Chapter 01 - Awake

I had never met anyone who enjoyed waking up from cryogenics.

My lungs were full of a perfluorocarbon-based substance, triggering the “I’m drowning” instinct. But in reality, it was the opposite; the substance transported more oxygen and CO2 than blood itself. In other words, having this stuff in your lungs was more efficient than breathing the purest air.

Filling your lungs with the damn liquid was already horrible, but purging it from there was even worse. Air was being forced into my lungs by hoses, but instead of the relief of a breath of fresh air after a dive, the process felt like drowning in reverse, invasive, aggressive, and humiliating. Unfortunately, this was the only known way to survive a cryogenic chamber.

“I hate this shit…” I thought.

My vision swirled in a haze as the pumps expelled the perfluorocarbon, leaving behind a lingering disorientation. The light in the chamber was purposely dim, becoming more intense as my pupils adjusted to their task. The interior of the chamber was like an inverted balloon, with me in the center being crushed from all sides. The intent of this design was to keep the body static during the centuries-long sleep, as well as provide localized contractions and cramps to circulate blood and prevent muscle atrophy. As I awoke, the chamber deflated, giving me some space for brief movements

Despite the prefix “cryo-”, the temperature inside the chamber was pleasant. The computer had raised the temperature to a warm twenty-four degrees Celsius before I woke up. The inner surfaces of the chamber were sticky and gooey. I remembered some training colleagues associating the sensation with some kind of fetish about being swallowed, and as much as I tried, I never found a better way to describe it.

The chamber continued to deflate, which allowed me to articulate my upper limbs with a greater degree of freedom. However, I was still completely locked from the waist down.

“Shouldn’t I be waking up with the ship still in free fall?” I mumbled, still groggy and vocal cords rigid. I still had a lot of cryogenic drugs in my bloodstream.

I stretched my arm to reach the terminal’s power button in front of me, a small screen the size of a tablet. The screen began to show the familiar sequence of logs while booting up, ending with the minimalist logo displaying the name Genesis IX, or GIX as we nicknamed it. It was the ninth ship in a sequence of thirty. Result of a joint effort of all nations in the solar system to colonize new stars and establish a lasting presence on other planets.

Despite all the things to mitigate muscle atrophy, I felt as if I had an anvil tied to my fist. It was like in one of those dreams where you’re facing some bully, but your punches have no strength or impact, no matter how hard you try to hit him.

“Damn, it wasn’t that hard during training” I thought. “And we still complained about the ‘half-pump’ drugs, that was a park walk compared to this.”

But then again, all the training I did was for a maximum of a few months. This time, if everything went right, I should have been in cryogenics for about 150 years.

Fighting against the weight of my own arm, I forced myself to follow the standard procedure, clicking on the [Blood Diagnostics] button. The report pointed to expected deviations; hypokalemia and hypocalcemia, and an elevated level of creatine phosphokinase. All known problems of cryogenics, and not easily controlled by the chamber’s systems. The main symptoms were weakness, drowsiness, and motor difficulties, definitely what I was feeling.

I continued the struggle to keep my arm touching the terminal. On the next screen I clicked on [Cardiovascular Diagnostics]. Several alterations when compared to a person in normal conditions, but two things jumped into my eyes. My heart rate and blood pressure were much higher than normal.

“Could these changes be due to the effort I’m making to keep my arm extended?” I thought. “This is completely insane, my muscles are totally fucked.”

The blurry vision was already clearing up. It was clear enough for me to notice the incessant trembling of my muscles; deltoids, biceps, triceps, and everything else.

Those once pleasant twenty-four degrees Celsius now made me sweat like an old mop. Panting, tired, but not defeated, I decided to continue operating the terminal. This time the chosen button was [Instrument Panel].

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“Holy shit!” I found the strength and vocal cords to shout. I could hardly believe the reading: 2.7 g’s of downward acceleration. “This is why I can’t keep my own arm weight.”

“This is not possible, it can’t be possible, how are we accelerating at almost thirty meters per second squared?” I questioned myself. “Okay, this is bad, really bad. I needed to find some explanation for this” I thought. I ended up formulating three scenarios.

First scenario: I was no longer in space, but landed on a planet instead. This planet would need a gravitational acceleration of 2.7 g's. However, our destination was the TRAPPIST-1 system and none of the seven planets there has more than 1.2 g’s of surface gravity. Which means that; If I landed on some planet, this planet was not in TRAPPIST-1. Yeah, this scenario was very unlikely, I dare say impossible.

Second scenario: The GIX has two counter-rotating rings that produce 0.35 g’s of artificial gravity. The cryogenic capsules should stay in these rings for most of the journey. Just before waking up, they should be moved to the GIX’s spine where I should be at this moment. However, if some failure had occurred that caused the rings to spin out of control, the chambers could have remained stuck in the rings. This makes much more sense than having landed on some planet... Depending on how severe the damage was, maybe I could even survive. I liked this scenario quite a lot.

Third scenario: Very close to the second. But the failure did not occur in the rings, but in one of the pressurized tanks. Depending on the type of rupture, this could cause a very high acceleration for a short period of time. The GIX’s helium-3 and deuterium nuclear fusion reactor would never reach 2.7 g’s. But with a considerable large burst or leak, this could be possible.

I spent more time than I should thinking about all this. I did the calculations in my head. It would have been much easier to use a spreadsheet on my terminal, but just imagining how much effort it would take, I gave up. Anyway these were just speculations and there was no point in wasting more time on this, the priority was to get out of the capsule as quickly as possible. But, before that, it was necessary to complete the waking procedure.

I went through some screens and buttons. I will never be able to express my gratitude to my instructor who hammered these procedures into the folds of my brain. Every millisecond less that I spent with my arms extended counted a lot.

I finally got to the sanity checks; the atmosphere outside was within the expected parameters, the integrity of the chamber was apparently perfect. All the green balls indicating “ok” lit up. I stretched my index finger like in the painting where God tried to reach the indifferent Adam in Michelangelo’s work. I pressed the [Start] button. My arms fell in relaxation after a flood of dopamine took over my brain after the successful task. I dare say I was smiling, as I felt the drops of sweat wandering through the cavities of my face.

The joy didn’t last long, much less than I would have liked. The progress bar froze at three percent. A few seconds later I was ironically graced by a pop-up informing that the procedure had been nullified by another user.

“What the hell is this!” I shouted, cursing again.

Frustrated and enraged, I gathered another handful of willpower and started the process again. My snarling teeth were a mixture of hatred, anger, and a coping laugh for all the stress that was taking over me. This time I hadn’t even reached the [Start] button, someone had knocked me off the system again. Continuing to insist on this was stupid, I could barely lift my arm. I was very tired and someone was actively blocking me from the system.

“Well, it can only be some other crew member, he must be doing this for my own good, right?” I thought, trying to convince myself that things were still under control.

Suddenly the acceleration stopped, the drops of sweat that before ran voraciously down my face now floated inside the chamber. I felt like Rock Lee when releasing the training weights.

That’s when it hit me. “Since the acceleration stopped, then I can’t be landed on a planet. Thank goodness, this would be the most bizarre alternative of all.” I thought.

“It stopped suddenly, without any deceleration or abrupt shock, which also rules out the hypothesis of the uncontrolled gravity ring. Therefore, the only explanation I can imagine is scenario three.” I still hadn’t decided how much I was liking that information, but the only thing I was sure of is that I was screwed.

There was something else too. Due to my inebriation after waking up from cryogenics I hadn’t noticed, but there was a very loud noise before. Now that it stopped and I could appreciate the silence, it became very clear that it had been bothering me all this time. But the silence didn’t last long.

A creak like dragging chairs on the porcelain floor upstairs was responsible for taking it away. The most interesting thing wasn’t even the noise, but the slight push to the left that I felt in sync. A few seconds later a push of the same intensity and direction, but in the opposite direction, to the right. A few more moments and another push, this time coming from behind. This was obviously some kind of Reaction Control System, or RCS for short, used for maneuvering in space.

The past minutes were quite boring. Every once in a while I felt a new push to break the monotony. My access to the terminal had been completely revoked and I was still trapped from the waist down. There was literally nothing to do but create far-fetched theories about what the hell was going on.