Yeah. Cryo sleep is like that.

Sometimes I think there’s something wrong. I shouldn’t be so aware. But then I realize I’m only aware for a moment, and then, as I’m realizing it, I slip into another dream.

Mostly, I dream of Earth. I think that’s because I didn’t want to leave it.

A field of flowers; smells of dirt and rain. A breeze… But not really a breeze, a memory of a breeze, a memory made into a dream that tries to drown out my frozen mind.

Earth. I hold on to my thoughts of Earth. I don’t like the dreamtime. The dreamtime is too much like dying. They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over.

Pressure on my pinky where Daddy wrapped his finger around mine, and a whisper of his words promising me I could stay with my aunt and uncle. The heaviness in my chest, where I thought about it, where I really thought about it. I push the dream-memory down. That happened centuries ago, and it’s too late for regrets now. Because all my parents ever wanted was to be a part of the first manned interstellar exploratory mission, and all I ever wanted was to be with them.

And I guess it doesn’t matter that I had a life on Earth, and that I loved Earth, and that by now, my friends have all lived and gotten old and died, and I’ve just been lying here in frozen sleep. That Jason lived and got old and maybe he married and had kids and everything, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s dead now. God, his great-grandchildren might be my age.