Laura coughed out all the hibernation fluid in her lungs. She then remained sitting and shaking in the freezing water rising to her chest.
Her arms were tied around her legs while sobbing.
An automated voice promptly announced calmly, “Warming,” and the pod's water started to warm pleasurably.
Her body temperature rose to average levels quickly. She kept shaking, still seeing flashes of the nightmarish car cash she had just experienced.
The room was dimly lit with a subtle ambiance light to soothe the waking.
Her eyes were slowly regaining usability, but so were the tears.
A mechanical arm extended her a bottle with a straw.
She sipped eagerly, surprised by the nice flavor of the hibernation breakfast fluid.
She felt a jolt of adrenaline as the drug in the fluid kicked in quickly.
PEG spoke calmly in the darkness: “Welcome back, Laura.”
Laura was startled and almost fell back, lying underwater.
“You sick bastards,” she managed to yell while getting her balance back.
“I’m sorry, Laura,” she said PEG.
“Why did you make me lose them again?” yelled Laura angrily.
“Oh no, I’m sorry, no, it wasn’t on purpose, I needed to wake you up…” panicked PEG, reading the last lines of events of Laura’s life before the departure of hibernation.
“Where is Lars? Tell him to come here. I’m going to drown him in this pool,” fantasized murderously the woman.
“You can’t. Captain Lars Lim is dead, and so will be every other colonist on this ship in 1 minute and 19 seconds,” announced PEG.
Laura suddenly stopped and remained silent for a moment.
“But I just talked to him in the dream?” she asked.
“No, no, it was me simulating his voice. The captain was already dead. You were injected with the euthanizing nanobots and were having a wonderful last dream. That would have certainly made your defrosting slower than 10 minutes. So I had to create a traumatic event to make you want to leave the dream and de-hibernate as fast as you could.” explained PEG.
"10 seconds to euthanization,” announced a timer.
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“WHAT?! Only 10 seconds?!” she panicked Laura.
“Acting Captain Laura Shane, do you order me to stop the euthanization and save everyone?” asked PEG.
“Of cou... Ye…I order you to,” rushed Laura.
PEG interrupted her astonished blabbering by saying, “The euthanization has been stopped T-3 seconds, captain”.
There was a long silence while Laura collected her thoughts on what had happened.
“Thank you, Laura. Your order overrode the previous one from Captain Lars. Please finish up here and then join me on the bridge. I want to bring you up to speed”.
Laura was happy to finally have a moment of rest.
She was still naked in the tepid water.
The water started draining from the pad, and a warm current precisely dried her body gently,
Mechanical arms help standing, but she realized she didn’t need them so much.
She was a bit groggy, but her muscles were not atrophied. She grasped her thighs’ muscles and felt their tone. She flexed a few other muscles, glad to realize she was in excellent shape. She had never been in such good shape ever in her life. Even her scars were healed. She had finally got the anti-aging treatment she hadn’t been able to afford. She had been much more focused on investing in her family's future and her son’s education. Then, the irony fell on her.
“What a devil’s bargain I made,” she said. They took my family and made me young again,” she said, feeling cheated. “And they say that the devil has already died, and I can’t even kill him.. We’ll see. This mass euthanasia on an entire colony ship sounds just so improbable. Something’s up. Maybe Lars is alive. Maybe the AI is glitching, and one moment is killing everyone, and one moment is saving everyone. I need to get to the bottom of this," she thought.
While absorbed in her thoughts, mechanical arms gently helped her limbs assume the dressing pose with spread legs and arms. Two more arms were carrying clothes split in half front and half back.
The arms neatly attached the two halves to her and sealed them together on both left and right.
No heat was felt, and no mark was left in the joining.
Layer after layer, she was fully dressed in her Geometrés Guild Master official clothes with the rank insignia of captain pinned to her chest.
“Anti-gravity fluctuation is recommended in the dimly lit hibernation room,” was announced for the last step of the defrosting procedure.
She realized she was in a stupendously long room hosting 420.000 naked, muscled-up humans who deserved privacy.
She passed through an intangible separator and was in a bright room.
This was the part where she would be given a welcome package and shown where the rest of her rest family was waiting for her. For Laura, there was no time to rest and no family to hug again.
The anti-gravity fluctuation brought her through all the corridors of the ship she knew well. She had visited them many times during construction in the space shipyard in orbit around her planet.
She finally reached the bridge and saw it in all its glory. The outside view showed a solid planet of many colors, including green and blue. She thought something was off, though.
“Welcome, First Captain Laura Shane. You can take the bridge”.
“I take the bridge,” recited Laura.
The empty chair of the captain reminded her of Lars, and she lost her composure.
She jumped forward, expecting Lars to be hidden, crouching behind the chair to surprise her.
“I was expecting Lars to jump out to tell me the mass euthanization was also a sick joke,” explained Laura, still flashing her eyes around the corners of the room.
“Laura, I’m an AI. I would never execute a cruel and traumatizing practical joke on a crew member,” reassured PEG calmly.
“Then the captain ordered you to do it. As the new captain, I order you to tell me where Lars Lim is. I promise he’ll receive a fair trial,” negotiated Laura with the newfound authority of her uniform with clearly bad intentions for the trial's outcome.
PEG took her time to answer, busied on the results of the script stopping the euthanization process. The AI had received diagnostic reports of the health recovery of the colonists. Most were not recovering.
“I have terrible news to give you, captain: the euthanization abort script didn’t run through fully successfully. Despite being in the 10-minute window with full recoverability, I could stop the process and remain in the recoverability window for two more hours. The problem is that I will have to control the nanobots manually, and a few million nanobots will be needed for each colonist to fix the damaged vital organs. This is a seriously intense computation I’ll have to run, requiring a great ton of energy. I will be able to recover only 40% of the colonists fully. The other 60% will not survive.”
40/60 was a terribly particular proportion to Laura directly linked to the loss of her family. Her eyes went vague, and her mouth slouched. The horrible, real memories started to flash back behind her eyes.
She was revisiting the day of the departure of the colony ship…