Each stasis chamber was a tall, thin shape made up of two halves of a cylinder: the front half that faced Daniel was diamondglass and the back half was some type of metal.
At first, the chambers looked similar to every other he'd seen before.
But, on closer inspection, Daniel saw a key difference: these cryos were beautiful.
In his experience, making a “pretty" stasis chamber was like building an aesthetically-pleasing garbage can -- no one cared enough to try.
And, in this case, whoever made the top two-thirds of the chambers seemed to agree; sterile and dull, the upper section was perfectly smooth, with no markings of any kind.
But the metal that made up the back half of of the cylinder's base – at least among the few chambers he could make out clearly in the fog – was different.
It was royal blue and had been masterfully sculpted.
The metal resembled splashing liquid turned solid, like a fountain that had been spraying in all directions but then stopped moving.
Each chamber's base was similar and subtly different. They gave off the impression that the cryos had been surfacing from a lake and were suddenly flash frozen.
It was a nice effect.
The work gave Daniel pause. Whoever made the station had put time and effort into their designs – or at least had programmed a cloud to put time and effort into their designs.
If they care enough to make cryos look nice, why not spend a little time making the Tour Guide work right?
That's always the case with technology isn't it? Hardware that was designed to last for decades; software that barely lasts a year...
Try six minutes :-P
Uh, Daniel, maybe they were suddenly flash frozen as they surfaced from a lake. I have a very bad feeling about this.