Gary laughed while he watched the news interview. It had been the fifteenth time in a week that he played it. He froze the image on the female reporter, as he delivered his final words to her, and revelled in her surprised glare. Oh, it was so gratifying to him. To stick it to that woman with her snarky attitude. He loved it so much.

“Grace, I want make a big poster out of that frame,” He chortled lightly. “I want to plaster along the wall near my cryogenic-bed.”

Grace acknowledge his command, saved the image and diverted it to a larger printer in another room. Poster sized paper was available, but it was more for printing out blueprints for other technical projects.

“Oh yeah, that’s gonna look great there.” Gary leaned back in his chair with smugness. “Everyday I’m going to give that girl the middle finger and flick her face.”

“That seems like a very cruel thing to do, Mr. Steinbeck.” Grace said. “I do not understand this aggression to this individual.”

“Oh, she was a bitch.” Gary proclaimed. “Just look at the way she talked to me, even afterwards, fuck her… and fuck those in the media. Bunch of ungrateful, unintelligent, waste of genetic material…”

Gary stewed in his bitterness for a moment, swinging back and forth in his chair. Looking at the paused image of her face on the monitor, then turning away in disgust.

“How dare she mock me, I don’t know why I even attempted to be nice to her.“

“She did seem interested in you.” Grace stated. “I detected a flirtatious nature in her behaviour…”

“Really?” He glared over at the monitor.

“And in you…” Grace continued on. “You seemed to smile at her a number of times. Your eyes periodically studied her frame, specifically, her chest region.”

“Hey-hey-hey!” Gary defensively sat up. “What the what? Grace! Come on, I did not fixate on her boobs. She was holding a clipboard with her questions, I just… uh… wanted to see what was really on there. She might have been, ya know, ad libbing most of them. I was just, ya know, being nice to her… that’s it.”

“And yet,” Grace surmised. “You displayed hostility to her, just now. But, when talking to her in person, you were… nice. It is conflictive.”

Gary groaned, standing up and arched his back slightly. He wasn’t sure what to say. He gave the monitor a quick glance again and touched the screen to turn off the image.

“What can I say, Grace. I can put on a good face sometimes. One minute nice, the next a complete asshole, I’m just a mean guy, I guess.”

“You are not that way with me.” Grace stated.

Gary nodded at that. She was right, he wasn’t too hard on her, but, she was just an artificial intelligence he created. Maybe he was a bit more tolerant to hearing her ask questions, rather than some know-it-all reporter. He shrugged in response, hoping Grace understood his body gesture, and headed to the next area where the printing room was. There, waiting for him, was the blown-up image of Anna Delmond-Jevara, with the surprised look on her face. He took it in hand and snickered while gazing upon it.

“Good riddance…”

As he rolled up the paper in his hand, he thought he heard something behind him. He turned about. Nothing was there. Gary shuffled the page again, and the sound of something nearby started again. When he stopped fiddling with the paper, the other sound stopped.

“Hello?” He called out. There was no reply, other than Grace.

“Is there a problem?”

“Are you absolutely certain there’s nobody else on this ship, Grace?”

She didn’t answer. He repeated his question, and again, he was met with silence.

“Grace?” He glanced upward. “Hello? Grace?”

As he waited for her to respond, the mysterious sound started again. He headed out to the junction and looked down the opposite end, where the other sections were shrouded in darkness. He peered into the void, the sound drew closer and closer. Then, it suddenly stopped. This made him wonder if it was just his imagination, and shook it off. But as he turned about, a disfigured person, leaped onto him, and shrieked out his name. It was Anna Delmond-Jevara, she was dead, her body and face mummified and contorted. She screamed his name, putting her putrified hands over his face, and clawed at him.

“Asshole!” She hissed. “Asshole!”

Gary screamed as her nails dug into his eyes, he repeatedly called out to Grace, begging her for help.

* * *

Gary suddenly shot up out of his cryo-bed screaming to the top of his lungs. He felt his face frantically. There was no damage, it was just a nightmare. The room was relatively dark, with only a few monitor screens lit, and the only sounds he heard now were that of the ship, as it whirred and bleeped about in the background. He was drenched in sweat from his nightmare and looked about in a confused fright. He wasn’t use to sleeping in such a small confined space, especially since it resembled something more like a coffin, in his mind. Gary rubbed his face as he wept, curling the light blue blanket closer to his body like a scared child.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Is everything alright, Mr. Steinbeck?” Grace said with concern.

Her voice startled him for a moment, as it broke the eerie silence of the room.

“I-I-I-don’t know…” He whimpered, glancing about wildly. “Where am I? What… what’s…”

He wept again, and wiped the tears with the bed’s blanket. Grace repeated the question again, and gradually brought the lights back up. That seemed to quell his fright, slightly, and lowered the blanket down to survey the room. He let out a long sigh of relief, took a moment to calm down and gathered his wits. Once again, Grace ask the same question to him and waited for his answer.

“Sorry-sorry… I… I must have been dreaming… I thought I was… uh… I thought I was…”

Grace didn’t reply, instead, she turned on the bed monitor overhead, and displayed his vitals. Gary glanced up at them and nodded. He saw the poster of the reporter woman, Anna, taped to the wall beside his bedl. He instantly removed and crumpled it up in his hand, and then threw it away.

“Yeah, okay… thanks, Grace. It’s just a dream, that’s all it was, just a terrible, terrible dream.”

“Would you like to discuss this dream?”

“Whew… I don’t know, maybe?” He glanced upward to the camera in the corner of the room and smirked. “It was really just… awful, I’m not sure it’s worth talking about.”

“It is part of my duty to tend to your well-being and psychology. This is necessary to ensure your mental health is looked after, and to detect any early stages of deep space psychosis. A common ailment of those embarking on long cryogenic sleep cycles.” Gary quickly dismissed that, but Grace asserted her recommendation. “There have been numerous cases of those that have undergone this type of mental stress. Isolation and compartmentalization have always been the cause of such incidents involving humans in long cryo-sleeps. You are social creatures, with a need to be around others of your own kind, and create a companionship for emotional support.”

“Pfft! That doesn’t pertain to me.” He passively waved off. “I’m not like those morons. We don’t think the same way.”

“You are still human, Mr. Steinbeck.”

“Don’t insult me, Grace. I’m human in name only, a better version, I’m like the first major upgrade.”

“But still human.” Grace stressed. “You were still conceived naturally, sharing genetic material with both biological parents.”

“Yeah, but then I was tinkered with while in the womb, they managed to correct and replace a few genetics for something better.”

“I know, Mr. Steinbeck. I am only stating that your humanity is still intact. While you are an enhanced version, you are still human, in body and in mind.”

Gary laid back down into the cryo-bed and arched his head back on the pillow.

“The point being, it was just a dream, really… I’m okay.”

“This has been the twenty-seventh time you have experienced such a chaotic state after dreaming.” Grace stated. She then placed a graph chart up on the monitor and animated the rate of his continuous erratic sleep pattern. “There is an increased possibility that you are experiencing early stages of this psychosis: you show signs of growing anxiety, nervousness, and depression about being alone on this ship.”

“Whatever…”

Gary closed his eyes, let out a long exhale, and then waved his hand at the monitor.

“Please Grace, I don’t need to be analyzed right now, okay? Just let me get back to sleep.”

“Do you feel alone?”

“No,” He gruffly answered back. “Geez, come on, no! Not when I’ve got you bugging me about my mental state, so, no. You’re my companion, okay? A friend to chat with about it. Let’s just leave it at that for now, and let me get back to sleep.”

The lights dimmed down again, making the room dark enough, but with just enough faint light to see everything in it. The monitor overhead switched off and Grace conceded to his wishes.

“Good night, Mr. Steinbeck…” She said soon afterwards.

“Grace?” He replied, opening one eye.

“Yes, Mr. Steinbeck?”

“Call me Gary, please.” He said with smirk. “Let’s forgo the formalities. If you and I are going to be such good friends, I would rather you address me as, Gary.”

“As you wish, Gary.”

“That’s better.” He grinned, closing his eye. He shifted in his bed and pulled the cover over his shoulders. “Much, much better… goodnight, Grace.”

“Goodnight, Gary...”

* * *

The lone ship cruised through space like a white speck of dust against the vast emptiness of infinite black. Its massive outer eight rings encircling the central cylindrical body like a spin toy. Each one was moving at different intervals, giving a cork-screw effect along the structure. In the distance, the stars could faintly be seen, the curvature of the Milky Way was a non-moving backdrop that shone through the bleak, black setting. Infinite Traveller One was a small, insignificant craft voyaging through cosmic grandeur, making its way across the galactic curve as the spiral arm continued to spin on, until they would meet up again on the other side.

This was what Gary was dreaming about. His mind’s eye viewed it all. It was like he was floating outside, witnessing the marvellous invention he created, and taking in the awe inspiring magnificence of the entire universe. He could see the other galaxies in proximity to theirs, and the mind-boggling distance it would take to traverse the long void between each one. He wondered if man would ever get there, to explore, and to touch another world that inhabited those celestial bodies.

Again, he could feel fear about it. He began to wonder about his life he left behind. The world he abandoned to search out a new future, as if to put it on fast forward and get to the good part. Was it wrong to go? Was this a terrible mistake he couldn’t correct? He was so caught up in the moment of blind ambition that he didn’t stop to think about any of the consequences. He didn’t have anyone to miss really. Both his parents had died after he obtained his PhD, a terrible car crash on a snowy winter’s night just outside of Vermont, as they made their way to the ski slopes for a bit of fun.

The question of time become an issue for him after that. His parents had so much time and so many dreams, yet all it took was one accident, one wrong night to miss out on whatever else life had in store for them. Would he suffer the same fate? Would he miss out on what the future holds? No, he wouldn’t let that happen. Gary felt the future had to come straight away, there was no sense in waiting for it to happen, he would grab hold of the reins and force it to come to him. Humanity was too slow for such progress. He needed it to match his intelligence, if not more.

Armed with a ton of degrees and scholastic achievements, he would put them to good use and build his own way to defeating time. Time needed to be broken, it needed to be sped up faster, death was an obstacle that had to be surpassed. The only way to do that was to leap across the cosmos and manipulate time to a point he would be happiest living in. All those inventions, all those feats of engineering brilliance, each one of those leaps in discovery brought him closer and closer to that future.

Now, here he is, in the depth of space, inside his spinning time ship, heading towards the unknown future. It wasn’t the future that frightened him so, no, it was the thought of not getting there in time. That he would meet the same kind of fate his parents did, a stupid accident that would erase their lives from existence. He feared that death would come and deprive him of that goal, to cheat him of the prize he so craved, and turn the universe, even time, against him.

As he looked upon his ship again, slowly cruising through the stars, the looming threat of doom haunted his vision, the terror of floating away from the vessel and succumbing to the ravages of time.

“I won’t let it win…” He thought. “I won’t let it win!”