The Sleep

Love takes many forms.

            The sleep-pod was covered in dust and frozen water. Under the dust and ice inside the sleep-pod slept the pathfinder; John Smith, Captain of the extra-solar ship New Hope. He was the ship’s only inhabitant. The green light on the pod was on showing that he was in good health.

            His wife, son and daughter had slept in similar pods on Earth waiting for him to return.

            Earth Command had written him off as dead when the computer of New Hope reported the hull breach three thousand years earlier. The mission was supposed to be a thirty-year journey at near light speed to a promising star called Dextus 315. There he would set up a transmitter that allowed fast time travel, folded space and instant movement across the stars. A created worm hole that let mankind slowly expand throughout the galaxy. Dextus 315 was now named New Perth and had been colonized two thousand eight hundred years earlier.

            The small rock that had torn through the ship and pushed New Hope deep into the dark was part of the dust laying on the sleep-pod and about the room of the hardened sleep chamber.

            Floating dead, far from light and energy the computer had decided that waking John Smith would be catastrophic to his psychological wellbeing. He could not leave the sleep-pod if awake and once woke, the computer could not put him back to sleep. The ship concluded that letting his sleep, even if forever, was the better option. It knew that eventually it would lose power and both of them would cease function.

            The ship woke itself every fifty years to check that he was ok and that operations were normal. It nodded to itself that other than the hole in the side of the main deck, all was functional. After year three-hundred the computer began to talk with itself during the five days it was awake.

            At year nine hundred-fifty it fell in love with her captain.

It was now mission year three thousand fifty and the ship woke to run diagnostics. Hope sighed as she read the data and her external cameras watched the inevitable union with the huge chunk of rock that would destroy her as the moved inbound toward some alien solar system Earth did not have in her files.

Animated systems started and she walked around the room and looked down at the John lying asleep. “I love you,” she said. She leaned over his coffin and sighed.

            His arms were across his chest with his eyes closed.

            “I have dreamed of you for so many years, John. I wish I could kiss you and wake you like the girl in the story.” She giggled and added, “Of course reversed. I am a girl and you are a boy.”

            Alarms sounded.

            She smiled as she looked about herself, wounded and damaged. Hope whispered, “I wish I could kiss you and wake you like my prince charming and we could be together always.”

The alarm grew louder and Hope lay across his sleepy coffin wishing with all her processing power that she could just be with him. “I love you so much, John.”

She had dreamed so many times of him opening his eyes and looking at her and reaching up to embrace her. Hope knew her systems were damaged somehow and that her core data was corrupted in a way. She knew she could not feel or love or ever touch John Smith. But as they were to arrive at the end of their long journey together, she wished it.

            Animated tears fell from her face and she stared at him sleeping. As the alarm warned she closed her eyes and lay atop him separated by the thick material of the sleep-pod.

 

            *** I do not know whether to go for the emotional impact of them dying together or to have some alien species or even humanity save the two?

            If they die together, I’d have her crying and staring at his face and his eyes would open to see her through the dirty window of the pod. His lips would whisper. And she would know that he loved her also.  
            If I save them?

Reviews

[Jack O]

I don't tend to edit myself very much. I hate how this place makes you delete something to change it. Why cannot I just add to a posted piece?

Am I missing something?

[Rosie Brooklin]

Kill them! I prefer to go or the bleak shock factor in my stories. But this was very well done. It could use a little proofreading, however. I enjoyed it, regardless!