I'm starting a sci fi fiction (shortstory/novel iunno)

[ReikonKeiri]

I randomly had this idea for a plot. Writing it out I realize how insanely hard it's going to be to avoid plotholes with this so I'm going to have to edit this like mofo. Havent edited this yet I just rambled out about 2500 words for an introduction to the introduction. Please feel free to point out anything that immediately doesnt make sense within the context of the plot because i didnt think about it much l0l
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I think these sort of things are supposed to have some sort of introduction or preface, but you must understand I haven’t been to school in a few centuries. Even back then, I was always a terrible writer. At least as far as my fading memory leads me to understand. As one of the last few living humans—and I use the term “living” lightly—I feel it is my obligation to document the last 250 or so years of human existence from the perspective of the only man to see it all unfold. It’s really sad how things turned out, but perhaps this was the predetermined fate of our species.

Oh, please forgive me if I seem to ramble on. I’m just writing my thoughts as they come to mind and I don’t have any intentions of editing this document. Dr. Ziad tells me my power supply only has about a month left of energy and my wiring is so outdated replacing the system would require replacing most of the parts in my body including some parts of my brain. I’m told most of my memory will be lost, so you see I have a set timeframe to finish this autobiography. I still haven’t even decided if I want to go through with the procedure. I’m told my soul will remain intact, but what does that even mean? In these years aspirations of immortality are far more commonplace than in my youth, but as someone who knows what it’s like to keep on living, I think I’ve been around long enough.

But, I digress. I don’t have the time nor the mental capacity to discuss the topic of immortality. All I am qualified for is explaining what the hell happened to us. I suppose I should introduce myself, then. My name is Ethan Freeman. I was born in the year 2004 and I have begun writing this document on August 26th 2293. It may seem like a daunting task to document the events of nearly 300 years, but in reality the majority of those years were quite uneventful. There are some major prerequisites for understanding the present day situation, but I can fly through them in no time.

Period 2004-2034

I was born. I don’t remember my parents’ names, where I was born, or the first 15-20 years of my life, really. I definitely had a little brother at some point. Yes, I’m absolutely sure of it. I was quite fond of him and can remember spending a good deal of time together. I got married in my late 20s, though I don’t remember her name. I can kind of picture her face, but I don’t really bother anymore. She was quite pretty and I think I loved her very much, but those feelings have been gone for a long, long time. Only a few years after our marriage I was unemployed and when I heard of a special opportunity to make some cash with a volunteer program I jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately, time travel is still theoretically impossible. It’s amazing how far science has come in the past century yet we’ve come no closer to figuring out this mystery. If any of you are reading this in a time period where it is possible please go to this time when I gave up my body to science and stop me any way you can. It was the worst decision of my life and I’d do anything to take it back. I’m just an old fool that can’t even remember the exact day it happened.

I do know it was in the year 2034. I could have been 29 or 30 years old at the time. This independent research company called AnTech had a number of volunteers have a physical, take a blood test, and answer a survey to determine the optimal candidates for a new procedure that would create the first androids. Almost everything about you would stay the same, but you would live considerably longer. As you can already guess from reading this, their procedure was a success. It really wasn’t at all.

I was selected as part of a group of ten to undergo the procedure. I really didn’t care about the extended lifespan; I just wanted the $100,000 they were offering all who participated to support my family. I’m told my wife did get the money at some point which I suppose was the silver lining in all this. My wife was pregnant when I went under, but I’ve never met my child. For all I know she had a miscarriage, but my child could have been born, lived, and died with me none the wiser. It’s become a lot harder these years to find people.

Anyway, the procedure began with all ten of us being put into stasis as we were recreated with mechanical parts. All I can tell you is the procedure of 2034 failed. It definitely failed. I was in stasis for a long, long time.

Period 2080-2081

I know I skipped over the 46 years I was in stasis, but I will get to that. To my knowledge no living human experienced these years including myself, but I know quite well what happened during this period. History has been a forgotten subject since humans ceased to be the dominant species. Yes, it's true, the Ersians have been Earth's main inhabitant for barely over a century, but this is not common knowledge anymore. I'm lucky I recovered as soon as I did or I may not have had the opportunity to create this record of events.

My memories become far more vivid from after my awakening despite all the time that has passed so I suppose you can officially call this the beginning of my autobiography. I apologize for sounding so mysterious, writing all the things from before has left me hazy, as it feels like it was all a dream and I was born an android. I was assured that my disorganized recollections were all real by my little brother, but I truly missed so much.

I arose from the stasis chamber, wide-eyed. I felt 30 and I looked 30, but something was wrong.
"Happy 76th birthday, Mr. Freeman," a deep, almost God-like voice called out.

I looked for the source of the voice but there was no one. I was clearly speaking to an intercom. “Can you hear me? Who are you? What happened to me?” I could feel the questions escape my lips with exasperation. At the time, I wasn’t really scared or angry. I was merely desperately confused.

“I am so sorry about what happened to you, Freeman. Do you remember the experiment you underwent with nine others? Well, they’ve all been dead for a long time. The company AnTech has been gone for over forty years, and this lab was more or less abandoned for almost half that. From what we’ve gathered from their notes the researchers working here tried to create the first androids far before they knew just what they were getting into. The bad PR this stunt resulted in pretty much ended android research. I suppose the 10 of you were forgotten eventually.”

My mind was racing trying to comprehend the situation. I did remember the procedure, but why was I awake now? What had happened to my life?

“You really are lucky in more ways than one. The other 9 appear to have suffered heavy brain damage from the extensive time in stasis and were unrecoverable but somehow your brain was intact when I found you. No human could have finished your procedure but we already possessed a vast knowledge of android construction.”

I felt like throwing up. I could hear and understand all his words, but an overwhelming cloud of dread hovered over me. No conclusions about the past were entering my consciousness, and this paralyzing fear of what came next kept me silent.

“You seem troubled; understandably so. Here, it may help if I can talk to you face to face.” I found myself lying in the fetal position now. I could feel the minute vibrations the being made as it came closer and then the sound of the metallic door to my cell as it slid open. I directed my gaze to the being and despite his appearance remained equally as distressed as before.

A well-built, red-skinned humanoid wearing a lab coat stood over me. I rose to my feet to speak with the strange man, having not seen his face yet. I’m sure you have figured it out by now, but for me only once I had seen his face did I know this wasn’t a human. As soon as I saw his face had no eyes I froze, waiting for him to speak.

“Oh, yes. I’m an Ersian. I guess you’ve never seen something like me before, but I assure you I’m friendly. There’s a lot of us around your planet now. We’re pretty bad at remembering things so I can’t really tell you when or why we’re here. Oh, except for science! We know a lot about science. I pretty much finished the work on you by myself. It’s human law not to work on androids anymore, but you were almost done so I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

I must have been listening because I can clearly remember what he said to me that day but none of that mattered to me. Finally, I was able to speak, “Are… are you blind?”

The Ersian was unsurprisingly taken aback by my seemingly inconsequential query but he smiled anyway, “In the literal sense, yes, I suppose we all are. I’ve seen blind humans before, though, and it’s really a tragic thing. Ersians have incomparably higher perception than these poor people.”

This whole time I couldn’t stop staring at the blank space in between the Ersian’s forehead and nose. To me the whole event seemed like something out of a science fiction novel, but it was so real. I found myself unconsciously tiptoe a full pace backward though I said nothing. As if he knew I was testing what he just said, he followed me with a full pace forward, “How…”

“I may be unable to see you, Freeman, but I know exactly where you’re standing and even the exact shape of your face and body. I don’t have much else to tell you other than ‘Good luck’,” he tilted his head gave me a weak smile. It was impossible to read his eye-less expression, but I think this Ersian pitied me. I can’t really blame him. At the time, I was wallowing in self-pity.
“You aren’t going to help me or anything?”

“Well, you’ll find out soon enough humans and Ersians don’t have the best of relations. To be honest, I only fixed you up for fun. I haven’t gotten to tinker with an android since I left my home world so it was actually quite refreshing. Actually I suppose you aren’t really a human anymore. The only advice I can give you is don’t tell anyone you’re an android. It will probably only lead to trouble. Live a long and healthy life and trust me, you will live longer than you can imagine.” He turned his back and walked away. I never saw this Ersian again for the rest of my life. My only regret in 300 years is not thanking him for what he did.

I waited about ten minutes after he left to exit the lab myself. When I got outside, a wave of familiarity rushed over me. 46 years had not done to this place what I had expected. The lab was surrounded by yellow tape and biohazard signs. My only theory as to why the lab hadn’t been demolished was that someone had hope the others and I would recover some day. At some point in my long life I returned to the lab to find that eventually it was taken down and replaced with a shopping mall. I only hope the nine others were not forgotten and at least given a proper burial.

The suburban area surrounding seemed like just the kind of world I had left behind, but as I turned to the east I saw the downtown area towering as an endless sheet of skyscrapers. Before I had gone into stasis I lived in a fairly small town. The only city in the entire United States in 2030 that could compare to my town in 2080 was New York City. Even then I was presented with architectural designs I had never seen before. Subconsciously, I found myself walking towards the heart of the city with a dream-like curiosity. I shouldn’t have been surprised considering how much time had passed, but it was breathtaking seeing it for the first time, nevertheless.

I explored the city for several days. My newly acquired android body gave me nearly limitless energy, but I found I still needed to eat and sleep just like everybody else. I found a soup kitchen on the first day that I came back to every night to eat and sleep. The ladies working there never pried about my situation and I always greeted them with a smile. It warmed my heart to know such kind people still existed after all these years.

Around this time the ratio of humans to Ersians appeared to be about two to one. I also found there was a surprising lack of technology and scientific advances. This might not be surprising to the history deprived Earthlings of the present day but back in my younger years, before my stasis, there was a concept called Moore’s Law. I knew it pretty well back then but now it’s a little fuzzy. The basic idea was that computing power followed a trend of doubling every two years. Essentially the rate humans were discovering new technologies was rapidly accelerating to the point where if this trend continued, in 2080 we should have had the moon colonized, flying cars, and disposable computers for every mundane task you could imagine. It seems trivial to think about now, but the 2080 I lived through was far from this.

I had decided I needed answers. I knew no one, understood nothing, and my life had no direction. I was given a near immortal body and I needed to give myself a reason to live. It was at this moment I made the decision to understand. Surprisingly there were still libraries at this time. There used to be objects called books. They were like data streams, but in a physical form that you could hold, and a library was a building where you could find all kinds of books. The only kind I was interested in; however, were the history books. Books that would tell me everything that happened in the 46 years I was in stasis. My life for the next year consisted of reading and the nice ladies at the soup kitchen.

Period 2035-2041

Back in 2080 adjacent to history was a subject called genealogy, the study of a family’s history. I was able to discern that my wife had remarried several years after AnTech was shutdown in 2036. I found no mention of my child in any genealogical records. I’ve blocked her out of my memory as she had nothing to do with history or myself anymore. However I do know both her and her new husband already succumbed to an illness I’ll discuss in the next section.

Would you believe me if I told you no Ersians lived on Earth before the year 2040? The years after my stasis leading up to around 2040 were fairly inconsequential concerning human history. There was a highly destructive war that lasted several years that eventually ended in global peace, I suppose. I can say I’m somewhat appreciative that I missed that era. However, as it turns out, the next 40 years were incredibly important to Ersian and human history alike.

Now that the study of history has been essentially forgotten they lead us to believe that humans and Ersians have lived together since life began, but they are in fact in alien species that joined the human populace several million years after human life originated on the planet. I suppose them existing here since the beginning is quite a believable theory considering how similar they look compared to us. It would be no surprise if my claims are doubted given no physical evidence exists for these events anymore besides my own memories. Though I claim I am documenting history as it happened, you may treat this as fiction if it conflicts too much with your personal emotions. I initially had no interest in historical events from before the time I went into stasis, but as it turns out there are some hidden events dating back to before I was born that influenced the Ersians emigration to earth.

Sometime less than a century before my birth humans actually had not gotten any object into space. No ships, probes, satellites, or anything. It’s pretty impressive to think less than 400 years ago something even a child can do now was beyond the capabilities of Earth’s greatest scientists. The point of all this is that back before, when humans were trapped on their own planet, they did not know that the now dead planet Mars had enough water to sustain an entire species. Of course, this was the Ersians. Thousands of years before when Mars had a thin atmosphere of breathable oxygen the Ersians had developed breathing apparatus technology out of necessity as their atmosphere was fading away.

Even through primitive space viewing tools called “telescopes” that humans had for hundreds of years they could not detect the existence of the Ersians because all their colonies were underground. It all seems basic now, but in this time period the Ersians were several centuries ahead of humans in scientific research. Strangely, they had put much more focus into mechanical engineering than computer engineering which begins to explain the Earth of 2080 being structurally impressive but not quite so technologically impressive.

Two technologies the Ersians had mastered far before humans that led to their eventual invasion—and I use the term “invasion” lightly—of Earth were spaceships and cloaking. Mars’s water supply ran out sometime before humans had ventured anywhere beyond their atmosphere as I mentioned, but the Ersians had been prepared for this moment for a long time. A massive ship capable of holding over 100 million Ersians comfortably, as well as enough water to sustain them for nearly a century was built to emigrate a large portion of their species to Earth as it had been deemed far more habitable than Mars. I believe many Ersians were left behind as they simply did not have the resources to emigrate the entire population. Those Ersians have long since gone extinct as you would expect.

They did in fact orbit Earth for about a century so as with everything else it showed the impressive foresight of their species. The ship also had a nearly undetectable cloaking feature which also proved essential to Ersian survival. Humans were a very war prone species around the time the Ersians were orbiting Earth and it is likely if they had been detected they would have been annihilated in an instant by nuclear weapons. The Ersians are rumored to have been able to sense the massive destructive power of humans even as they were on Mars. They had prepared for this necessary move of their species for a very long time and executed it flawlessly.

The Ersians clearly had to wait for a lull in the fighting amongst our species as they wanted to be accepted by humans as a friendly species as easily as possible. The entire time the Ersians orbited our planet they intercepted radio waves, a primitive way of sending audio signals, with the intention of learning our languages and ultimately being allowed to assimilate with humans. Back before inhabiting Earth, Ersians had their own language, but no Earthling knows a word of it anymore and it was never documented.

They had a pretty strong grasp of our species’ language and culture after orbiting Earth for a little less than a century and a planet-wide peace treaty was signed sometime after that final war ended in the 2030s. A lot of the defense based technology developed in the preceding decades by humans was rendered pretty much obsolete after the abolishment of war. Human research shifted more towards finding intelligent life and habitable planets after this time which eventually led to the creation of an incredibly powerful gamma laser. It was a much more detectable proof of our existence than radio waves were before, though we expected to not find life in our own solar system. A response from another star system would take an unthinkably long time given what we humans expected was in the realm of scientific possiblity.

It was a start; however, and before the Ersians could even react to the newly achieved human peace and contact us it was discovered by both species that this gamma laser had enough energy to disrupt the cloaking field around the Ersian craft. We found them. Before humans could even react to what was the most unbelievable discovery in the history of our species, Ersians sent us their declaration of peace and desire to assimilate with our species. We sent them a response back essentially along the lines of, “We’ll think about it.”

A year passed with no contact while the United Nations (which actually existed even before the Ersians became a part of it and was an important part of human interactions for a while) discussed the unknown species. Ultimately, it was decided that if the Ersians were not friendly, with their level of technology they could have destroyed us in an instant. What we could hope to gain by combining our knowledge with theirs was unimaginable. Not to mention, refusing their offer of peace could prove even more dangerous than accepting it.

The 100 million Ersians had actually grown to nearly 200 million in the past century and were facing overcrowding problems on their craft despite efforts to curb reproduction until they had populated Earth. They finally stepped foot on Earth for the first time and were evenly distributed across the main cities of the world to avoid overpopulating one area. Their assimilation went quite smoothly as they had been studying us for a century and global peace sentiments had left the human populace much more open minded than they had been in their war centered past. Before Earth’s last war, I’ve read that human population was nearly nine billion. The war devastated that number and brought it down below six billion. We still outnumbered the Ersians by an incredible thirty to one so their presence went mostly unnoticed. It stayed that way for a few months, but human prosperity as it was known ended when we made first contact with the Xeno Virus.

Period 2042-2079

Firstly, I know it’s a stupid name. I didn’t name the disease as I was in stasis the entire time. Needless to say this is the name that was given to the disease that devastated the human population for many years. Arguably the most devastating disease before the X Virus, was something called cancer, which destroyed lives for thousands of years. It was thought incurable until a permanent prevention and treatment was found within my lifetime sometime before I went into stasis.

The X Virus was considerably worse. Cancer patients could survive with treatment for months or a few years before either succumbing to the disease or potentially recovering. There was always a chance of the disease returning, however. The X Virus by comparison killed much, much faster, but anyone who contracted the disease would not notice any side effects because the virus took a few months to evolve within the body. Eventually, without anesthesia, the victim died a relatively painful death in a matter of days after the virus activated.

The X Virus surrounded the Ersian species though they had developed a hardwired immunity to it millennia ago. It’s believed that the virus was a manifestation of cells mutated through bio radiation emitted from the intense brain activity Ersians are known for. As the Ersians had been distributed throughout the world, an incredible number of humans contracted the disease through extended contact with the Ersian species. The first breakout occurred several months after the Ersian assimilation with nearly a 100 million humans falling ill and dying a couple days later.

It took Earth’s top doctors a few weeks to draw a connection between the disease and the Ersians. A decade before if this information had gone public, humans would have declared war and killed all the Ersians, but Earth’s world leaders in this time strove for nonviolence. As police forces across the world maintained the outbreak of chaos, the Ersians were given an ultimatum: Leave Earth or become subject to mass quarantine until further notice. The Ersian diplomatic leaders understood that Earth was their only hope of survival in this solar system and even in their crippled state the humans could easily annihilate them in a war. They promptly agreed to the quarantine of their species.

The next decade was one of the darkest in human history. People unaware of their disease transmitted it to others that in turn would transmit even further. Even in the dormant stages of the virus it was still highly contagious and it took several more waves of the disease for doctors to understand how the disease was spreading despite the quarantine of the Ersians. Shortly after, it was mandated by law that all humans wear full body suits to prevent further spread of disease. Despite this after the mass waves of disease died down, smaller outbreaks occurred due to carelessness and neglect of safety protocols. Even further, the chaos enveloping the world during this disaster drove many individuals infected or harnessing the disease of their own free will to commit devastating acts of bio terrorism.

As the extinction of the human race was becoming a possibility, world leaders agreed to shift funding heavily into finding a cure for this disease. Ersian medical officials were tortured for answers on how to stop the disease. As you know, Ersians are not record keepers and no one on Mars had seen the disease for countless generations. Needless to say the only thing humans got out of the interrogations were a couple accidental infections that cost the lives of many others in the quarantine facilities. One Japanese scientist finally found a breakthrough in the mid 2050s that finally marked the beginning of the end.

In the distant past humans used to use what’s called a vaccine to combat disease. The basic principle was that by inserting a weakened form of a disease into the human body, the immune system would learn how to combat that disease and could then take on the stronger form. As with cancer, this method did not work for the X Virus. The human immune system could be conditioned to fight the X Virus, but it could never win under any circumstances. What the Japanese scientist had achieved was creating nanobots that could seek out specific cells via complex programming and vaporize them. This ended up evolving into the technology that ended almost all internal diseases.

It took a few years to inject the nanobots into the remaining humans. Some refused treatment though injecting the nanobots even after the virus reached its final stages proved effective. As scientists were unsure of how the virus had evolved or changed in the past decade tests were performed using the Ersians to determine the perfection of the nanobots. After all tests passed the Ersians were finally released from quarantine. History does not mention the quarantine facilities in much detail, but the living conditions were considerably worse than the Ersians experienced in the months preceding the pandemic.

Though their standard of living increased after their release it was not by much. Many humans who had lost friends and family to the X Virus held indiscriminate hatred towards all Ersians and persecuted them severely, even escalating to outright murder. As confrontations reached these extremes the Ersians began banding together to form tight knit groups that protected each other. The species as you know are incredibly strong though at this time were very conflict averse. As a result of the changes in the ratios of species, the humans were forced to abandon their grudges as even with their greater numbers they could not stand up to the Ersian gangs. Though the violence was short lived, verbal abuse against Ersians lasted for several decades.

The Ersians remained complacent in the face of this adversity; most of them were able to become quite successful. The majority of them became employed working in construction and design. The city I lived in during 2080 was designed and built by mostly Ersian workers as far as I know. Though they were paid lower wages than humans working the same job, Ersians always had a lower threshold of happiness than humans so this did not affect them much. As a species we have been insatiable since the dawn of technology whereas Ersians have always been more focused on enlightenment.

Back when more records existed there was a process called a census. This meant that nations of the world counted the number of persons living within their borders. Two important censuses took place during my stasis, the first being in the year 2060. This was the first world census on record that counted the number of humans and Ersians living on earth. The results were approximately 1.5 billion humans and 500 million Ersians. The X Virus had claimed nearly five billion lives, about 80% of the human population of the time period. Humans now outnumbered the Ersians by only a ratio of three to one making their presence effectively ten times greater than before the pandemic. The statistics shocked human and Ersian alike but it wasn’t before the next world census in 2080 did a frightening trend come to light.

On the Earth of 2080, mere months before I recovered from stasis, there were approximately 1.6 billion humans and 800 million Ersians. Due to higher life expectancy and reproduction rates, in just 20 years the human to Ersian ratio was reduced to merely two to one. Some major changes were about to occur on this planet, and I had awaken just in time to see it.

Period 2082-???

I’m sure you’ve been wondering this whole time what actually caused the massive decline in technological advancement in the 21st century as that was one of the questions I set out to answer in the year I dedicated to research. The truth is it was never actually documented as a phenomenon that occurred. At the very least there was no mention of it in any of the books I read.

I do have a quite sound theory; however, and this will double as a recap of the previous sections. For the first decade, we spent a great deal of resources researching and developing war machines, followed by the technology that led to discovery of the Ersians, all since rendered useless. For almost 15 years after that science was forced to give incredible focus to developing the cure for the X Virus. After that humans spent over two decades as a destroyed species just doing their best to maintain survival. Even though there were many super intelligent Ersians on the planet at the time, they had been assigned mundane construction tasks. If it weren’t for this sacrifice we wouldn’t have the glorious cities we have today, but I believe these events were the basis for the hit to 2080s technological potential.

[Nullifidian]

science fiction fiction

[ReikonKeiri]

I needed to clarify that I'm not writing about quantum mechanics

edit: wrote some more. at around 3800 words now

[Cavernio]

I like it. Very on the nose, but you said this was just an intro.

[ReikonKeiri]

5320 word intro. It's done. The real story begins, but my brain is done for now lol.

[Cavernio]

I guess the biggest thing is that, despite you explaining it and touching on it over and over, I still don't really -get- the downfall of technological advance. I suppose when you first mention it, the storyteller says he wakes up and is shocked by how lacking in technology the world is, and he says 'it was obvious'. But to the reader of your story, that is not obvious. To the reader, to me at least, that happens in the near future, within my life. That feels ridiculously advanced already...nanotechnology acting as the immune system, bringing back people from stasis, the nebulous existence of androids...none of those things scream to me 'technological downfall'.

If he woke up and expected to see a number of things, but found that those didn't exist, then that gives the reader a good sense of where technology is expected to be at. Or perhaps if you note some things that are actually non-existent anymore (besides the downfall of the experiment the storyteller was in) that WERE in existence when the storyteller was put in stasis, that could help too. And you do get into that too, but it's not enough. Like, to me, something like colonizing the moon would be a good deal easier than artificial T cells. It feels doable to live on the moon right now with a few unique engineering ideas, but there's no reason to and that's why no one's bothered with it. I suppose another thing is that Ersian's obviously know more than people, so I'd assume they'd have retained their technical expertise and filled the earth with lots of brand new technology and ideas.

The biggest crux about this, I guess, is that it's just really hard for the reader to comprehend that this world is somehow at technological stagnance when there's just not enough comparison to build upon. As your story actually begins, however, and we really get a feel for the world you've created, that might be a non-issue, as we will get to see first-hand how technology has stopped.
Don't forget that despite Moore's law, much of human history hasn't had anywhere NEAR the breakthrough's we have today. We had lots of war, empires falling and with that, a lot of knowledge was lost. Then we have the dark ages where knowledge = devil's work, and then finally, a renaissance. This took place over thousands of years. It's hard to feel that 50 years of no advances is notable.


I really like the idea of Ersian's not keeping track of history. Really like it, it's unique and moving...you've got a lot to work with that could make for some great themes and stories. Just be careful you fully think is through though, the specifics of it. Like it would be hard to keep technology without a good memory of prior technology...there's plenty of workarounds etc for this, but just note that memory, as humans know it, is a lot more than just history and social events. Memory is how we have consciousness IMO.

[ReikonKeiri]

This is an incredibly useful post, thank you very much. I will take into consideration all of your advice.

I suppose when you first mention it, the storyteller says he wakes up and is shocked by how lacking in technology the world is, and he says 'it was obvious'.

I realize this was a mistake kind of like a dangling modifier. The obvious concept was supposed to be Moore's law, not the lack of technology.

Like, to me, something like colonizing the moon would be a good deal easier than artificial T cells.

solid point. I need better examples for that section. Would you say a couple paragraphs to explain the state of technology in comparison between before stasis, after stasis, and present would solve everything?

Don't forget that despite Moore's law, much of human history hasn't had anywhere NEAR the breakthrough's we have today.

My basis on this was any history Ethan had learned before he went into stasis was forgotten because of his fading memory, and during the time he was researching history he was only learning about the years he went into stasis. No one in this world including him has any memory of the world before the year 2020 (and hes the ONLY one that can remember back that far). It's supposed to be notable that the 50 years did not meet the expectations of the protagonist given what he knew about the world. (and the pandemic was almost entirely the cause)

[Cavernio]

Ahh, makes sense. His memory also seems a little too in-depth about some events, so I guess it's easy to forget that point.

I few paragraphs about more detail would probably help a lot. You could also, instead of mentioning it in the introduction, let it more slowly be discovered by the reader during the story, but I suspect you don't want to do that, seeing as you made a whole introduction specifically to get some things known first, BEFORE the story.

Don't worry so much about the little details if you feel like writing new stuff though. You'll never write anything new then. I was a little hesitant to even post because you seemed to be on a roll.