The Marathon wiki

Lore

Humans in cryosleep aboard the UESC Marathon.

"It's not sleep. You dream when you're asleep. In a cryopod, you're closer to death than sleep."

— DBRY

Cryogenics, sometimes referred to as cryogenic stasis, cryogenic suspension, cryostasis, cryogenic sleep, cryosleep or simply cryo, was an advanced technology allowing a person to be held in a near-death state of suspended animation at sub-zero temperatures for hundreds of years. The largest and longest-duration use of cryotechnology was for Project Marathon, when 24,000 colonists were placed into cryosleep, supported by 6,000 support staff on alternating wake/sleep cycles.

Function

This section is a stub. You can help CyberAcme by expanding it.

While frozen, bodies are subjected to electrical myostimulation to prevent muscle atrophy.

Thawing

Those coming out of cryosleep regularly experienced peripheral nerve damage, persistent nausea, temporal disorientation, and sensory overload. Collectively these symptoms were known as cryo fog.

Feelings of physical illness were expected to pass within 24-48 hours. Feelings of perpetual cold lasted anywhere from 6-8 weeks. Many who were successfully thawed experienced feelings of temporal misorientation, where they perceived that no time had passed since they were frozen, despite (in some cases) centuries elapsing while they were in stasis. Instances of cryocognitive degeneration were sometimes reported, with some indication that successive wake/sleep cycles increased the severity of this degeneration, leading to memory and personality decay.

Many who were successfully revived from cryosleep after the extended duration of the Marathon expedition experienced behavioral problem, including outlier cases of extreme aggression, and were required to go through a series of reintegration protocols before resuming normal functions.

History

This section is a stub. You can help CyberAcme by expanding it.

Colonists aboard the UESC Marathon were categorized into different "cohorts" based on their operational importance, with less important individuals undergoing fewer wake cycles while mission critical personnel were cycled more frequently.

• Minimal Cycle Cohort - Wake-sleep cycle: 150 Earth years, tissue integrity cycle: 50 Earth years
• Moderate Cycle Cohort - Wake-sleep cycle: 84 Earth years, tissue integrity cycle: 42 Earth years
• Contingent Generational Cohort - Wake-sleep cycle: 15 Earth years, tissue integrity cycle: 15 Earth years (no return to cryosleep after reanimation)
• [REDACTED] Cohort - Implied to be individuals deceased due to cryo failure, remains donated to cryo research efforts

Upon reaching Tau Ceti, colonists were reanimated from cryo in staggered waves. Security incidents pertaining to post-cryo behavioral problems went more smoothly with each wave, as science and security gathered data about how best to deal with outlier cases of chaotic and aggressive behavior.

Gallery

• 

  Rows of humans in cryosleep aboard the Marathon.

Classic

• 

  A Sub-Zero Cryo Storage Unit from the original Marathon (1994).

Appearances

• Marathon (1994) (First appearance)
• Marathon (2026)