Space spasas. It's always the same dream. Oh, I didn't know at
the time that I'd miss it. I wanted meaning Now I have longing.
My parents tried to talk me out of this, my friends too. I
wouldn't listen. I never did. I was so distant. I thought I
knew, I thought I wanted this. Now the finality of the decision is
eating away of my subconscious So I just dreamed the same dream on repeat.
The farmhouse, first, my childhood, then the move to Mars. I
was so excited, But as I got older, I wanted more, and
I realized to git more, I had to go January twenty fourth, twenty
one thirty two, cry of cycle completely initiating. Please try to relax.
Your body is adjusting to the chemcom leaving your system. You may feel disoriented.
Can you confirm that you hear me? The head fog is the worst.
You feel scrambled. It's not like the two three day long tests back
on Mars or Earth. This was four years of brio going almost the speed
of light. It feels like shit. Oh, you've confirmed that you hear
me? I hear you. What day is it? The current date is
January twenty fourth twenty one thirty two time slip may apply due to relativity.
Would you like me to explain? Did we pass by any large planets or
singularities? As far as my systems can tell, we did not? Okay,
Well, how is your system? I am working at optimal speeds and
accuracy. Oh that's reassuring. How long do we get there? Kelly is
a cutting edge AI software. Closest thing you have to a friend up here.
As long as she's working right, I get to live. I have
to admit every time you lay down in the tube or cryo chamber, it
can't help wondering if you're ever gonna wake up. We are four years into
the six year trip to proximate Centaur. This is one of three cryo reset
points. Gotcha, remind me what this resets for? Complete system checks,
health and psychology check, and mission course and recorrection check. You can't do
that while I'm asleeping. No, your body isn't in a natural state win
in cryo. The cryo compound can Come eighteen is designed to lower your body's
color need as well as slow the metabolic process. I can only imagine what's
in that compound. Cryo compound can Come eighteen is trademarked under the Elician Astro
Solutions Company in twenty and eighteen. Oh yeah, sound safe. Just as
shown, the compound has tested at eighty nine percent success rate. All right,
well, where do we start? The system will have to do a
full stress test. Would you like to initiate? Yeah, might as well.
Uh, let's get started. Hey, could I get a coffee?
First? Coffee is being dispensed. Dispensed, you don't have a way to
bring it to me, Kelly, what's that all about? I thought we
were on our big, fancy spaceship. My mechanized units are unable to be
deployed until the third cryo checkpoint. Yeah, yeah, I gotta conserve energy,
right, energy consumption is not a concern. The robotic arms and mechanized
units are unable to be restowed once deployed, making treble dangerous. It is
safety part of POLES section seed line thirty two h. Of course I must
have missed that when I tried to read that giant manual. Would you like
me to read it to you? That would be like putting me back into
cryo. Thanks, but no, thanks, Your beverage is deplored. You
will find the heated canister and the dispense reach you to You're right, can
you walk? Yeah? I think so, let's try. That's not bad,
Kelly, did you make this to yourself? I dispensed it from your
food stores. You have two hundred pounds of coffee grounds fresh from the hills
of Columbia. The coffee grounds were cloned in the southern quadrant of the motors
City Nexus, so test tube beans awesome. When we realized the Earth was
dying, we had to start growing more food on Mars. Mars not having
an atmosphere doesn't do very well in the way of pollination or bees, so
almost every plant is a clone. The animals all clones. We were been
cloning our own viruses to fight each other in a desperate attempt for immortality.
So we used our sickness to damn near kill Earth, and then we brought
it to Mars. What could go wrong? Right? All right, let's
get this going full system scan, solar telemetry and relaying messaging. Wait,
is there any messages I should know about? You have one voicemail? Shall
I play it? Might as well? Hey, Steve, it's Leonard.
How you're doing? All right? Would love to talk to you about that
idea I proposed, well, asks me, when you can? That's really
odd? Shall I archive this? Sure? What the hell would you want
to talk about? I'm already on his mission. Can you check for a
fragmentation? This can't be right checking. There is a fragmentation anomaly in the
storage drives. Shall I repair? Yeah, go ahead, and we don't
need anything else messing up because of it. Purging anomaly? Oh god,
Oh my head, Ah god, god, my head. Are you all
right, Stephen? I think so. I have an intense headache. Oh
god. I will pause the purge and dispense medication. All right. Thank
you must have been the coffee. You find ways to amuse yourself out here.
You have to the endless ocean of stars, all staring back at you,
seem indifferent, the realization that you don't matter at all. It's a
constant fixture in the backdrop of black hopelessness. It must be what a drop
of water feels like like in an ocean. The size and scope of it
defeats us. All right, how's it looking? Status update? All systems
are out of sync by one percent as per dilation. That's acceptable, and
we don't have any real gravity other than our centerfuge out here to keep us
in line. So it makes sense. How's the telemetry are we tracking?
All right? Telemetry is often no deviations from course and our cloud of God
particles is still there, right, not like it's gonna take off on us.
The particle cloud is there and sensors reported increase in size by one point
two percent. That's interesting. Why is that unknown? Not enough data to
resolve? That's all right, Kelly. We have a bigger mystery here.
What is this tube of goo? Is this dinner? Meal? Two?
Is turkey, green beans, carrots and apple sauce? Uh, it's all
in one tube? Am I missing something here? The meal is condensed to
say, stay Stephen, Oh, you spoil me. I do not understand
it. Said joke, Kelly, Man, They've really screwed you over on
humor. This is gonna be a long drive if you can't laugh at any
of my jokes. Apology, Stephen. I can search for a software to
help me understand humor. There's an idea. Let me know what you find.
I will update you on the next cryo reset. I will be applying
corrections to the dilation to keep us on course. Yeah, I guess I'll
be back in the fish tank in the next eight hours. Huh. The
cryostation is nearly reseat that can come is supplied to last another nine months.
Okay, just don't hit anything, Stephen. The telemetry won't allow me to
make mistakes or allowed for accidental collisions. So you say, all right,
well, I'm gonna go watch a movie and send an email off. Then
I'll start winding down for the tube. Which film should I load for you?
I don't know. Surprise me. I just want to watch something.
Maybe I'll dream about it. It'll be a nice change. I will load
your collection. I spent that evening watching films from the twentieth century classics.
These folks are long gone, and it's amazing how much they got right and
how much they missed the mark. We could travel great distances in space,
but we didn't have any flying cars at home. Mars didn't have alien ruins
on it, or so they say. AI wasn't a deadly killing machine of
the future. We relied on it. Some said it was our next step
in evolution. I wonder if Charles Darwin would have ever guessed that one.
Are you comfortable, Stephen, Well, I'm as comfortable as I think I'm
going to get. I will begin the sedative. You will feel light hitted
at first. Yeah, yeah, I know. I feel like I'm following,
etc. So forth, I'll be all right, Kelly, sleep well,
Stephen, I will see you in nine months. I'll see you then,
hopefully, and the sleep begins again. Down and down I go the
spiral some call it. You fade to black at first, and there's a
slight feeling of panic, you feel helpless, and then you don't feel anything.
You can still hear for a little while, but what's there to hear?
The deafening sound of silence. We're putting together a mission to explore the
particle cloud. You're familiar with it, right, yeah. I've been obsessed
with the topic since I saw the first news Reford. Awesome, Hey man,
we're obsessed too. We want to send a guy to study it first
hand. You're a physicist, right yeah. I'm also a seventh rank pilot.
I could have went further, but I'm not interested in military flying to
want to fight in space. I don't blame you. This is going to
be a long term mission though, eight years. If nothing goes wrong,
that's round trip. Yeah, I figured it was. I'm okay with being
alone. Yeah, but it's eight years. That's a good stint. I
mean you'll be asleep for most of the part, but still. Yeah,
how's that technology working? Last I heard it was spotty. We have made
incredible leaps in the field. We can keep you under for a year at
a time, but we don't. We do about eight to nine month sleep
cycles with full reset. So that's the trick. Huh. Give the body
a few days of awake and then sleep it again to reduce the risk of
long term damage to the brain and body. I see that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, I thought you'd liked that. So what do you think? Do
you want to make another giant leap for mankind? Yeah? Get it.
I think the guy that walked on the moon I thought it was funny.
Ah, I must have missed him. I'll come back in nine months.
Did I dream that voice build and bi