YEAR 0, DAY 0

“Congratulations galactic citizen, for becoming a part of our System Pioneering Program. You can be comforted by the thought that, though your new home lays lightyears away, your destination is only the distance of one long nap, thanks to TimeFreeze, our corporate sponsor. Safe travels, and good night, from the terrestrial government of Pluto.” This was the refrain loopings in the space dock belonging to Prodius Exodus, while he was preparing his ship for one last voyage.

“This is it, I’m going to a different system,” he said with an airy tone of hope in his voice. “A new system, a terraformed one, where I can breathe clean air outside a stuffy dome. I’m really doing it, huh?” He squared his shoulders against the light coming from the ship in the empty, dark hangar, with the stars hanging dim in the skies, trapped behind the large hangar windows. The ship was bulky, squarish, and had two complicated rockets embedded into each side. It was made of silvery metal, to better be seen against the dark backdrop of space. The identifier Ni3tz2ch3 was painted in neon pink along the side.

“Nietzsche, baby, I promise you, when our three hundred years of travel are up, you’re getting a tune up and a repainting so good you’ll seem like you’ve never been in an asteroid field before,” Prodius promised his faithful skiff. “ Pluto is paying me to do this after all.” Following his parting remarks, Prodius bravely stepped into the gentle light of Ni3tz2ch3, already knowing that when he stepped back out, all his worldly problems would have been made mute by distance and time. Then he pressed a button, sealing the hatch behind him, and embraced his future.

YEAR 112, DAY 174

“Huh, wah? I’m here already? Felt not ten minutes ago that I layed down. Well, I guess that's the TimeFreeze bed, so no wonder.” As he muttered to himself, Prodius groggily rubbed his eyes and looked around himself, seeing that the ship looked the same as it did when he’d left, a cramped room no larger than the standard classroom, filled with displays and controls. The hatch to the cargo hold below him was sealed, and the life support systems embedded in the floor were buzzing merrily. He unstrapped himself and climbed out of the vertically resting TimeFreeze capsule on shaky, long unused legs. Prodius’ weak legs brought him to the command console, where he proceeded to mutter to himself some more.

“They said I’d wake up a day in advance, let's check on what happened while I was out, yeah?” Prodius once again said in the low shallow tone of people who need to fill the air with words, yet are too tired to do so with their usual enthusiasm. All that lingering lethargy left him the moment he saw the TimeFreeze command panel flashing red. It was a concerning red, like the radiation of a young star, newly born and still finding its place in the cosmos.

Like a young star, the screen was flaring, outlining in stark contrast the black lettered words it contained; “Your TimeFreeze bed has undergone critical failure, and will not be operational without repairs. Please travel to your nearest Enterprise Machine Repairs outlet and restock on our patented Time Freeze Formula. TimeFreeze apologies for the inconvenience, and wishes you safe travels.” In contrast to the warning reflecting in his eyes, Prodius’ face went the white of an elderly star, bowed under the pressure of countless millennia, yearning to be consumed by the abyss in a brilliant yet fleeting explosion.

His voice started quiet, “No. No no no no no,” then escalated to a scream, “No! NOOO! It can’t, I still have two hundred years left! It can’t, no no no no no no!” Then, his despair converting to rage, Prodius rushed back to his defunct pod and began to punctuate his words with blows. “Work!” clang, “You!” clang, “Stupid!” clang, “Pod!” However, the unyielding metal refused his heated request and instead only gave him a bruised hand. The intrepid astral pioneer deflated, and sat down, despondent. Then, as they always did, his thoughts turned to the practical. Without a trace of his former lethargy Prodius addressed Ni3tz2ch3, “Wait, if I’m stuck in here, what am I going to eat?”

YEAR 112, DAY 180

It’d been four days since his breakdown, and Prodius wasn’t panicking any longer. Well, about being food, at least. “OK, ok, that should work, right? The air filtration algae is edible, so I should be good like this. The water and waste recycling system will keep the nutrients flowing as long as the reactor can provide the energy. The algae will keep growing, and I can eat it. Hopefully. As long as nothing critical breaks. Thank all the distant stars that this ship was designed for interplanetary travel.” As he talked to the empty air Prodius had the floor panels torn up, exposing the tank of super algae that all long haul ships used as oxygen and waste scrubbers. It was a concerning shade of light green that reminded Prodius of vomit.

“OK, immediate concerns of an indefinite stay with Nietzsche aside, what do I do n-Wait. I should probably stop talking to myself,” Prodius interrupted himself. Then a thought came to Prodius, and he quickly scurried up the ladder to the cargo deck and retrieved a deck of cards.

“Solitaire! I knew grandma taught me for a reason, though she probably didn’t expect this,” Prodius exclaimed, immediately breaking his vow of silence.

YEAR 113, DAY 142

It’d been nearly a year since the dreadful pod opened, and Prodius had grown very tired of solitaire. His mood was somber, with slouched shoulders and a bored, longing expression on his face as he stared out the lonely window embedded in the airlock of his ship. He was lounging in discomfort against a cargo box as he stroked his new beard and stared into the abyss. Sometimes he felt watched, as if the abyss were spying on him through that same window.

Eventually, he laid his contemplations to rest in favor of his hunger, and he scooped up a handful of algae from the open access panel. He never closed it any more. The algae had a lot of the necessary nutrients his body needed, and the nutritional supplements he found in his cargo bay handled the rest. He probably wouldn’t starve for a while, and if he decided to break out the salt, sometimes he didn’t even want to vomit. He’d even made it a little song and everything:

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“Algae soup soup soup,

Makes you poop poop poop,

But it's no dupe dupe dupe,

It's algae soup soup soup.”

“It tastes really bad bad bad,

But I'm not mad mad mad,

Cause it's no fad fad fad,

And living is rad rad rad.”

“It’s better with salt salt salt,

But I want a malt malt malt.

That's not its fault fault fault,

Just wish I had more than salt salt salt.”

YEAR 113, DAY 332

“Here lies my salt reserves, may they rest in peace. They lived bravely, sacrificing everything for the simple sake of making mr. Algae palatable, but I shall not let them die in vain. For you, salt reserves, I shall continue to eat the algae no matter how bad it tastes, because you died to let me not have to,” Prodius said with a tone of mourning. He was kneeling over the empty crate of salt crystals, each side thoroughly scraped bear, and he cried a single emaciated tear into its depths before he continued.

“Let this tear symbolize the love I had for you while you lasted. Take this last ion of salt that I have to give you, and rest well. I hear the abyss is very calm these days.” He then pushed the crate into his small airlock, retreated back into the harsh blue light of his chamber, and released the crate into the embrace of the abyss. He stared through the window for a long time as the crate disappeared into the distance, the only object for lightyears around. Anything to distract himself from the futility of it all. Anything to distract from the futility of him.

YEAR 115, DAY 241

“Hey Albert, how you doing down there? Still growing big and strong so I can eat you later?” Prodius yelled down into the algae tank from his spot nearest the abyss. It looked especially bright today, out the window. “Make sure to grow tasty, Mrs. Salt has been gone for a long time now.”

Prodius caught his reflection in the window, when he turned to consider a particularly bright star and the light reflected off it just the wrong way. His hair was wild, dirty and matted, yet still sticking out in tufts every direction. His beard was much the same, even thicker than his hair, and the rest of him was filthy and stained. He had long eschewed the use of more than his boxer briefs, there was nobody around to see him anyways, and they clearly needed washing. Prodius didn’t mind though, he was not particularly concerned with his presentation at the moment, and Albet loved the way he smelled anyways.

It had been five years and sixty six days since he had woken up from that blasted pod, and he was beyond caring about how he looked or smelled. He was beyond caring about most things, really. “OK Albert, let's play some solitaire and then we’ll go to bed. Just like we did yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. And all the days since that ----ing pod failed!” He went up and punched the TimeFreeze bed again, as had become his tradition whenever he thought about it, and this time he managed to give it another small dent. One more ding in its chassis, among all the others, like the surface of a weathered moon.

YEAR 117, DAY 36

“You were right Albert, the abyss is staring at us!” Prodius said as he paced. “I can feel its gaze burning upon my neck every time I face away from that darn window! The void is greedy, yes. It's probably the one who broke my pod!” He once more punched the dinged, battered, and broken TimeFreeze bed wildly, with eyes wide in anger and an aggressive stance in his shoulders. “It was the abyss who couldn’t just let me pass by in peace, and now we're stuck in it! Well, too bad for it then!” At this declaration, Prodius took a big mouthful of algae and chewed it into a light green paste, which he then spat onto the window. He spread it all over the cold pane of glass, and repeated the process until a thin layer covered the entire surface.

“There, Albert,” Prodius said with pride, setting his hands on his hips and puffing up his thin chest, “Now the abyss can’t bother us anymore.”

YEAR 130, DAY 180

“Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Albert,

Happy Birthday to you.

And many moooorrreee,” Prodius sang, his voice scratchy and wildly off key. It was this day eighteen years ago that Prodius saw Albert freed from the bowels of the life support systems after all, and they had decided to celebrate.

“Albert, sometimes it's hard to believe that we’ve known each other for so long. Albert my boy, you’ve done become a man on me before I even noticed it,” Prodius said tearfully, with pride for his Protista friend, who having started so small, had now grown to carpet the floor surrounding the life support system access hatch.

“Now, I’m sorry I don’t have any candles for you, but we couldn’t light them anyways. But, I do have something special for you!” At these words, Prodius ran to the window he had covered in spit thirteen years before and tore down the nasty set of blinds he had masticated so long ago. “Food!” he exclaimed, “I’ve brought you more food so you can keep growing for me!” He ran over to the smeared green paneling that surrounded the hole in the floor leading to Albert, and carefully dropped that disgusting crust down into it.

“Now, what do you want to do for the rest of your birthday? Solitaire you say? Sure!”

YEAR 130, DAY 181

Prodius was sitting in front of his lonely window once more, staring into the abyss as he had many years ago. “Huh, I had forgotten what was out there. Are those stars?” Prodius asked in a soft tone of mild amazement and curiosity. “Come see this Albert. We’ve mastered Solitaire anyways.”

YEAR ???, DAY ???

The man was looking out the window of his lonely space ship stranded in deep space, and his interstellar course, uninterrupted for ages, conspired to make his reflection look back. His hair had been so matted with algae for so long that it was stained green. The man’s perilous locks reached to his mid back, the ends thin and wispy. It had grown to be mostly gray. His beard was much the same, though somehow more stained than even his hair, especially directly around his mouth. The man climbed to the upper deck, and rooting around through the cargo, came back to the window with a knife and a bowl, crudely formed from the metal panel missing from the floor. He left the knife on the window seal and filled the bowl with green tinted water. The man picked up his knife and brought it to his neck silently, and with a splash of water, made it glide out from under his chin, taking most of his beard with it.

Due to the poor construction of the blade it took a long time, but the man shaved his face smooth, being extremely careful to avoid nicks and cuts. He washed his hair, though the green tint remained, a permanent pigment forever entombed in his butt length locks. Next came his clothes. He took a set of clothes that were green to begin with and washed them with yet more water. He chose a green set so that the green hue of the water would have less of an effect. He changed into these clothes looking the most human in decades, and stepped into the tiny airlock on his tiny ship.

He squared his thin shoulders against the light coming from the ship, a dim flicker sent adrift in the empty, dark, nothingness. The stars hung blindingly bright in the still puddle that was the airlock window. Their brilliance was reflected in the eyes of Prodius Exodus.

With starry eyes, he stared into the abyss. Then Prodius pressed a button, gummed up from disuse yet still functional.The doors grumbled and groaned, constrained by the weight of untold decades, but after several ponderous seconds, they yielded to the will of the man, and yawned open.

The wind fled around Prodius, like the touch of a long lost friend, and carried him out to finally meet the embrace of the abyss with his arms open wide.