I found myself confined in a featureless gray enclosure, the curving wall of a smooth plastic cocoon so close upon me that I could not lift my head without bumping it. I lay on my back, disoriented, blinking eyes that felt gummy with sleep. My arms were pressed close to my sides; there was scant room for me to move them. But I edged one hand along the curving wall of my chamber. It felt blood-warm. Yet I was chilled, as cold inside as a frozen corpse.

I could remember dying, more than once. I recalled freezing to death in a frigid landscape of snow and ice and bitter, merciless winds. The numbness of the cold had been a mercy then; my body had been torn to bloody ribbons by a cave bear.

A mechanical click snapped me to the here and now. I heard a soft beeping sound, strangely annoying. Then the curved plastic cover abruptly swung open. Immediately a chill white mist enveloped me. I shivered and tried to sit up. It took an effort.

Propping myself on one elbow, I squinted through the icy mist. I was in a large room. Featureless gray walls. Low ceiling that glowed with cold bluish light. The floor was lined with large objects that looked to me like coffins. Dozens of them, a hundred, perhaps. And that irritating beeping sound, soft yet insistent, like a worry gnawing at the back of your mind. One at a time, and then in twos and threes, the lids of the coffinlike capsules swung back with soft sighing sounds, like the slightest of breezes wafting through the nodding limbs of a forest. Cold whitish mist drifted up from each of them. The beeping stopped when the last of them opened.

Men and women began pulling themselves up to sitting positions, rubbing their eyes, stretching their arms, looking around the room. I could see that they were young, slim, physically fit. They looked so much like each other that they could have been brothers and sisters. At first I thought they were siblings from two or three families. They wore nothing at all. Completely naked, men and women alike. Just as I was.