From the grayscale silence a man awoke. Like everybody else, he was sealed in a private dome of cold glass, itself wrapped in thick aluminium. With the most delicate fingers and toes he explored the darkness, feeling the pinch of the corners, the ceiling's curve, ridges in the floor.
The dome was cramped; he could only turn around inside it by pulling his knees up to his face and pivoting, with his feet. He realised he was naked. And the coldness of his dome, his egg, absorbed most of his sensations. He tried to call 'Hello', but the sound merely spun around in vortices.
Gravity gave a sense of what was up and what was down. Downwards on the floor, he ran his right finger across the ridge, where there might be – and where there was – an opening. Pushing at the hatch, also made of glass, he thought it was slightly springy, like a tyre. Another illusion, another illusion.
The dome was officially a 'dewar', according to a bold sticker on the outer shell. The moon now shone through slits in the warehouse walls, giving some clues about the world around. Dewars, he remembered, had first been designed for the preservation of small organic matter: moss, sperm, collagen, or even brain tissue. Put the matter in the glass chamber, pump it full of liquid nitrogen, and quickly it becomes so cold that effectively all life within stops. He knew where he was: how he arrived there and why he had awoken remained unanswered.