“How long will the trip take?” she asked. We watched the technicians open her pod, run diagnostics on the monitoring systems that would keep her asleep and nourish her body. Yumi stepped out of her flight suit and handed it to one of the techs, draped herself with an opaque plastic poncho.
“No one really knows. It’s not like we have a set destination—we need to find our way,” I said. “But you and the other children won’t come out at all. You’ll remain asleep, and when you awaken, you’ll feel like a long night has passed.”
The technicians helped Yumi climb into her pod and allowed me to say goodbye. I wondered how many farewells and second thoughts and assurances to scared children and spouses they had already seen.
“I do want to go,” she said. She held out her hands and pulled me in for a hug. “For Mom. She would want us to go.”
I told her to dream about the impossible and colorful and miraculous. Dream about your mother and father. I squeezed her hands. I kissed her head. “When you wake up,” I said, “I’ll be there. And we’ll be home.”
I nodded to the technicians to proceed, and they finished preparing Yumi for the long sleep. Her tiny, shaking body looked embryonic beneath the plastic in her silver crib before she succumbed to the sedatives and the cryo gel washed over her as if she had been encased in ice.
Proxima Centauri B–—4.3 Light-Years from Earth; Travel Time: 50 Years
CONSTELLATION: Centaurus. Tidally locked and in tight orbit around a red dwarf star–—perpetual day and night on opposite sides of the planet. Approximate orbital period: 11 days. Volatile solar flare activity likely to have stripped any atmosphere that would have been present.
ARTIST’S NOTES: We stopped because of possibility, even though we knew the world was likely dead. After all, it would be too convenient for our closest neighbors to be right for us–—the universe wouldn’t make our journey that easy. But this would be our first look at another world not in our backyard–— vermilion at over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit on one side, steeped in darkness and ice on the other.
Most adult passengers lived through the long, dark years in stasis, emerging from their pods only for weeks at a time when we stopped at a planet worthy of study. Children were not to be awakened before colonization, to preserve our resources. Perhaps some thought it cruel for children to spend so many years in a tin can. After I woke up and completed my initial checkup with the ship’s doctors, I didn’t go to my assigned quarters or to the mess hall as I was instructed, despite my hunger and the fact I was still wearing a hospital gown. I allowed my bare feet to carry me across the empty steel corridors, beyond the areas that had begun to stir with life from the crew. I sat next to Yumi’s pod and described the ship’s awakening—how everyone was wandering the halls half-naked, disoriented, slightly slimy from the cryo gel, how the windows of the ship glowed with the faint light of a red dwarf. After that I visited Yumi every morning. I held a small speaker to the glass walls of her pod, playing her favorite songs as I updated her on my life, which was punctuated by the monotony of meals, sleep, and trying to make myself useful, cleaning the halls, rearranging the mess. I could barely bring myself to socialize with the others—they all had colleagues and spouses and friends, a purpose. They were vital to our task. I wonder if the Department of Planetary Security offered me privileged passage aboard the Yamato out of some sense of guilt, the widow of the great Clifford Miyashiro, who gave his life attempting to avert an outbreak; the mother of the woman who tried to cool the planet. But when the navigation commander found me curled up outside of Yumi’s stasis chamber about a week after our arrival at the Centauri system, my space life changed forever.
“We can’t use all the paint, of course,” he explained. He crouched beside me and looked up at Yumi. “But between your personal supplies and part of what we earmarked for education, we should be able to spruce up these walls. Do you think you can take charge of that for me?”
I nodded, a little self-conscious that I hadn’t showered since I’d awoken. A moment later a woman approached, lingered behind the commander until he waved her over, making me even more aware of my unwashed appearance. She wore leather boots, magenta tights, a wool poncho that grazed her thighs.
“And Dorrie here is something of a painter as well,” he said.
“Nothing like you, of course,” Dorrie interrupted.
“She’s a lottery passenger. We woke her up hoping she’d want to help you,” the commander said. “How’s that sound?”