A voyage in suspended animation is awesome… truly the only comfortable way to travel if you ask me. Drifting through the void, burning days and months as if in some dream-like state, keeps the mind from wandering down too many rabbit holes, from exploring any of the little psychoses hidden just beneath the surface of each and every one of us. I’d been in this state for the last ten months give-or-take, experiencing the gentle cycles of thrust and rest of the main propulsion. The sensations were mostly abstract… more like feelings than actual awareness of what was going on around me. I sensed I was safe, at least. Unless there was a catastrophic failure of the onboard computer, I figured I’d be okay. Then, to my chagrin and ultimate terror, a catastrophic failure was exactly what happened.
Without knowing how or why, I felt myself ripped unceremoniously from the sleeping pod, torn free of its protective cocoon and separated from the lifeline that kept me fed and watered. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected… that’s the weird thing about suspended animation. It just feels like you exist, like you’ll always exist, in that strange dream-like state of being. I hadn’t known the exodus was going to happen, not at that time or in that way, and it was awful.
Free of the pod, I realized something was wrong. I was weak… unable to speak or move or cry out. My eyes hurt. Something bright had been shoved in my face, and a strange, fleshy-faced creature stared down at me. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I realized the creature must be some kind of service drone, but I couldn’t understand why it had ripped me from the sleeping pod. What had happened to my ship? Where was I? I stared around my strange surroundings, too shocked and weak to keep my head raised for very long, and saw more service drones. They were all flitting frantically around, performing this task or that, but I was too exhausted to carry on and eventually, everything faded to black.
H.K. Farrell 