(Found) sci fi short..true bath-pharaoh mask-robot mime-gene engineered mice-space station

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Danny McG

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hello all. back in early eighties in some random sci fi anthology. basic outline is Earth all frozen and deserted. A man wakes up as he is being moved from a regen pod to a rescus slab. he is being dragged by countless generations of bio engineered slave mice who keep dying from his body heat blasting them and others jostling to take their place on the haulage cords. once he is on the slab lots of tubes and wires connect as he comes to full awareness. at this point he looks at his body and realised THIS TIME he's almost full size. he looks at badly cracked weather dome above his roof and notes that he must still be at True Bath. A pharaoh mask (?) with traditional protruding tongue lowers onto his face and interconnects with his nerves to transmit some kind of warning. then he gets up and moved to window and looks upon the frozen wasteland. instantly his body temp attracts a 'tourist' who comes closer but unfortunately just as he sounds (?) and the tourist is killed by a wave of nostalgia. the death sets off alarms in massive Earth monitoring space station and the A I , named as Dr Mobious, hastily dispatches a snatch squad.the A I hurriedly checks it's systems and wipes out the rogue worm security programme that allowed this regen without sounding the alarm. back on Earth the man, now identified as Nicholas, is warned by a robot mime about the squad hurtling down . they arrive too late as he is already moving back through time. anyone ever read this? I was told on another site some years ago that this weird short was actually expanded into a full book and the short formed opening chapter. however my correspondent couldn't name it either. he stated it was in a yellow cover "like Gollancz dude"
 
further to this. the protoganist named Nicholas had the surname Dean or Eden or Dene
 
just remembered something else that may jog someone's memory - the man first starts to revive and croaks out "My pipe, my drum, my fiddlers three!" in a sarcastic voice to the automated rescus slab. Think hard my brothers
 
These seem like a lot of details that would make it relatively easy to find, but I came up empty. Your description is a little bit confused, however -- is there anything you can do to clarify your first post? It might help someone else to recognize it.

Would "Gollancz" be referring to the publisher? (It seems like they used yellow covers.)
 
give me a day or so and I'll try for a rewrite with maybe bullet points etc. re the book cover ; I think he meant he had saw the short story expanded into a full novel in (what he thought) was a gollancz cover. however that was a good while ago and the emails from that site are long gone. i don't think i can log into there anymore as passwords and even my username have been lost
 
Same question as this one at scifi.stackexchange.com? Some questions that might trigger additional details:

1) Are "regen pod" and "rescus slab" terms from the story itself?
2) What makes the robots mimes?
3) Why are the mice laboring to revive this guy?
4) Why does his body heat kill the mice?
5) What does it mean to "sound"? Is the "tourist" literally described as dying from nostalgia?
6) Has this guy been revived before, possibly in another body? If not, what is the significance of "THIS TIME"?
7) How is he able to move through time? Where/when does he go?
 
indeed yes that was me as Danny3414 a good while ago
1) thinking hard the story said it fully -regeneration pod. however it then just said subsequently that he was 'laid on the slab to complete the rescusitation process' and tubes and wires snaked across his body
 
2) the story just said a 'robot mime' emerged to warn him - no further explanation given
3) am fairly certain the story said they were gene modified slave mice carrying out their programmed function
4)no explanation give regarding the body heat -either the mice very adapted to the frozen earth or the body heat is massive when coming out of a regeneration pod
 
5) the story just said ' he sounded' but didn't explain. then the tourist was hit by a wave of pure nostalgia and died instantly
 
6) no idea -it just said he realised he must be almost full size this time. it didn't state if this has happened previously
7) the story said "they were too late, he was already passing through time and out of their reach"
 
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