Origins of the
Crypto-Freezer
The Crypto-Freezer technology itself was designed by the current curator and head researcher of the museum, a Lupine inventor and historian named Torben Ker. Ker invented the technology to help elongate the life cycle of those who were sick and dying, in the hopes that it could prolong their life long enough for a cure or treatment to be found. A valiant inception for a technology that is primarily used nowadays to run a morbid entertainment business and make money. The story of how Ker found himself at the Crypto-Freezer museum is a bizarre and sad situation.
Ker very quickly discovered that the research and development of the Crypto-Freezer was an expensive endeavour, one that quickly found him in a situation without any funding. The freezer was initially being funded by the Lupine Monarchy, but they soon abandoned the project as money became tighter due to the situation on
Vulfheort Alpha Canis - The Silver City of Lunaris and the ongoing tensions across their border with the Imperial Council of Planets. Unfortunately for Ker, his research was an easy decision for the Monarchy as his reputation by this point had been floundering for some time. Frustrated at this betrayal of his own kind on a project he felt had such promise and hope for the sick, Ker took his prototypes and his team and left Lupine space.
Eventually finding himself in the Federated Territories of Vash, a fairly new and still somewhat unregulated Territorial Governance. Here he continued his research using private funding from various sources, but this too dried up as the project continued on for several years without much progress. Eventually, one private anonymous funder stepped up and agreed to fund the project. Under one caveat, Ker agreed to take the position of curator and lead scientist at a new foundation once the freezer was perfected. Ker was excited to have a permanent funding source, backed by contract, and agreed. But as it commonly occurs in situations such as these, Ker did not read the fine print.
Ker had agreed to sign off the development and usage rights of the Crypto-Freezer to the unnamed funder and the role he had agreed to was of curator to a new for-profit museum that would be built to house the freezers and display their inhabitants. Initially, this discovery was met with shock but Ker, an optimist, continued his work and decided to believe that his donor would do what was best with the freezers regardless of the new foundation's business side.
Shortly afterwards, progress was finally made on the freezers and several prototypes were constructed, about a dozen to be exact. Ker eager to use the freezers for those in need reached out to his funder for additional funds and potential contacts. Instead, the funder said the freezers already had decided upon tenants and that a team of movers would arrive within a few days to pick the freezers up, along with Ker, and move them to their new permanent home. Confused Ker didn't know how to respond and went along with the move in a state of shock.
Ker and his untested freezers arrived at a large cubed building, emblazoned with the name The Crypto-Freezer Museum on the front. Ker was not even aware that this building was being constructed let alone been completed. Before he could digest this information he and the freezers were hurried inside, the freezers were taken away to be installed in small cubbies with glass display windows, and Ker was taken away into an office.
In the office was a team of people, each one in charge of various avenues of the new museum. Their head, the new lead of the museum, told Ker that he would continue on with the project, building new freezers and tending to the old ones as well as becoming the curator and lead researcher for the new Crypto-Freezer museum. As he had agreed to do when he first signed his contract.
This would include not only caring for the installed freezers but also developing and building new ones. He would be allowed some leniency to experiment with new freezer-related technology but all of this would be owned by the foundation in perpetuity. If he declined, he would be in breach of contract fined heavily and barred from any further access or rights to the Crypto-Freezer technology. Stunned but unwilling to walk away from the work he had invested years into, Ker once again agreed, and would honour his contract.
To this day, almost two decades later, you can see an elderly Ker wandering the halls of the museum, tending to each freezer with care. Ensuring they are working at top efficiency. While the freezers are mainly filled with people he had not intended them to be for, he still secretly holds out hope that one day he will be able to abscond with the technology and use it for the good he had first envisioned.
The outside of the Crypto-Freezer Museum
Layout of the Museum
The Museum began life as a single floor with about a dozen occupants on display, these dozen were mostly wealthy corpo businessmen and politicians looking at a chance at a new life someday in the future. Paying an insane upfront fee, and a monthly rental cost these twelve were the original line-up. Only six remain to this day, the rest could not afford the upkeep and were removed from the building at various points to meet an unknown demise.
This first floor was designed as such, all twelve freezers were placed in the center in a rectangular shape, with freezers all along each side. A long corridor circled the freezers and allowed for a simple viewing of the bodies, which hung in a strange blue liquid. These first-generation freezers were simple and were constructed with only the thought of preservation in mind. Now, two decades after the opening of the museum, the freezers are filled with a clearer liquid giving a better view of the seated residents, and are equipped to allow viewing of the body in various ways. Including x-ray which shows the bones, MRI which shows the muscles and nervous systems, and a variety of other modes and combinations.
There are now nearly a dozen floors to the museum and several private basement floors used for research, development, and various other things. The above-ground floors are all public and are accessible for a nominal entrance fee. After the first floor, all subsequent floors were built as balconies, with a long rectangular hallway ruining alongside the walls of the building and the freezers placed upon the outer side. Leaving the balcony side to look down on the first floor, the space in the middle is also rented out for holo-adverts by various companies. When the museum is closed the lights for each freezer is kept on dim, and the corpses of display are only vaguely visible shadows floating in their standing coffins.
Residents of the
Crypto-Freezer Museum
The museum is home to several hundred "frozen" members, most of which are on display at most times, though there are several storage floors underneath the museum now that hold new guests being prepared, private guests who do not wish to be displayed (these guests are charged a high premium), and a large collection of other guests rotated in and out of the museum for special occasions. Below are two residents of notes, one is famous, and the other is missing.
The Brown Liquor Devils
Cover art of a Brown Liquor Devils' album
One of the more unique displays at the Crypto-Freezer museum is that of the Brown Liquor Devils, a rock and roll country music band all frozen together in the same extra-large freezer each posed with their instruments as if mid-performance. The story of how the Brown Liquor Devils got to be in their situation is a sad one.
The band had been at the top of their game and popularity, touring the galaxy to sold-out venues everywhere they went.
But tragedy struck one day when their tour ship struck an errant comet, and the ship was breached and opened to the vastness of space. The entire crew suffocated, including the four band members, with only their manager and the pilot surviving thanks to a quickly timed sealing and pressuring of the small cockpit.
Their fans were distraught at the loss, and their manager having survived devised a clever way to help capitalize on the situation. Through a suitably vague section of the band's managerial contract, their manager gained ownership over their bodies. And he reached out to the Crypto-Freezer Museum and set up a unique arrangement.
Instead of paying them to keep the bodies, he would allow the museum not only access to display the bodies but also to sell merchandise and play their music within their museum. For a nominal royalty of a few percent.
The museum thought this was a wondrous idea, and both parties agreed. Both the former manager and the museum have made considerable money off of the Brown Liquor Devils display section of the museum and its related merchandise.
To avoid controversy the manager convinced each of the band members' surviving relatives that the display of the band members' bodies in full regalia at the Crypto-Freezer Museum would not only honour their memories, and allow fans to grieve for them indefinitely, it was also allow for their potential and literal resurrection at some point in the future.
And so they signed off, initially convinced of these promises. Many of the family members have realized the truth, and are now contesting the decision to try and reattain their loved ones' bodies for a more formal send-off. But this fight has already gone on for years and it is unlikely to see any resolution any time soon.
The Missing Resident
Former Kay'ar military leader Ky'tis Elpydos
A few years after the opening of the museum, one of its residents mysteriously went missing. Upon their daily inspection of the freezers, Ker discovered an empty freezer. That of former Kay'ar military leader Ky'tis Elpydos.
Elpydos was a well-respected general of the Kay'ar having been in service for decades to both the current King of the Ka'yar Colonial Governance, Ta'liote Myridos XIV and the former king as well. Achieving a rare and long service of nearly six decades between the two kings. Upon retirement some twenty years ago, Elpydos was gifted with a ten-year pre-paid tenancy at the museum whenever he wished to take it. A few years passed by and Elpydos grew sick and feeble due to his age and decided to take the procedure and join the ranks of the museum. Where he stayed for several years unperturbed.
Ker after discovering the empty freezer just assumed that one of his assistants had taken the body away for a routine examination and had forgotten to log the time. A bit perturbed at this, but not overly worried Ker simply asked his team when the body would be returned only to be met with confused looks. None of them had taken the body. Now in full-blown panic, Ker searched the museum from top to bottom, checked the cameras, and interrogated each guard, and found nothing. One moment the body of Elpydos was there, and next, he was gone.
The search continued for weeks, but nothing came up until one day a janitor rushed up to Ker frightened and said he had seen Elpydos walking the halls of the underground floors. Ker was flabbergasted and chastised the janitor for this ill-conceived joke, but the janitor insisted. Ker brushed him off, but over the next weeks and eventually months, more and more sittings of Elpydos occurred. Never caught on camera, and only seen in glimpses or in one's periphery but unmistakable the figures of the lost military man. Even Ker was convinced eventually and has had a few sightings himself.
No one is sure what actually occurred with Elpydos, why his body disappeared and why he is occasionally seen roaming the halls. At this point, Elpydos has become a part of the mystique of the museum, and the museum has even advertised nighttime tours of curated hallways in the basement to make some money off of the strange happenings. Advertising the tour as a ghost walk and the opportunity to spot a living spirit, or whatever strange thing Elpydos has seemingly become.
The Lost Floor - The Sub-Basement
A recent development at the Crypto-Freezer Museum has necessitated the complete lockdown of their sub-basement floor, the lowest floor of the building. No information has officially been released regarding the incident that required the lockdown but leaked information has come to the surface. The sub-basement was built as an extension of the research and development wing of the museum a few years ago and is the most recent extension. Doctor Ker and his team worked in this area on innovations for the Freezers, Ker also continues his work on improving the freezer technology's efficacy and cost.
The leaked information states that one of these research experiments to push the Crypto-Freezer technology further went astray and caused the need for the lockdown. It goes into further detail stating, that a new coolant liquid for the freezers was being developed, one that was both cheaper to produce and didn't need to be flushed and replaced as often as the current liquid does. For comparison, the current liquid needs full replacement per cycle, whereas the new version was hypothetically being developed to extend that to a full radial or longer.
See the Measurements of Time in The Delta Space for an explanation of cycles and radials.
Regardless of the intended purpose of the new freezing chemical, the leaked report notes that this new concoction turned out to be a bit more volatile than originally expected. Causing a kind of corrosive damage to the skin if touched or severe internal damage if ingested or absorbed through a membrane like the eyes. The new chemical was kept in gaseous form in pressurized canisters for storage and was hyper-cooled into a liquid form upon extraction.
However, during one of these extraction processes the canister breached due to a sudden impact. The chemical staying in gaseous form began to spread, several researchers inhaled the gas and were rendered comatose but were dragged out to safety. A few did not make it out of the room though and would perish in the gas. Those who survived had severe gas burns in their lungs and currently have to use respirators to breathe.
Now, several weeks after the incident, clean-up is still being attempted and the floor remains on lockdown, with only a trained clean-up crew with full hazmat suits allowed to enter the area for short periods. It is unknown how long the floor will be on lockdown or if it will ever become safe again. The gaseous form was not tested for its longevity, only the liquid form was undergoing tests, so it is unknown how long it can linger in its current state. It could linger for several radials or even years.
Comments