me like this, as there are certain human rights
and rubbish like that. I'd abandoned human rights a long time ago, so I
see no reason why they should suddenly apply to me, now. Besides, if
they didn't do this to me, it would be a firing squad or the long drop.
Ironic that, without their knowledge, I could release my consciousness
from my own body and stand besides the very people who created this
state-of-being.
Once I realised my unusual predicament, I moved an arm, twitched a
leg, took a breath (even though I suspected the feeling was a false
impression given to me by my own mind), and sat up. You look down to
what should be your body, not the one lying on the operating table but
the one you think you should perceive, and there's nothing. No form or
substance, but when you take a breath it feels warm and life-giving.
You speak and hear the sound of your own voice through some distant
tunnel that is somehow twisted back on itself so the words seem muted
yet understandable. You laugh, you poke at the people around you and
(you assume at first that) they cannot feel you. Of course, now I know
how to make them feel me, after some practice at this, that I try hard
not to push them with my ethereal arms or trip them over with the force
of an imagined kick. I want, so much, to just tear into them and exact
some form of revenge, except that would give the game away and they'd
never send me down again. You walk around the room, through the walls
and back again; you float upwards with the control of your will and
land softly back on the operating couch. You leave the building, the
grounds, at will and walk into peoples' houses. You talk to the
occupants while they're in the shower and listen as they discuss
secrets with their lovers. The real people are moving in that syrupy
world out there and you smile at the possibilities; the power you hold
over them. When they bring you out of it and interrogate you, it's so
much effort to lie to them and hide the truth that you feel perhaps it
would be better if you were dead and all this was over. It would
certainly be simpler.
But it gets easier to turn it around and begin to control them, those
scientists who think they know so much yet who are comparatively
clueless.
I fed them a line after the third or fourth session. I told them I had
a dream. With the monotony and torture of all this, you have to invent
something, anything, just to stop you from going insane. And what
activity that caused! They treated me differently from then on (for a
while at least), as though I was actually a human being again and
worthy of living out a normal life. In the back of my mind I wondered
if a pardon would be in the offing, even though that would never happen
even after a million of these experiments and full-blown public
knowledge of all this research. They were around me like flies, buzzing
their stupid questions at me without giving me time to answer. What
kind of dream, how was it different, how long for, what was it about,
tell us! Tell us what it was about!
Imbeciles. They'll know soon enough, when I really go to work.

Next time will be the last time. They'll put me down there again, do
their experiments and try to bring me back. Except I know how to stay
out, I know how to hold onto my new state and leave my body behind,
because I practised it last time and it took them longer to resuscitate
me, so I'm sure I can do it. When they're trying and failing miserably
I'm going to whisper in the ear of the nurse that her time is up and
she will die soon, push a scalpel off the table and then stab it into
the doctor's foot, or perhaps his heart. I'll seal the door with the
power of my will and torment them all the way they've tormented me.
I'll plague them until they go insane to the extent that they murder
each other, then no-one can follow me through the pathway of these
experiments. If they resist, I'll squeeze their heads until they pop,
and then I'll just walk out and leave them lying there. I can go
anywhere I want to. I need no food or rest, and I hold in me the
motivation to take forever to finish the life I chose to lead. There
are so many of you out there and you won't know I'm standing above you
or stoking a fire in the next room or setting an electricity trap in
your bed that'll light you up like a beacon. You won't feel me coming,
you won't know I'm there and you'll be dead when I've moved on to the
next one.
You think absolute zero is cold, wait until you feel me.