Uncanny Valley - Part 1

    The sounds of electronics waking, gas hissing, and alarms blaring brought him to consciousness.
    He was cold inside as if he'd been frozen for an eternity and even in waking couldn't be warm. He couldn't feel anything. His limbs and fingers refused to work how he wanted. They were heavy as lead, tingling only ever so slightly with a faint buzz like electricity.
    Leaning forward from his metal coffin, the previously sealed tube, Adam coughed hard.
    It did little to help his condition, but at least he was still alive.
    His eyes didn't work though. His vision was bleary.
    Where am I?
    He could vaguely recall a brief moment of people standing above him. He had been on a table: cold and hard. Who were they? Doctors? Surgeons? Someone had been working on him but he couldn't remember how or why. He remembered the hot, bright lights and the sensation of their hands digging around in his chest.
    Tenderly, he reached up and touched where he remembered those hands had been. He found nothing. Not even a scar.
    No wound.
    Had it been a dream?
    "kkkkZZT!"
    Above him, a speaker chirped to life.
    "Hello? Hello?! Can you hear me?" the voice of a terrified young woman called out.
    The man jumped, gasping in surprise at the sound over the loud-speaker. His numb hands latched onto the sides of the tube and he gagged in shock.
    The woman continued overhead unabated.
    "Oh please don't be dead. Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead." she rattled frantically over the sound of someone tapping ferociously on a keyboard before suddenly. "YES! You're alive! He'saliveyou'realive!"
    The man's breath hitched in his throat and he found himself staring up at the loud speaker. His vision was clearing but he couldn't process what was happening.
    "Can you hear me?" she asked, her voice softening but still high strung. "If you can hear me, please say something. Please?"
    For a long minute, he thought about that request. How does one speak? Something about lungs and a tongue. A breath and a thought. He coughed twice more before the words formed with little coherence as to their meaning.
    "H-H-Here. I'm h-here."
    No response.
    "H-Here." he tried again. "Hello?"
    Still nothing.
    He was trying to form the words again, to think what to say and how to say it, when the loudspeaker again chirped to life.
    "I can hear...something. But it's not really coming through. It's just static." the woman said, her voice hollow through the speaker as she, once again, seemed to pound away on a keyboard. "Something didn't go wrong did it? No? No? Ok. Ooookay."
    She seemed to giggle almost hysterically before turning her attention back to him.
    "Ok. Just give me a second to think..."
    The man stared at the loudspeaker for a few moments more before looking around. The room he was in was sterile and empty, devoid of anything warm or human even in appearance. Nothing but machinery; hanging tools, dangling wires, medical tables, and more. There were a few other large tubes like the one he had woken up in, but they all appeared empty.
    He was just about to climb out when he heard the woman return.
    "Ok. I got it. If I remember right, there's a little security office down the hall from the recovery lab. There should be a mic in there. We can try again when you find it."
    "Okay." he agreed, though he wasn't sure why since she'd already said she couldn't hear him.
    Weakly, his limbs still heavy, the man pulled himself forward out of the tube.
    It was only as he stepped out onto the tiled metal floor that he finally realized he wasn't as cold as he thought he was. The floor was. Not only that, but wasn't wearing anything.
    "F-f-fuck." he rattled out hoarsely, his teeth chattering involuntarily.
    Glancing around the rather spartan room, he saw very little in the way of anything helpful. More wires. More tubes. More bits and bobs of electronics and gizmos that he had no hope of ever understanding. Things and stuff. Medical equipment and robotics.
    However, as he padded across the icy tile floor wondering if he would be the first person he knew of to freeze to death in a naked and alone in a hospital room, he found small box of various garments in a cupboard near the front.
    Hospital pants and gowns did little to offer much protection, but they were still sealed and sanitary. He threw on several sets of both followed by two pairs of non-slip socks that he found in the bottom of the box.
    All in all, the layers made him look a touch ridiculous, but they at least helped him feel more like a person and less like a meat popsicle.
    Hesitantly, he exited out the only door in the room and, despite any creeping thoughts of monsters or aliens waiting to spring, he found himself in a perfectly ordinary hallway. There were a number of doors in either direction and the hall to the right curved out of sight a couple dozen yards away but that was it. With the exception of a small plastic sign, there was nothing that stood out.

<---                     Assembly

<---  WetWear Integration 

Recovery

Security                      -->

Management               -->

    Following the sign, the man made his way down the right hall.

    Many of the doors that he passed were labeled with letters and numbers. "AH-321" and "AH-322" went up sequentially on one side while "R-5" dropped down to "R-1" before he reached the curve in the hall. Just around the bend, a heavy set door that stood out with its black and yellow striped frame and "SECURITY - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" blazoned in small, blocky letters stood out from the others he'd walked by.

    Only one problem...

    There was no door handle.

    The man walked up to the door and simply stared at it. How was he supposed to open it? There was no handle or any other obvious means to pry it open. The door itself was set into the door frame and was likely made of heavier stuff than he had in him. What was he supposed to do?

    He glanced around the empty, seemingly endless hall to no effect. There didn't seem to be anyone around.

    "Hello?" he called out in vain.

    No one answered.

    It was then that he saw the security panel set into the wall. It was slim and recessed into the metal, but stood out by its jet black coloring and small, red LED that glew brightly even in the fluorescent glare of the hall.

    And, as he stared at it wondering what even to DO with this knowledge, he watched as the red LED turned green with a soft chime. The door slide open with a woosh and inside a bay of computer monitors lit up.