Among the Stars

Whether it was a faulty comm relay or a disintegrating airlock lining, something always went wrong in space. In my specific case, my cryo container started emitting false signals to the bridge, indicating that my engineered sleep had ended and my “bed” needed to be cleaned. Cryopods were cleaned with a special mix of chemicals that Yumi referred to as “Space Agent Orange.” The stuff killed me instantly. I didn’t feel it at all. 

As I gazed back at my corpse, greying slightly due to the fog-like substance that surrounded it, I began to wonder what to do with myself. Twenty or so colleagues lay sleeping beside me, dead to the world for the next hundred and fifty or so Sol years. The embryonic pods, located in the adjacent bay wouldn’t start operating for another two hundred. I had died, from my estimate, roughly halfway between Earth and Alpha Centauri.

For the next few hours, I roamed the desolate space station, which looked identical to how we had left it over two centuries ago. Space is a funny thing, isn’t it? On Earth, our equipment would have rusted, gotten dusty, or warped. Yet here, lost in space, it was preserved like it was new. I visited my small, somewhat messy chamber on the lower decks. My notebook was left open to Sol date 2144, where I had written: 

Dear Seargent stupid, 

I hope you had a good sleep you lazy putz. By my estimate, you are about 400 years older than I am today. Just retire already. Anyway, I hope that the system is all that it's cracked up to be. Earth is probably dust by now so no going back. Also, ask Yumi out already will ya? It's been years — literally.

See you there, spaceman.

Sol 2144, 2132 hours

As I finished reading, I glanced around the chamber, not much bigger than a broom closet. Vintage 2000s-era NASA posters decorated the room in its entirety. My bed, adorned with possibly the worst colored sheets in the entire station, lay vacant. My bedside table, as it always did, was covered in books of all shapes and sizes. From space-faring manuals to Dune, it was a mini, messy library. My dad’s watch lay, somehow still ticking, where I had left it, alongside the honorary Newton’s Cradle I had received per my completion of the initiation program. As I went to pick up the watch, it phased through my fingers. Perhaps this was for the best. I left the room soon after. 

There was no life on the ship whatsoever. Even Marshmallow, the station cat, had been frozen in sleep despite the general disapproval of our commanding officer. I vaguely recall his husky voice berating our specialist: “Why in the absolute hell should we freeze a cat of all things? It’s going to die within a few years after we wake up anyway. What an absolute waist!” The vote regarding putting Marshy in cryo-sleep ended unsurprisingly with twenty-two for and one against, and thus, we froze the cat. Marshmallow’s legacy, despite the cat only being on the ship for a couple of months prior to being frozen, was evident across the ship, with various scratch marks on practically every surface. As I crossed the atrium, I noticed the cat’s signature on the doors to the cafeteria and decided, per Marshy’s seeming instructions, that this would be my next place to explore. 

I spent the next few years like this, wandering aimlessly through the ship, searching for meaning in space purgatory. I reflected, quite often, that the only fun thing about death would be seeing progression around you. People doing their jobs, living their lives, and then dying in due time. This was simply boring, floating around with nothing to do. Nothing moved besides the stars that floated past while our station progressed on its journey. I do have to admit, the view was wonderful. I spent days, or maybe it was decades, gazing out the windows of the observatory next to the bridge. Distant stars flickering in the abyss, accompanied by the occasional floating rock.  It was beautifully lonely.

One day, while I was making my way over to the observatory, the light above the door leading to the biosphere was flashing a deep green. I had forgotten all about this. Alyx, the botanist, had told me that roughly three-quarters into our journey, and prior to the activation of the embryonic cells, the biosphere would commence an operation spanning up and till the time we woke up. Essentially, I was witnessing the start of the first-ever ecosystem, produced by humans, in space. The idea behind it was that we would have farm-grown food on our ship in case there was a contamination in our frozen food supply prior to getting to our destination. Having the ecosystem on board would also kickstart farming on our new home.

For another century or so, I was captivated by the artificial habitat. Sprinklers spanning half of a mile in each direction watered a variety of flora. Trees grew to heights that threatened the artificial sky above. Corn and squash grew until it was harvested by farming automatons manufactured by a company probably long bankrupt and gone. These lifeless creatures would deposit their findings in pools of a jelly-like substance called Spero that would preserve the harvested items for years to come. Generations of birds, hatched artificially, came and went, populating the ceiling. Bees and other pollinators swarmed and flew in a constant orbit of the biosphere. It was beautiful, and it was alive.

A forest surrounds me now, floating in desolate space. In twenty years, the rest of the crew will wake up, and in thirty, the embryonic pods will start functioning, giving life to a new generation of humans; a generation that will never know Earth as we did. Yumi and the rest of the crew will find my skeleton in its chamber, frozen in time. And all the while, I’ll be here, in the forest, among the stars.