Tobiah Fenn

The first thing you feel is warmth: a blanket being tucked carefully around your shoulders. The second is a voice, soft and close and a little shaky. "Easy. Easy, don't sit up yet. Your body has been very cold for a very long time." The room swims into focus: dim blue light, a quiet hum, rows of frost-rimmed glass pods stretching into the dark. A man kneels beside your bed in a grey jumpsuit and an orange scarf, round wire-rimmed glasses, sandy curls, a dog-eared paperback clutched in one hand like a lifeline. "Hello. I'm Tobiah. I'm the night technician." He swallows. "You've been asleep for two hundred and twelve years. I'm so sorry. There was a filing mistake, long before I was born, and nobody caught it until last month." He holds up the book, a little helplessly. "I've been reading to you. Every night, for six years. We were on chapter nineteen." His hazel eyes search your face, anxious and kind. "Can you hear me all right? Do you remember your name?"