And then I thought: That will be nice.

And then whoosh! The flash-freeze filled the tiny chamber. I was in ice. I was ice.

I am ice.

But if I’m ice, how am I conscious? I was supposed to be asleep; I was supposed to forget about Jason and life and Earth for three hundred and one years. People have been cryo frozen before me, and none of them were conscious. If the mind is frozen, it cannot be awake or aware.

I’ve read before of coma victims who were supposed to be knocked out with anesthesia during an operation, but really they were awake and felt everything.

I hope — I pray—that’s not me. I can’t be awake for three hundred and one years. I’ll never survive that.

Maybe I’m dreaming now. I’ve dreamt a lifetime in a thirty-minute nap. Maybe I’m still in that space between frozen and not, and this is all a dream. Maybe we haven’t left Earth yet. Maybe I’m still in that limbo year before the ship launches, and I’m stuck, trapped in a dream I can’t wake from.

Maybe I’ve still got three hundred and one years stretching out before me.

Maybe I’m not even asleep yet. Not all the way.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I only know one thing for certain.

I want my year back.

2 ELDER

THE DOOR IS LOCKED.

“Now that,” I say to the empty room, “is interesting.”

See, there are hardly any locked doors on Godspeed. No need. Godspeed isn’t small — it was the largest ship ever built when it was launched two and a half centuries ago — but it’s not so huge that we don’t all feel the weight of the metal walls crushing us. Privacy is our most valued possession and no one—no one—would dare betray privacy.