Inspired by this post.

"Ladies, gentlemen, AI, and everything in between," I said, gesturing at the room full of smiling, attentive faces. "507 years and 4 months ago, we embarked on this journey. We left everything behind; family, friends, lovers, achievements, prosperity, fame, we killed it all and boarded this great vessel, which so lovingly carried us across the stars while we slept." Should I have waxed poetry there? I didn't actually have time to write and rehearse this speech, I was just winging it. "507 years ago, we set out for a new life, way out in the stars. Now, through space and time, here we are, a mere 2 months from Ouintous 4." I paused, basking in the crowd's cheers. "Now, more than ever, is our goal within our grasp. Times will be tough, there will be struggle, but triumph will be right there along with it. Are you all ready for this?" More cheers echoed the dining chamber, and I couldn't help but smile as I raised my glass. "I won't keep you waiting much longer. Here's to new beginnings, happy ends, and a whole new adventure." Everyone raised their glasses, and in half broken chorus, chanted cheers to my toast. "Now," I said with a pose, "Let's shake off that cryosleep with some booze, baby!" For a half baked idea of a speech, they sure as shit loved it, I thought. I hopped off the table, and started mingling in with the crowd. I still felt a little queezy in my gut, but I wasn't about to let cryosickness deprive me of good booze and better women, not a chance in hell.

Kurosawa, the AI, turned up a good party mix, and away into the stars we partied. I chit chatted here and there, made small talk, drank my first cup and was well into my second when I saw her across the room. Beautiful, freckles like the stars in the sky, striking orange hair as deep as the sunset back on Earth, and a body that put all others to shame. I knew who I was sleeping with tonight. She was alone, mixing a straw into some green and blue cocktail, and I was also alone, half way into my third glass of whiskey. I made my way towards her, all casual like, and took a seat besides her.

"We have 2 months before we're spending the actual rest of our lives with hundreds of strangers, and you choose the biggest social meeting to drink alone?" I jokingly asked. She chuckled, and gave her own quip. Though I couldn't quite hear her, I laughed anyways, and carried the conversation on. 6 or so glasses in, we were both laughing a storm at the bar counter, when someone tapped on me from behind.

" 'scuse me mate, that's my seat your in."

I didn't even bother to look back. "Sorry mate, can't see your name on it."

"Yeah, well, it's my seat. Move."

This guy was irritating me, and worse, ruining my chances with this woman. She was trying to say something, but I wasn't about to let this guy be a pain in my ass. "You got a problem, pal?" I said, before turning around to face him and immediately regretting saying so. Jesus this guy was huge, how'd he even fit in the cryopod?

"Yeah, I got a problem. You're in my seat, talking to my girl, wanker," he said. Whoops. Somewhere inside me, I kind of realized it wasn't a good idea to pick a fight with this man. Somewhere else inside me wanted to anyways. Who's this douche bag fucking up my night?

"Sorry mate," I said, "Can't see your name on her."

Flying through the air is an experience everyone should try, at least once. One moment, you're seeing the scenery rush past, you catch that feeling of weightlessness, and then the next moment, it all comes crashing down against cold steel flooring, accompanied with a sudden, intense pain on the back of the head. Jesus, I was seeing stars, and not the ones outside the ship. I tried to get up, with one hand on the back of my head, but he didn't even give me a chance to do that. Nowhere did I see his fist sailing for my face, but nonetheless it hit harder than the god damned steel floor. Jesus, this man was strong. My head was spinning ballet, the edges of my vision were growing darker than midnight, my stomach was revolting like the French. Shit, I've had my ass beat before, but this one really takes the cake. I held a hand out to him. "Shit, ok, ok," I tried to say, gasping for control over myself, trying to stifle the blood pouring from my nose. Didn't last long before everything went really dark, really quick.

Next time I came too, something felt off. My whole body just felt like I woke up from another cryosleep; in other words, like absolute shit, with piss on the side. This killer migraine was fucking horrible. I tried to roll over, maybe going back to sleep would help, except that I rolled straight into the wall. I went the other way, and rolled straight into the wall. Wait a second, no bed has a wall on both sides. It's just, wrong. Whatever, I thought, this headache is too fucking killer to worry about. I thought I might get some water, and tried to sit up, only to bash my face (again) into something. The fuck? No bed should ever have walls on both sides of it, except cryopods. Finally I decided to open my eyes, thinking I might get some grasp of what the actual fuck was happening, and I saw stars. Endless stars. Jesus, it was beautiful, but different from the observation deck. I floated around in whatever I was for a while, just enjoying the vastness of space and the infinite set of pinholes in the black canvas of space. I did this, until I realized I was floating, and that the artificial gravity onboard the ship prevents this, and that I was surrounded by three walls, a roof and floor, and a bed in between. The fuck was going on? It didn't take long to click, even with this killer headache. Bodies can't be kept on the ship, and the cryopod that the dead person was in is no longer usable without the person, so to solve both problems at once, they use the cryopod as a casket.

In other words, I'm dead. Which is impossible, because clearly I'm still alive. My heart started to race. I heard stories about people, whole millenniums ago, how they were buried under the earth in a wooden box, but sometimes they came back to life, or weren't actually dead, and were just trapped, several feet of dirt separating them from any air or water or food. It was such a problem, they had to install bells in the coffins, in case someone woke up. Except, that was millenniums ago, and modern tech was such to the point where we can clearly distinguish death from really bad hangovers, right? That didn't change the fact that here I was, drifting through space in a coffin, God knows how many millions of miles away I was from the ship in which I belonged to, with no little bell to let everyone know I'm not dead. Holy shit, I'm going to die out here, in the worst possible way, with no hope whatsoever. How long had it even been? Cryopods should open when the cycle completes or the auxiliary power runs out, but that was only in pressurized environments. Out here, in the cold reaches of the vacuum, I was sealed forever. No food, no water, no company, dwindling air. Fuck, fuck, FUCK! I should never have challenged that dumbass prick who wiped me out. This can't be happening, this can't fucking be happening! I screamed at the top of my lungs, for what felt like hours, though I had no way to know.

More time passed. I didn't have a single way of measuring how much, I only knew I was starving and thirsty. I don't want to die, not out here, not like this. Tear started streaming down my face, wasting what little water I had left. "Please God," I whispered, praying, not just to God, but anything that would listen. "Don't let me die out here like this. Please, please." I whimpered, and sobbed. This was it, this was how I died. In the middle of my self grieving, I heard something. A bump, against the hull of my casket. I didn't think much of it, especially not now. A meteoroid could demolish this thing for all I cared, the end result was the same. I heard another bump, then a third, and then... scratching. No, it couldn't be scratching, it had to be something scraping against my coffin. It stopped, then started again, this time in a rhythmic pattern. This time, I changed my mind about how I wanted to die. I'd rather not make first contact with some strange new space species just before it eats me alive. No thank you, I thought. I laid completely still, not making a sound. Perhaps it was just curious, and not hungry? The scratches stopped for a while. I started to regret not doing anything; there was nothing I could have done, but rush my inevitable death. It's in these moments, that you start to think about what it truly means to live, and man was my life a shitshow. I had hundreds of regrets, things I wished I had the opportunity to say to people before leaving Earth. Things I wished I was bold enough to do. Maybe if I hadn't been such a complete fuckup, I wouldn't have ran from my past, my life, everything. Jesus, and now I wouldn't even have the opportunity to even redeem myself. The tears came back. This is all I can do until I die, reflect on how shitty of a person I've been, and cry about it.

The scratches came back, this time more forceful. Shit, I hadn't even seen it come back! Did it know I can see it from this side and was thus hiding on the other side of the coffin? I tried to lay still again, soundless again, but the scratching was relentless. I heard another bang, two more quieter ones, and a few louder ones, while the scratching went on. There's no point, I thought. Not anymore. I screamed, hoping the alien monsters preferred me for food instead of a potential nesting ground. More scratches, more bumps, all from just out of view. Did they want to eat me? Was there more than one of them? I didn't care, just kill me. I moved towards the glass and banged on it, hoping to get its attention, and I succeeded. Some.. thing that defied all understanding slithered and crawled along the window to the coffin. Jesus, what was this thing? "What, are you?" I said aloud.

It opened what I can only assume was its mouth, before I heard from the back of my head, "What are you?"

Foreword: A much older story I wrote, inspired by a tiny baby skunk. My stepfather found a bunch of the children near his shed on his property back when I was a teen, put them in a box and moved them so the mother could take them. She left one behind for a few days though, he was just a tiny little thing barely clinging to life so I took care of him for a night, milk and everything, before I took him to a sanctuary since I didn't have the means to take better long term care (not that my folks would have wanted).

Once upon a time, there was a soldier on watch duty. It was past time for most of the civilized peoples to be in bed and even the owls have taken to sleeping, the sun having decided to tuck itself under its blanket hours and hours ago. As he stood frighteningly still in the tower, his eyelids demanding to sleep, he allowed his mind to wander and ponder.

The earliest memories the soldier had were of a small straw hut. His mother and father were simple villagers, poor and with 4 other children, all too young to begin working their duties. Very little the soldier understood of that time; one day his father left and never returned, but the soldier did not know why, only that he was gone. Some days he cried for his father to return to their humble hut of a home, but mostly he was content. Some days he played with other children, and with his brothers and sisters. Other days, he was sleeping for most of it. Life was going well for him.

One day, he recalled, late at night, something had changed. There was screaming, not the screams of other children wanting milk or their mother’s embrace, but screams he could not understand. It bothered his ears, so he soon joined the chorus that was the anthem of fright. Soon, a faint red glow appeared at the hole that was the entrance to the hut, and the world began to get very warm and hot, and it was hard to breathe and began to stink, so he cried louder and louder. Suddenly, his mother was there. That was all that mattered, his mother was there and everything would be fine, but it could not, would not, come quick enough. She picked up three of his brothers, while one of them, who was old enough to walk and talk and obey orders, picked him up. He was lifted up, crying and screaming. Together, as a family, they left the hut, and suddenly, even though it should be night, the world was painted with the red glow of a warm sunset, but there was darkness too. The child was able to see his village, and saw. He was old enough to know what fire was, but he had never seen fire like this, so large and vast, and covering many other huts in the village. There in the middle of town, there was a large strange man, and at his feet was one of the other village mothers, crawling away like a baby. The man lifted his arm up. He stopped seeing, as his mother adjusted her hold and obscured his vision.

The glow was soon replaced by darkness again, and the scent replaced by that of the forest. He still cried, as did his siblings. Their mother was rushing, running, and his brother that carried him was running as fast as he could, but crying, yelling. It was only later that the soldier was able to understand the words; “Mother, I can’t, mother please stop!” And then there was a great tumble, and the brother and the child he carried both crashed into the ground. The brother got up, and stumbled after his mother, and the soldier’s cries were forgotten.

Morning dawned, and still the child cried. His cries resounded throughout the forest, but it was only the forest that would hear. Eventually, he stopped crying, and laid there. Another day passed, and the child found he could not cry. A day passed, and the child was not moving, barely awake. Soon water fell from the sky, and in large amounts, and there was no protection from the rain for the child, and so he cried again, but soon became too weak to cry anymore and so he laid there. The sun began to fall again, the third day coming to a close as was the child’s life, when a shadow loomed over him.

A knight, dressed in his armor, approached the mysterious lump in the woods. He bent over, and saw a child, frightened, wet and cold, still as the dead. He kneeled over and prodded the baby with a stick, to which the child reacted with an ever so nearly imperceptible reflex. The knight arose, child in his arms, and carried it off. “You’re still alive,” he cooed. “That village was burned three days ago, little one, were you from it? Out here, in the dark and scary forest, alone and exposed, yet you live. You endure, like a soldier would. I think that’s what I’ll call you. Soldier.”

Soldier awoke with a start. The ancient sun was beginning to arise, and its light slapped him awake. He checked the time on the clock tower, and saw that it was still his shift, but it was nearly over. Soon the memory of his dream was replaced with a list of duties that he must attend to, the everyday goings on in life, and people he must talk to and meet with. It was only later that day that he remembered that he dreamt, but try as he might the memory of the dream escaped him.

Sorry, missed last week's chapter. Didn't have time to write it, may or may not have time this week to catch up. Will do my best to, but it may have to go on hiatus for a bit until I catch up with school work (exams and projects, big sadge).