Counting to Sleep

Seventy two. Forty Eight. Nine. When discussing space travel, A lot of numbers get thrown around. Seventy Two percent, for example, is the statistical likelihood of waking up from stasis. Forty Eight is the number of vaccinations and preparatory formulas injected into a person’s bloodstream before stasis. Nine is the number of life support systems required to maintain stasis during the 159,140 earth-day journey to a place where the seeds of humanity were to be replanted.

By the time Jerod began the reanimation cycle in the new world, everyone he had ever known would have been dead for around four hundred years. Everyone except his mothers and his little brother. He mushed his protein around on his plate with his fork, deliberately ignoring the conversation at the dinner table. Just like Mum and Momma had ignored his recent protests about being stuffed in a pod and launched into the vacuum of space both years and miles away from the familiarity of earth and its inhabitants with a vague hope of waking up.

“Please do not waste your rations, Jerod. Those calories are essential for brain function.” Mum chided. Momma stopped mid-sentence and leveled a reproachful gaze at Jerod.

“So? My brain function is going to be completely shut down 34 hours from now. What does it matter if I miss a few calories?”

Mum Sighed, “Really Jerod? What a ridiculous comment. It isn’t as if you only have 34 hours left to live.”

“It is, though. They say in stasis you don’t dream. That you’re basically dead.”

“We’re going to be dead?” Collin cried.

“Nice Jerod.” Momma growled, reaching across the table to hold Collin’s hand. “No baby, we won’t be dead. Only sleeping.”

“I don’t want to be dead!” Collin moaned, the water works coming in hard. Mum got up from the table to pick up Collin and hug him. He buried his face in her loose hair, wiping his runny nose with the back of his hand. Indifferent to the slime contaminating her clothes, she took him into their shared bunk room, Shushing him as she rubbed his back.

Once they were out of the room, Momma turned her head to Jerod. He stared at his plate, unable to ignore the burning rays of her disapproval.

“You know, if you were so against it, why did you take the exam, huh? You carried on for months freshman year about international cooperation and population distribution like it was the only subject in the world.”

When Jerod didn’t answer, she reached between them and snatched the fork out of his hand, slamming it on the table.

“Look at me when I talk to you, Jerod.”

He raised his chin to glare at Momma.

“You could have skipped the test, it wasn’t mandatory. You could have failed it. But you didn’t. You were the first in your class to register. You scored in the top one percent. You scored better than your mother, and she is an accredited neurostasis engineer. You put effort and pride into your exam Jerod, which implies you wanted to be eligible for resettlement. And yet you are sitting here behaving like someone with a quarter of your IQ and less maturity than your six-year-old brother.”

“I took the test before I knew they were actually going to send people.”

“That is awfully naïve, son. You have sat at this table listening to your mother and I prepare the tech necessary for this journey. We work for the Genesis project, which has been livestreaming their progress for eight years. It was never a matter of if, but when, as you are well aware.”

“Maybe I didn’t think it would be now. Maybe I didn’t know I wouldn’t even be done with school, or that my friends are all morons and none of them would even prequalify.”

Momma’s mouth made an “o” as she understood the root of Jerod’s upset.

“None of them?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“Nobody I know.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. You have mum. You aren’t going into stasis alone.”

Momma grabbed his hand, squeezing gently. “My dear brilliant boy, you are not, nor have you ever been, alone. Mum will be with you. I will be. Collin will be. All of us are going together.”

“Statistically speaking, one of the four of us will not wake up.”

A bittersweet smile touched momma’s lips. “Sometimes it really sucks to be good at math, huh?”

Tears slipped down Jerod’s cheeks, the anger that served as a dam giving way to sorrow and fear.

“It is acceptable to grieve, son. You are leaving a lot behind. But if you look forward, you’ll see how much you are going to accomplish. How much you will experience. How much you will give to the missions that follow behind us.”

“If the life support systems don’t fail. If I don’t react to the vaccines. If my brain responds to reanimation. If yours does. If our ship isn’t struck by debris, or the radiation shielding doesn’t fail. If the fuel cycling doesn’t fail. If we don’t blow up at launch. If the trajectory calculation isn’t off and we don’t end up miles off course.”

“You are afraid of all that? And have you discussed this with your psychologist?”

“I know how to pass a psych evaluation, Momma.”

“There is a difference between passing for the record, and truly being fit for travel. I wonder if…”

She paused when Mum came back in the room and retook her seat at the table.

“I got him to sleep, thankfully.” She met Jerod’s eyes, “Dear one, please don’t scare your little brother like that. His mental capacity is not developed enough to understand the difference between theoretical fear and statistical certainty. He thinks we are going to flush him down the toilet like his goldfish once we reach the settlement. I would appreciate if you comforted him in the morning, please.”

Momma rubbed Mum’s arm. “My love, our preoccupation with launch has distracted us from our son. His behavior these past few weeks has been less stereotypical teenage rebellion, and more legitimate anxiety.”

Mum tilted her head, searching Jerod’s face.

“Are you afraid of dying in stasis?”

A pit opened up in Jerod’s stomach. He hadn’t actually said it out loud before. It felt like a betrayal to Mum. It was her job, after all, to ensure the safe preservation of brain function during stasis. She had designed one of the nine life support systems. He nodded.

“Oh, well that is logical. The statistics Genesis streams are overtly dramatic. But darling, you realize those statistics are the results of primates don’t you? And the younger you are the higher your percentage of successful reanimation are.”

“They are?”

“Absolutely. In the trials, the only reanimation failures were in females over forty and males over fifty-five. One hundred percent of the subjects under twenty years old were reanimated with zero diminished capacity. The Genesis board would not agree to launch until we reached perfect margins in young adults.” Mum easily rattled off the numbers, so familiar that she could probably have repeated them in her sleep. Momma gave her a look that Jerod didn’t understand, but said nothing.

The pain in his stomach eased a bit, knowing with a measure of certainty he was going to wake up. Sure, it was going to be really far from home. But, like Momma said, his friends could test again, right? For all he knew, Gemma and Toram might make the next mission. Despite his comment that they were morons, they were actually not that much less intelligent than him.

“I’m going to go to bed.” He said, kissing each of his mother’s on the cheek before he went.

***

Thirty Three. That’s how many hours it had been since Mum had eased his stress about Stasis. He had a ‘random’ psyche check this morning, likely courtesy of Momma. The Psychologist had asked him a lot of really pointed questions about what he expected of the stasis initiation, launch, and the accuracy of the on-board navigation systems. There was nothing subtle about it at all, but once the conversation was over, he felt really good about day zero.

The settlement hadn’t been named yet. After a lot of on-air conversations between the board, the settlers, and the general population of earth, it was decided that the first people to touch it should get naming rights. A lot of decisions were driven by media polls lately. It was the overall cooperative feel of Genesis that made people want to hear each other out, a historic first.

Toram visited him before he started his injections. He only had about five minutes, and they only got to talk through comms and a six-inch sheet of plexiglass. He asked about Gemma, but Toram said that she hadn’t been able to make it past the checkpoint because her temperature had been 99.1°. Now that there were active pods on sight, protocols were stricter than ever.

 Right before he left, Toram said, “I’m going to miss you man. It’s going to be really weird to go the rest of my life knowing you’re up there sleeping, and I’m not going to get to talk to you or anything but you’ll always be there.”

“You aren’t going to try again? You could end up sleeping up there too.”

“Irregular sinus rhythm. I didn’t pass physicals.”

“You never said.”

Toram shrugged, “No point. I knew you were going to make it, man. Don’t feel bad or anything. I’m glad you’re going. Got to send the best and the brightest, right? Even if it is just a ship full of know-it-alls.”

They laughed. But then the lab tech came to start his IV, and it was time to go into the pod. That was it. He wouldn’t see anyone again.

Jerod started to cry. Not blubbering, just quiet tears. He looked away from the tech, who he couldn’t identify underneath all the sterile gear.

“It’s okay, most people feel a bit overwhelmed right about now. Nothing to worry about, no need to hide it from me.” Her voice sounded mechanical. It was coming from coms inside her mask. “little poke,” she said, inserting the needle into his hand.

She flushed the line with saline, the pulled a tray over with several syringes on it.

“Okay, here we go. You ready?”

“Now?”

She chuckled. “I know, everyone expects there to be a little ceremony right? Genesis livestreaming everything the way they have has put a lot of theatre on it. But sweet pea, you are my thirty-eighth stasis prep today, and I have about a hundred more to do by the end of the day. I kind of have a rhythm going, you know? But if you change your mind, you can ask me to stop okay? We can stop all the way up to the last serum, that’s the one that puts you under. You say the word.” She held the syringe away from his arm, waiting on his response.

“No, don’t stop. Lets go. I guess the hype made me think there was more to it.”

“Okay.” She nodded, then injected the first vail. “This one is basic system preservation. Keeps your organs going full steam ahead.”

“You don’t have to tell me what each one does. Can you just talk to me?”

“Sure, sure.” She pushed the plunger of the second syringe one milliliter line at a time.

“So who is going with you?” she asked, paying close attention to her work.

“My moms and my little brother.”

“Nice. Family all together. That’s always nice to see.” Finally empty, she dropped the syringe into the sharps container and reached for the next.

“Yeah. It’s funny, but I got really worked up all week about the statistics. You now genesis had the primate numbers streaming, and I got it into my head that at seventy two percent, statistically one of my family members could fail to wake up.”

“Oh yeah, I don’t really know why they put such over simplified numbers up. I mean there are so many different factors that go into reanimation.” She carried on with the syringes while she talked. “Like you for example, statistically you will be completely fine. They haven’t had a single failure in your grouping.”

“Yeah, my mom told me the numbers when I was freaking out. She is actually the one who designed the neurological support system for the pods.”

“Dr. Fuentes? Dude, your mom is a rock star!” she reached for the final syringe as she talked.

 “I got to put her under first thing this morning. Pod one! She insisted on being first, since you know she is in the risk group. Made a whole speech and everything about risk versus reward. Man, she is so brave. Forty-six-point-five percent? Way to lead the way, right? It is so cool you got to see all that in the making.”

“What?”

“This one is going to make you dizzy, but that’s totally normal, okay. You might feel a slight burning sensation, but this is the last one.” She pushed the plunger.

“No I…” Jerod felt swept underwater. The technician’s mask blurred, and Jerod's eyes closed of their own volition.

A lot of numbers get thrown around when discussing space travel. Jerod thought.