Open Writing

As Mike Sargeson’s tour of duty was coming to an
end, the massive brain that controlled the ship was
preparing the final group of five sleepers to take over.
Already the individual sleep cells were being activated,
their occupants slowly rising up from the unimaginable
depths of cryosleep, up through the layers of induced
unconsciousness from the near-death state in which they
and their companions traveled through space.

Temperatures were rising, respiration rates were slowly
increasing, and fluids were beginning to move through
bodies long inactive.

Once the sleeper’s alpha wave patterns reached a level
approximating normal sleep, they were held there for
thirty minutes, to give their bodies time to adjust to being
fully alive again. In cryosleep, the mind did not dream;
there was no need for it to do so, even if it were possible.
The bodies were suspended in a state barely
distinguishable from death, and they had to be awakened
slowly, by a careful and measured process.

Each of the five thousand sleepers had their own
personal compartment which was kept at a constant two
degrees Celsius, just above freezing, their blood replaced
by the life-sustaining, almost magical cryo-fluid which
circulated through their bodies at one-hundredth the rate
of normal blood. Their hearts beat only once every two
minutes or so, depending on their size and physical
condition, with a respiration rate to match. Hair and
fingernails did not grow, making the cryogenic sleep a
state even further from life than the early stages of death.
In this state, it had been theorized that the human body
could exist virtually indefinitely, never aging.

Of the five thousand souls on board the Asimov, almost
a thousand were children under the age of eighteen; all of
these had been asleep for the entire voyage, and would
remain that way, undisturbed, until they reached their
destination. Their vital signs, like all the others, were
constantly monitored by the computer, which had been
programmed to revive them at the first sign of
degeneration, either system-based or organic. So far, there
had been no such signs.

The duty shifts were for adults only, anyone who had
been aged eighteen or over at the beginning of the
voyage, nearly two hundred years before. They were
awakened in groups of five and rotated every calendar
month. Ship’s time had been set at the beginning of the
voyage to Greenwich Mean, and the cycles of day and
night were still observed in this place of endless dark.

The date was also scrupulously observed; calendars
spanning several thousand years had been programmed
into the computer before they had left earth. Holidays
were celebrated by those fortunate enough to be awake on
days such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, Hanukkah,
Mohammed’s birthday, July Fourth, Bastille Day, Nelson
Mandella’s birthday, Australia Day, New Zealand Day,
King’s Birthday and all the other days so special to
humanity.

Each adult was awakened approximately every sixty-
five years, and almost everyone served three one-month
shifts. At the present time, the ship’s calendar proclaimed
the date to be April twenty-third, in the year 2317; they
had left earth in November 2124, and had therefore been
traveling for one hundred and ninety-three years. In that
time, the ship had journeyed more than eleven light-years.
Allowing for deceleration, they were just one month, or a
mere fourteen point four billion kilometers from their
destination, the binary star system of Procyon A & B. It
was there, on the seventh planet orbiting the major star,
that they meant to establish the first human colony outside
the solar system.

* * *

Inside sleep center three, the bodies of the sleepers lie
stacked in their compartments, row upon row, one atop
the other like larvae in a hive wall. Each compartment, or
cell, is individually monitored by the computer, and the
vital signs of the sleepers are scrupulously regulated and
maintained. Any deviation from the norm, any
irregularity, is noted and acted upon immediately by the
ship’s brain.

There are five hundred sleepers in each center,
arranged in five layers of fifty. In the second row up from
the floor on the forward wall of SC3, in cell #64, the inert
form of Holly Louise Parmentier is beginning to show the
first signs of a return to consciousness. Respiration is up
to six inhalations per minute, her pulse is 24 and slowly
rising, and her body temperature, at present 14 degrees
Celsius, is also rising, as is the temperature of her cell.
Alpha brain wave patterns are becoming defined, their
activity increasing as her essence slowly rises from the
depths of darkness towards the world of light and life.

The fluid that has sustained her these past 64.3 years is
being drained from her body and replaced by her own
blood, which has been cleansed and purified, and stored
in a sterile compartment in her cell. Slowly, the process is
continued, as it is for four other sleepers in four other
compartments throughout the ship. Only one sleeper in
any center is awakened at any one time, for security
reasons no one seems to fully understand. The main
rationale seems to involve minimizing the risk of loss
through a malfunction, however unlikely that risk may be
thought to be.

After another twenty-five minutes, Holly Parmentier’s
vital signs are much closer to those of a fully conscious
person. Her temperature is up to 28 degrees Celsius, and
pulse and respiration about 70 percent normal. The IV in
her left arm continues to drip-feed her own blood as her
meticulously measured climb back up to the world of the
living is maintained.

In four of the other nine sleep centers, the other
members of Holly’s shift are also emerging from their 64plus
years of frozen slumber. In SC-4, third level,
compartment 116, Marc Taggart still sleeps; a medical
doctor by profession, he nevertheless is required to do his
share of shift work. All of the sleepers are skilled in a task
that is secondary to their main function, and Taggart is
no exception. No one, other than children under eighteen,
is exempt from the duty roster.

The soft lights of the sleep cell lie upon Taggart’s
features as his metabolism continues to stir. Since the ship
is not under acceleration, no artificial gravity exists on
board, and his body, like all the others, is held in place
not by restraints that might cause chafing and wear over
the decades of sleep, but by a jelly-like substance that
partially fills the chamber. Now, that cushioning gel is
being drained off, to be stored against the time when he
returns to sleep once again as SC-4-116 continues to
thaw. He has almost reached the level of normal sleep,
and will soon awaken.

In three of the other centers, each of the other shift
members is also moving towards wakefulness. SC-8-374,
Alain Tournier (chef, communications tech.), SC-6-142,
Jude Mboko (biologist, inventory expert), and SC-1-28,
Serge Volkin (fusion engineer, logistics), the designated
shift leader. All of these, the eldest, Volkin, being just
forty-one, are in objective terms well over two hundred
years old, and they sleep with a steadily diminishing
depth of unconsciousness as the magic of the cryosleep
unit brings them closer to full wakefulness.

After just fifty-seven minutes, the IV in Holly
Parmentier’s arm automatically detaches and is
retracted, its job done. Her body temperature is now 37.5
degrees Celsius; pulse is steady at 60 beats per minute.
She breathes deeply and steadily for the next thirty
minutes, her eyelids beginning to show the flutter of REM
sleep as the first images in more than 64 years filter
through from her subconscious. Slowly, her senses
become aware of the gelatinous residue clinging to her
body, and her dark lashes begin to flicker. Her head rolls
to one side, then back, and she opens her eyes.

* * *

Nausea -a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, as
if she was going to be sick -was Holly’s first sensation.
She tried to groan, failed, licked her lips with a dry tongue
and tried again. This time, a small sound escaped her; her
eyes, unfocused, saw only blurred shapes, indistinct in the
soft light of the sleep cell. Dimly remembering her
training, and the other two occasions on which she had
gone through this, she remained still, eyes closed, waiting
until the sick feeling passed. As before, it did so quickly,
and she began the routine self-examination.

First, she wiggled her toes; no unusual stiffness there,
the same for her feet and ankles. Next, her fingers, hands
and wrists; ditto. Then she gently rolled her head from
side to side, feeling the tendons in her neck crackle and
pop. Once again, the cryogenics had done their job, and
prevented any atrophying of her muscles during her long
sleep. The rough physical check done, she turned her
attention to the mental side of things.

She lay still and silently recited her personal
information: name, age, occupation, where she was, and
where she was going. The name of her first and only lover
popped unbidden into her head, and she flushed as she
recalled the circumstances; a clumsy, fumbling
experience in the woods behind her school in Baton
Rouge, at age seventeen. There had been no one else in
the intervening eleven years, mainly from choice. Not
because she hadn’t liked it (although she hadn’t, not
much), but because she thought (wrongly) that she wasn’t
attractive enough. She wasn’t beautiful; at least, not in the
accepted sense of twenty-second century fashion. Her lips
were a little too full, her nose a shade long, her body a bit
too voluptuous in an age of dedication to the chic ofthin.

This line of thought triggered Holly’s next reaction.
She reached across the cubicle, opened a small
compartment in its side and removed a disc approximately
fifteen centimeters in diameter. Touching a control on its
rear side caused the silvery dot at its center to expand to a
mirror in which she studied her reflection.

She paid scant attention to her nose and mouth,
instead singling out, correctly, her eyes as being her best
feature. They were a smoky shade of deep sea green, long
lashed and heavy-lidded, and required little or no makeup.

Holly took a handful of tissues from a recessed
compartment in the sleep cell and wiped the residue of gel
from her face. There must have been a minute course
change during the sleep period, probably more than one,
which had caused her to turn in her cell and her face to
momentarily touch the gel. The motion sensors would
have turned her back almost immediately, but the gel had
stayed on her face. It was a small thing, some might think
it unimportant and harmless but Holly found it
undignified, and she worked quickly to wipe it away.

She lay still for a few more minutes; then, when she
felt strong enough, she touched the control on her cell
wall that would begin the aeration of the sleep center. A
few minutes later, one side of the opaque plasti-glass
cleared, then slid aside. From her position in cell number
64, she was only one level up from the floor of the center.
Even if they had been under gravity, she could have
dropped to the deck unaided; now, in the weightless
environment, she simply rolled out of her cell and floated
naked beside it. Orienting herself, she faced the door at
one end; the center was oval-shaped, and there were doors
at either end of the ellipse.

Holly kicked off from the wall and drifted to the door;
touching the panel set to one side of it, she moved out of
the sleep center, leaving the other 499 sleepers as she
made her way to the showers to wash away the goop.
After that, she would allow herself the luxury of a good,
long bath. And after that, she thought, she just might
begin to feel human again. Behind her in the sleep center,
the door slid shut, and the air was evacuated from the
room; blissfully unaware, the sleepers slept on in the
vacuum, undisturbed.

* * *

The warm water, mixed with a precise measure of
liquid soap and antibacterial solution, and issuing from
half a dozen recessed nozzles, played over Holly’s body
as she stood in the opaque cylinder they called the Shower
Tower. At the touch of another control, the water changed
to a clear spray and washed away, with the soap, the
accumulated grime of more than sixty-four years. Holly
smiled as she recalled the joke they had all told to death
over the first two shifts. We all have a shower every sixty-
four years, whether we need one or not.

Holly went through this cycle three times; then, when
she felt clean, she stepped from the tower and crossed the
room to the deep, rectangular Japanese-style spa bath set
into the floor. Slowly, luxuriously, she lowered herself
into the warm, swirling water until she sat on the bottom,
and only her head was above the surface. Then she lay
back, spread her arms and legs, and allowed herself to
float in the semi-weightless ambiance of the spinning
room.

The room was an ingenious contrivance by which
Holly and the others were able to take showers and baths
in a weightless environment. When she had entered the
shower room, she had activated the spin, which caused
the room to rotate on its vertical axis at a sedate speed.
The resulting centrifugal force produced an artificial
gravity of 0.3 gee, without which the bath and shower
would have been impossible. The spin was only imparted
when the room was in use; afterwards, the water was
drained off, purified, and stored for the next bather.

Only when her skin began to wrinkle and take on the
appearance of a pink prune did Holly climb reluctantly
from the bath and back into the tower. This time, warm
air played over her body, drying her in a sensuous caress
she always found slightly erotic. After a few minutes, she
stepped from the dryer and into her underwear, then
donned a one-piece coverall. Hers was light blue,
which identified her as an instrument tech, with EVA-
qualified flashes on the shoulders. Should it prove
necessary, she would probably be the one from her shift
to go outside the ship. The only other member of the
roster who was qualified was the leader, Serge Volkin,
and he had gone out during the last shift. Next time, it
should be her turn.

While she did not actually want anything to go wrong
with the delicate instruments on the exterior of the hull,
Holly nevertheless nursed a secret half-hope that she
would be required to suit up and do an EVA on this, the
final shift of the long voyage. Extra Vehicular Activities
were the part of her duties she enjoyed most; in fact, she
loved it “out there”.

She was by nature a loner, and the peace and solitude
suited her character. She did not mix well with other
people, although she always tried to be nice, and took
great pains not to offend anyone. However, her
awkwardness made social contact with most people
uncomfortable, and she found she related better to
children than other adults. When talking with someone,
she often had the impression that they would rather be
somewhere else.

One of the few exceptions was the EVA tech on
Sargeson’s shift, Jason Kerr. The American, like Volkin,
was always unfailingly polite to her, and his sharp, foxy
features and boyish grin always made her go a little
fluttery inside. Although she had only met him twice
before, at the beginning of her two previous shifts, and
had therefore known him for barely an hour in total, she
thought he was the most gorgeous man she had ever met,
and she would gladly have done anything for him. As for
the Russian, she had often worked past her daily shift, in
order to complete some task he had set for her, even
though she knew he would never ask her to do such a
thing.

There was never any haste or urgency among the
awakened personnel; nothing was ever so pressing that it
required anything more than normal care and application.
Theirs was mostly a watching brief, but Holly was happy
to put in the extra effort for Volkin. Still, she often wished
that Kerr was on her shift, and that they could see each
other for more than the half-hour or so when their shifts
overlapped.

Sometimes, alone in her awake quarters, she would
fantasize about the secretly imagined day when the tall,
lean American would suddenly realize that Holly was the
girl of his dreams, the woman he had been searching for
all of his life. Then he would sweep her up in his arms
and carry her off to some unspecified Shangri-La, there to
live out their lives in marital bliss and the adoration of
each other’s company.

Of course, she knew it was nonsense, pure fantasy; at
least, most of her did. But a tiny part held out a sliver of
hope that someday, somehow, the dream might come true.
Unfortunately, Kerr had never given her the slightest
indication that he shared her feelings in any way. The
pleasantness he showed her was the same as that with
which he treated everyone, without exception or favor.
Now, on the last shift of the voyage, all opportunities
seemed to have passed. Running her fingers through her
short, dark hair, Holly initiated the sequence that drained
the water from the bath, then stopped the spin of the
room. When weightlessness returned, she pulled herself
through the doorway and headed for the command center
to join the rest of the shift.

(TO BE CONTINUED NEXT MONDAY.)