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The seriglass sarcophagus pressurizes with a long hiss.
It is a sound of finality. It puts Loid in the mind of water on hot metal, something boiling away to nothing at all. His teeth are on edge.
The slab at his back is cold and hard. Even fully dressed as he is it is leeching the heat from his form and making him all too aware of the chill in the air with him. Cryofreeze is not a wholly literal term with the advances of modern technology, but the lowering of the subject's body temperature remains an important step.
Ideally, a stasis procedure is run by a medical team. It takes caution and specialized knowledge to safely put an individual into suspended animation in such a way that does not result in permanent brain damage. The subject is typically safely sedated and wearing the appropriate monitoring equipment long before the device physically closes.
Having run this process largely by himself, Loid has had to cut corners.
The construct is overseeing the process only nominally. Albrecht had designed all the precepts himself long ago.
(Loid chooses not to wonder just how long.)
There are horror stories from the early stages of stasis research of procedures that locked subjects in a state of semi-awareness. There had been no cases of recovery afterwards; a botched stasis procedure is identical to an execution. The human mind is simply not designed for months and years of absolute, utter nothing.
Cold.
Dark.
Still.
His breathing is so loud when there is nothing else.
Fabric creaks when he clenches his hands. Right. The process of stasis is unpleasant. Loid had known that quite well. That is precisely why he had had the foresight to self-administer a central nervous system depressant before lying back and allowing the lid to enclose him under the empty eye sockets of the construct.
No words had been exchanged. What is there to be said between a man and his crude shade? Both he and the construct are here to play their parts. Nothing more.
The hypnotic sedative is well known for its amnesiac effects. It will be taking effect within ten to fifteen minutes and he will remember none of this interminable anxious handwringing.
Until then, though, he is trapped in the present.
Alone.
In the darkness of the seriglass sarcophagus, Loid swallows. It is the most successful uninterrupted motion he can manage. If he exhales with force, he can feel his own breath bounce back from the lid above his nose and waft against his cheek. Of course this machine had not been designed with the comfort of its inhabitant in mind. The inhabitant is supposed to be insensate.
The only reason he is not is that some primal part of his brain is sure that this is death and is accordingly terrified.
For a moment, he weakens. He rolls the words on his tongue.
Stop. Let me out. I won't do this. Let me out.
But the construct knows its role well. It will not abort the Sequence and Loid will not spend his last moments of awareness scrabbling against the lid of his coffin until his fingernails splinter. If he is to die, his body will not be found in such an undignified state.
Never mind that being discovered at all is pure fantasy. If Albrecht is wrong, Loid will close his eyes for the last time here and that will be his plain and simple end. None will ever look for him. The construct is already in the process of replacing him with the family upstairs.
If the Kalymos Sequence is not triggered, the construct will spend the rest of its existence truly believing that it is the last record of a servant who glassed himself when his master vanished--
Abandoned--
Loid has never been haunted by the death of the sun as Albrecht has. There was a brief period as a boy learning science when he properly understood what heat death meant, the absoluteness of nothing, and the existential terror had stalked him into nightmares for a spell. But Loid had learned practicality young and put aside the yawning fear of utter, infinite cold. Such a thing would never be a real concern for him, nor his children or their children a hundred times over.
Albrecht, though--Albrecht would see Sol's end. Albrecht felt the weight of the Empire and carried infinity on his back. He knew that fate awaited him and had feared it. Loid had admired that farsightedness from the beginning, that Albrecht was not content to sit on godly laurels and instead seeked to secure prosperity for his people in perpetuity.
Loid had made Albrecht's fears and dreams his own without a second thought. It was the just and right act of a servant to a golden god, but Loid had known even then that piety was not the kindling for his passion.
So he will do what he has always done, and put his faith in Albrecht.
The construct will live out his role with the family until the Kalymos Sequence is triggered, or until House Entrati is no more.
He swallows back dread.
He cannot quite raise his hand to his face in the cramped compartment and tightens his fists where they rest on his solar plexus instead. His fingertips are numb.
At least there is no pain, he tells himself. There have been a handful of encounters over his long life where he truly feared approaching death and the majority of them had been agonizing.
Somehow, that fails to ease the primal terror bubbling in his throat.
Had Albrecht felt like this in his seriglass chamber? For all his frustration with the man Loid's heart aches. But no, stasis was a different procedure from Albrecht's arcane form of transportation. Albrecht had not needed to be sedated for the mechanism of safely easing him into suspended animation.
And…for however a small thing it was, Albrecht had not been alone. There had been Kalymos's warmth in the chamber with him, and Loid until the very end. He had not closed his eyes on an empty lab and a silent mockery of himself.
Stasis is a form of heat death, is it not? Bereft of energy and movement. Cold. Perhaps those childhood nightmares will come true and Loid will know thermodynamic equilibrium before Albrecht does.
A shame he won't be able to tell Albrecht what it's like. He could spin the data into dreams made real, Loid is sure, if only he had the numbers.
His wandering thoughts are degenerating to an inebriated stagger. Good. Not long now.
His hands are sluggish when they flex.
His eyelids are fluttering, breaths growing longer. Even with nothing to see in the darkness of the seriglass chamber he can tell his eyes are losing the ability to focus. Closing them feels like pulling a trigger.
And if he is allowing himself to fantasize, why not further? If his eyes never open again, why not imagine what he really wants? His weakness will be private. Not even the construct will know the character of his last thoughts.
The lid cracking open, light spilling in. The places reversed. A warm hand on his cheek. It wouldn't matter what was said-- this was a mistake or I've solved it all or you must come with me . Any words, any excuse. Anything that would have Albrecht reaching for him. Anything that would get him out of this frigid coffin.
If he is going to dream, what he dreams of hearing--
I missed you, my Loid.
Bloody stupid thing to think of when he can't wipe the tears from his face.
It's cold.
Dark.
Still.