THE PRESIDENT CALLED IT THE “EPITOME OF THE AMERICAN dream.”

Daddy called it the “unholy alliance of business and government.”

But all it really was, was America giving up. Bailing out in order to join the Financial Resource Exchange. A multinational alliance focused on one thing: profit. Fund global medical care to monopolize vaccines. Back unified currency to collect planet-wide interest.

And provide the resources needed for a select group of scientists and military personnel to embark on the first trip across the universe in a quest to find more natural resources — more profit.

The answer to my parents’ dreams.

And my worst nightmare.

And I know something about nightmares, seeing as how I’ve been sleeping longer than I’ve been alive.

I hope. What if this is just a part of a long dream dreamt in the short time between when Ed locked the cryo door and Hassan pushed the button to freeze me? What if?

It’s a strange sort of sleep, this. Never really waking up, but becoming aware of consciousness inside a too-still body.

The dreams weave in and out of memories.

The only thing keeping the nightmares from engulfing me is the hope that there couldn’t possibly be a hundred more years before I wake up.

Not a hundred years. Not three hundred. Not three hundred and one. Please, God, no.

Sometimes it feels like a thousand years have passed; sometimes it feels as if I’ve only been sleeping a few moments. I feel most like I’m in that weird state of half-asleep, half-awake I get when I’ve tried to sleep past noon, when I know I should get up, but my mind starts wandering and I’m sure I can never get back to sleep. Even if I do slip back into a dream for a few moments, I’m mostly just awake with my eyes shut.