That was totally Children's Circle, @Adetokunbo 9. What you're remembering is the waking process from the Deep Sleep Tubes. We sleep for light years before getting defrosted and installed.

My Children's Circle had a Mayan theme. All the revival pods had a thick stone trapezoidal design. The floors were stone and I can still remember how cold it was on my bare feet. It gives me chills even now to think about it. And they dressed all the newly awakened in Mayan togas or whatever, and all the kids would make fun of them when they first woke up, walking around like new-born babies, looking at everything like it was the very first time. Ha!

The Revival Pods ring a bell, @Maximum Bijan. But I thought those were just for the little caterpillars or Mexican jumping spider eggs that we'd all get at the beginning of the year. We'd hang the Revival Pods on the branches in the terrarium, then watch them all year till they hatched. But OMG I remember seeing a human face inside mine when it stretched open! That freaked me out so much I thought it was a dream.

Blimey! All this "waking" and "reviving" talk has unearthed my memories of the Sleep Canals! Any of you ladies and chaps remember them? Seems a few my Children's Circle mates and I got a bit cheeky one day and wandered off behind the curtains, where the sleeping pods get shunted around like train cars in the tube. A bit like being in a broken down amusement park ride, wot?

Those terrible little Gobelin beasts were hard at work, keeping the pods moving through, fishing out rubbish from the canals with their big sticks. Oh, my did we get lost -- I think we were wandering for a good two issues (29 and 30?) till Doctor Nite and the Catmancer finally rescued us. I'll bet they left us there so long just to teach us a lesson. Which certainly worked, because let me tell you we never wandered back into the Sleep Canals again.

The Bubble Room (sometimes referred to as The Tiny Bubble Room) is one of those pre-resuscitation stages, @Amelia Handpie. We start to regain consciousness while still in the stasis pods, and when they're stacked or stored in a big group it can look like you're surrounded by bubble wrap.

Ok but what about our "pods" in Children's Circle? When I meet people I get along with really well and feel like I've known for years, I feel they must have been in my pod -- that we were all in the same Children's Circle together. But could it be we went to different Children's Circles together instead?

Ok there are pods and then there are pods, as I'm sure you know, @Adetokunbo 9. But for people coming late to the thread:

1) Pods as the revival pods, or sleeping pods, or stasis pods - the devices that our consciousnesses are retrieved from before we're re-instantiated.

2) Pods as your cohort in Children's Circle. Like a family of Orca.

So, in terms of the second definition, at this point it's impossible to say if those people you connect with in a special way were necessarily part of your pod, or if they just share the same enculturated behaviors and programmed cues that you do because they were in Children's Circle at large (but not necessarily in attendance at the same meta-facility as you were).

Definitive identification of pod-mates is so far impossible, but it's certainly something I think we should continue to consider.

This really brings back memories. Although I remember another song, infinitely more sinister...or maybe it was just the little oddball group I was part of. You know, the three girls who dressed like Wednesday Addams?

We had a villanelle we would chant. I don't remember all of it, but it started with:

We sing of things somewhat uncouth.
Rhymes of goodness we cannot abide.
There's no use crying for wasted youth.

It was a rather morbid poem, now that I think about it.

Giant wheels turning in a desert. Two Anubis sitting aside a large stone stair case. The doors open, the light overwhelms me. I am new, I am complete.

I remember one time my teacher was teaching us how to molt our skin and everyone was having so much fun molting their skin and I was the only one who couldn't molt my skin. I remember crying as I sat with my teacher who was hand peeling my old skin off ,while all the other kids were playing games.

Once all my old skin was off, I ran to go play with the other kids and they laughed ,because I had a tail of skin stuck to my foot. Good times.

Ava Elisabeth