The hibernation complex was silent. Deep within its multitudinous chambers and corridors, two men gazed intently at the hibernation pod that was in front of them. All that separated the normal timeflow of their control room and the contracted timeflow of the hibernation chamber was a sheet of standard-issue plate glass. Inside the chamber, a naked young man floated in a swirling bluish-green solution.
“The season draws near,” Dirk Nowitzki said to Adam Silver. “DTB must be awakened soon.”
Adam turned his incredulous gaze on the bigger man. “I’m aware of that, Dirk. Of all people, I would be the one who is most attentive to the start of the NBA season.” He now looked down at the readings on the instrument panel in front of him. “The output of the sensors is troubling me. They indicate that a greater amount of time has elapsed than expected.”
Dirk did not seem concerned. “That’s what you said when we woke up Dawk Ins for Summer League, and the difference only turned out to be a few days. You know as well as I do that the facility hasn’t undergone a thorough calibration in over half a decade.”
“Funding is low, and the accuracy of our instruments is questionable,” Adam answered. “However, these anomalies are an order of magnitude more severe than anything we’ve seen before.”
Dirk leaned over and frowned at the displays. “Maybe you’re right to be concerned,” he finally said, pointing to a wavy green line labeled ‘EEG’. “DTB’s brain activity has been spiking for weeks now. I advise that we commence the awakening process without delay; every minute we deliberate is another day in his existence.”
Nodding once, Adam hit the requisite series of buttons with the precision of a practiced musician. On the other side of the glass, the liquid drained out, and the man’s body landed on a spongy platform, which was moved on an unseen track until it stopped in front of the two scientists.
The air was almost damp with the astringent reek of the hibernation solution. Dirk, eyes watering, stood over the highlight maker’s body. “Now that DTB has re-entered the regular flow of Earth-time, he should come to in the next minute or so. We can only hope that if his timeflow was dilated instead of contracted, his dreamless mind did not notice anything amiss.”
–
At first, everything had been as normal. The sun rose, the sun set, and in between, I went about my daily routine. Each day meant that the start of the NBA season was one day closer. But October came and went without any hint of a preseason, without even the most insignificant mention of a trade or transaction. When the regular season also failed to materialize, I questioned my friends. None of them knew, most didn’t care, and the ones that even bothered to answer with anything more than a shrug said something to the effect of, “Who knows?”
Fall turned to Winter, Winter turned to Spring, and still, there was no basketball. March Madness came and went, but not once during the festivities was a player referred to as possessing “NBA-quality talent”. The discord in my mind grew more chaotic by the day.
The years passed on as if nothing was wrong. Over time, it became harder and harder to find evidence that the NBA had ever existed at all. Websites once devoted to the game went offline. Saying the name “Kobe Bryant” elicited nothing but unrecognizing stares. A search through newspaper archives at the library yielded blank newsprint where NBA box scores should have been.
The day that all my Bucks gear vanished out of my closet was the day that my sanity uttered its final death-cry. My existence became that of a hermit as I grasped at, and finally released, my last failing ties to humanity.
Decades uncountable took their leave as I aged well beyond the normal lifespan of my kind. In my rare moments of semi-lucidity, my only thoughts were of death.
One day, I somehow became possessed by the idea of going outside, of rejoining my species. With great effort I lifted myself off the floor and staggered to the door, a door which had not been used for a century or longer.
It had been so long since my bone-taut skin had been harassed by the bright, bright sun that the sensation was almost painful. Shivering, I squinted at the unfamiliar surroundings. The landscape bore only the faintest resemblance to the terrestrial scenes of my youth. The trees, if they could be called such, grew at impossible angles. The clouds in the sky moved in directions that contradicted each other. Everything had taken on an angular, mechanized appearance, as if all the Earth’s organicity had been stripped away.
As I stood, all color washed out of the sky, and a deep rumbling began to destroy what order remained in the chaos of my world. A voice echoed all around and me as I clapped my hands over my ears, huddled in fear of the coming apocalypse: “…his dreamless mind did not notice anything amiss…”