Zero dreamed that he was swimming. He’d never been very good at it in real life, but in his dream he was as quick and agile as a dolphin, zooming through the water as easily as he’d flown through the open column in the center of the starship. And then as soon as he thought of it, he was in the starship, soaring and flipping through the air, except he was still a dolphin with no arms or legs, and he was still surrounded by water. Why was he still underwater? He couldn’t breathe! He struggled, and realized he was tied down, and then he opened his eyes and his dream disappeared in a blink. He was back in the real world, but he was still underwater! No, not water: he was surrounded by gel. The clear gel in the stasis pod. He was still in the stasis pod, still wrapped tight like a mummy, and still covered in clear gel. It was in his eyes, his nose, and even his mouth, and as soon as he became aware of it he started to gag on it.
A second later the gel started to recede, slowly being sucked out of the pod, though tiny gobs of it still clung to the windows or floated in the air. He was still in zero gravity. When the gel finally flowed away from his face, he coughed and spat and blew to get it out of his mouth and nose. The straps around his body loosened, and as he pulled his arms free he realized: I’m awake. The pod woke me up. The stasis sleep is over.
It’s been 105 years.
I’m on the other side of the galaxy now, under a brand-new star.
He expected to hear the computer voice again, welcoming him to the planet Kaguya or the star Murasaki, but there was nothing. He brought his hands to his face, cramped in the narrow pod, and wiped more of the gel from his eyes and nose. The hall was dark, lit only by a faint glow from the end of the aisle. He wiped his eyes again, and stared at the other pods, and realized something else: none of the people in them were moving. Maybe they hadn’t woken up yet? His dad had said their family would be one of the first groups off the ship. Maybe they didn’t wake up the others until it was their turn?
The gel was about half gone, but it had stopped draining. Was that supposed to happen? He was about chest deep in the stuff; it was thick and gooey. He still had a bunch of it stuck in his hair. He worked on scooping the stuff out of his ears, waiting for the door to open, but it never did. He was really starting to worry now that something had gone wrong.
And why couldn’t he see anybody else? Even if his family was the first to wake up, he should at least see them in the aisle, right? But the aisle was empty. He craned his neck to the sides, pressing his face against the glass to try to see, but all the other pods looked closed, just like his, and he couldn’t see movement in any of them.
What was going on?
Zero searched the inside of his pod for a lock or a handle or something, but he couldn’t find anything. He pushed against the door, lightly at first, then harder and harder as it refused to open. He even braced his butt against the back of the tube and leaned against the door with all his strength, but it stayed closed. He was starting to worry now. He looked again for a handle, and finally found two emergency handles—one at the top of the pod and one down by his toes, deep in the gooey gel that had stopped draining away. He tried jumping for the high one, but the gel kept him stuck to the bottom of the pod; even in zero gravity, he couldn’t move enough to reach the top. He looked down at the lower handle and probed it with his foot, but couldn’t get it to open. He’d need to use his fingers. He grimaced, closed his eyes, took a huge breath, and then crouched down low in the gel, submerging himself to try to reach the handle at the bottom. He fumbled around for it, totally blind, and finally grabbed it with his fingers. He pulled hard, and the latch clicked, and the door of the pod swung open, hinged at the top. Zero had expected the gel to spill out when the door opened, but instead, it just sat there, motionless, without gravity to pull it down. He kicked at it, sending blobs of gel into the air, and finally broke loose and tumbled into the narrow tunnel.
He hung in the air, looking around, and saw that he’d been right: nobody else was moving. Both rows of stasis pods sat silent in the darkness, with person after person sitting motionless inside. He listened, but the ship was perfectly silent. Not even a rumble from the engine.
He shook off as much of the gel as he could, leaving it in sticky, ropy strands floating in the air, and then pulled himself closer to the pods to see his family. They were all there: Yen, Park, his mom, and his dad. All in a deep stasis sleep. He rapped his knuckles on his father’s plastic shell, but there was no answer. Why weren’t they awake yet?
He looked up and down the aisle again, and then shouted: “Hello!” He waited while the echoes moved through the halls. Nobody shouted back. Then he shouted again, louder: “Hey! Is anybody there?”
There was no answer.
He was the only person awake on the entire ship.