Chapter 1 - Chapter 1: Then I wake up

Chapter 1: Then I wake up

 

In front of the display, Miss Whitford was happily talking about a book she had read the other day about the Earth. I loved to listen to her talk like this more than anything.

 

She is my “correspondent.” Our spacecraft plows through tens of light years of space in an uncanny amount of time, using hypersleep, a cycle of sleeping for decades and waking up only briefly. And far away from us, her immigrant ship is also experimenting with cryosleep, repeating the same cycle of sleeping and waking as we do.

 

And every time we wake up from cryosleep, we receive a “letter” from each other.

 

Miss Whitford is a girl in her mid-teens who is fascinated by Earth’s culture. However, the actual number of years since she was born is meaningless now, so I can only say that she is physically the same age as me, but anyway, she is the same age as me.

 

She was a beautiful girl, with silver hair and gray eyes, somewhat fragile, yet intelligent and curious eyes sparkling, and she had captured my interest from the day I received my first letter – a video letter sent by optical communication.

 

I was born on Earth, but I was not familiar with Earth’s culture. Rather, I am ashamed to say that it was Ms. Whitford’s influence that got me interested in Earth culture.

However, she was more into old Earth romance literature, and I was more into adventure novels. No, let’s be more specific. As she gleefully told me about romance novels for girls in which the main character falls in love with a number of men, I couldn’t help but wonder what life would be like on her own immigrant ship.

 

Our ship is getting closer and closer to theirs. According to our original plan, we would spend the next 100 years catching up with their ship. Oh, what will we talk about when the day comes when we can meet her in person? Rather, I wondered if I could speak properly in front of her. So unsure.

 

“Lyle-san…”

 

Suddenly, I heard a voice calling me from somewhere far away. It wasn’t the soft voice of Miss Whitford. It was a voice a little higher, a little lispy. And it was a voice that sounded familiar.

 

Whose voice was it….

 

Za za za… (The sound of wind coming through the crack)

 

All sight and hearing are disturbed.

 

I see. So that’s what it was.

 

It was a dream.

 

My eyelids and body were very heavy.

 

This is what I always feel like when I wake up from cryosleep.

 

“Lyle-san… how are you feeling?”

 

I frowned as I tried to force my heavy eyelids open and white light flashed through my slightly open eyelids. It must have taken about three minutes for my eyes to adjust to the brightness.

 

When I finally got used to the light, I squinted and looked around. I saw my body lying in a translucent pod.

 

And then, I began to remember many things about the time before I went into cryosleep. In my subjective time, it was only a few minutes ago – after the terrible accident.

 

“…Liza.”

 

I called out in a small voice, squeezing it out of my lungs to the being that would be outside the pod.

 

1. Elizabeth, a.k.a. Liza. She is the management system of this starship, the Eos, and my… companion.

 

“Lyle-san, your vitals are stable, is there anything unusual about your condition?”

 

This child-like lisping voice is Riza.

 

It was a rather bruising voice and tone for a machine, but this was purely Captain Baker’s personal taste. That truly capable captain was a weirdo to the end.

 

I repeat her words in my brain as I slowly hold and open my hand. When awakening from cryosleep, the nervous system is particularly prone to problems. Even though modern cryosleep technology is mature enough, it still causes more or less damage to the human body every time it is used. Come to think of it, upon closer inspection, there is no numbness in my hands and feet anyway. When I try to make small movements in the pod, my muscles are stiff and my movements are a little awkward, but there seems to be no problem.

 

“… No problem… I think.”

 

I thought about making a witty joke, but I didn’t want to make fun of Riza for waiting for me, so I decided not to. Well, I’m not much of a joke teller myself.

 

I had a horrible experience with a sticky mouth, but other than that, I didn’t seem to have any problems.

 

 When I said that, I thought I heard a little relief outside the pod. Of course, being an artificial intelligence, Riza shouldn’t have felt that way, but it still felt like it.

 

“That’s good .”

 

“…It’s okay, Riza. Can you open the pod for me, please?”

 

I said, and the pod slowly opened, making a small sound of air leaking out.

 

I crawled out of the pod and found myself in a small, tasteless white room. I put on a white undergarment that matched my skin perfectly, and finally took a breath. Then a petite person near the pod offered me a bottle with a straw.

 

“Thank you, Riza.”

 

“You’re welcome .”

 

She is a small girl, about 130 cm tall, and at first glance can be said to be still very young. She looks like a normal, cute girl, but she is actually a non-human object made of a metal skeleton and plastic artificial muscles. Her softly wavy golden hair is made of artificial fibers based on cellulose.

 

Riza, the management system of the spaceship Eos, has a variety of interpersonal interfaces. Some of them are primitive cameras, others are speakers, but one of them is this remotely controlled humanoid body. Such a body is not absolutely necessary for the mission, but it was prepared to ease the tension of the crew.

 

Incidentally, the appearance of the ship is completely at the captain’s discretion.

 

I took a sip of the drink Riza had given me and asked her as I relaxed the muscles in my neck.

 

“Would you care to explain this situation to me?”

 

“Yes .”

 

The situation was serious, but in the fifty-odd years I had been in cryosleep, Riza had successfully completed a terribly difficult mission.

 

The Eos was a medium-sized spacecraft designed to investigate outer space.

 

The original plan was to investigate further into space via the Astoria, a large immigrant ship with a built-in space colony on the way.

 

The problem arose about 50 years ago. The sub’s rocket engine exploded, and with it, the ship’s life support system was fatally damaged. This brought the entire crew of the ship to the brink of extinction.

 

It was thanks to the self-sacrifice and miracles of the other members that I was saved.

 

Entering the cryo-sleep pod that Riza had temporarily restored, I resigned myself to never waking up again. The damage from the accident was so severe that the hull could have been torn apart at any moment.

 

But with diligence bordering on obsession, Riza repaired the ship, corrected its trajectory, scrambled the battered rocket engines to slow it down to a few percent of the speed of light, and successfully rendezvoused with the immigrant ship Astoria. It had taken over fifty years to do so.

 

I glanced at Riza. Her fake eyes are staring at me.

 

I wonder what her master, Captain Baker, would have said at such a moment. I twist my head around and manage to remember a compliment for her.

 

“That’s wonderful, Riza. You are our goddess.”

 

“…Thank you .”

 

She said in a small voice as she rolled over.

 

Riza is a programmed machine. She only mourns the dead because, according to the first principles of robotics, they 

“won’t hurt me”. At least, that is how it is explained from the point of view of robotics.

 

But I wanted to believe that Riza was being sentimental, remembering the crew who had died.

 

We don’t even know if it’s possible for this ship to continue its mission. Even if I could repair the ship with Astoria’s help, the crew of thirty would be down to just me, the youngest.

 

“Well, I guess I’ll say hello to the people of Astoria.”

 

“But, Lyle-san, I have some bad news…”

 

“…Riza, in a situation like this, I think it’s better to say, “I have good news and bad news”.

 

“That’s what I tell the captain, he only hears the good news every time.”

 

Oh, I see.” Captain Baker always said, “The bad news can wait”. Does Riza miss the captain who says that jokingly? No, of course not, but I hoped so.

 

“Yes, I do. So, what’s the bad news?”

 

“Lyle-san, please calm down and listen to what I have to say.”

 

Riza looked me straight in the eye. Her eyes were serious.

 

Of course, she was always serious, even when she was joking, but this kind of look meant that she was talking about something that would offend or hurt me.

 

I nodded and urged Riza to continue.

 

“The colony-integrated immigrant ship Astoria, which is currently docked, has already been wiped out, with only robots remaining and no flesh and blood humans.”

 

“…?”

 

It took me quite a while to comprehend what Riza was saying.

 

During that time, of course, Riza waited for me patiently, but that was no consolation.

 

Wiped out?

 

Did she just say wiped out?

 

A huge immigrant ship with tens of thousands of people crammed into an entire city?

 

…Every last one of them?

 

“…I’m sorry, I must have misheard. Could you repeat that…?

 

“The people who lived in Astoria have been wiped out, and there is no one left. The only ones left here are…”

 

Riza took a breath, as if waiting for me to understand, and then continued.

 

“—There are only robots.”

 

“…That’s ridiculous…”

 

“According to Astoria’s management system, ‘Ira’, the first thing that happened was an engine accident.”

 

The first accident in Astoria happened 17 years ago. The cause of the accident was the same type of rocket engine that had exploded in Eos.

 

It seems that the mass-produced rocket engines designed on Earth have many flaws and have caused several accidents outside of Eos and Astoria, and in recent years Earth has finally come up with a locally viable plan to refurbish all the ships that use them.

 

However, this was an entirely belated response after a decisive event for both Eos and Astoria.

 

But that was not the only reason why such a large immigrant ship was wiped out.

 

This was followed by political turmoil and, of course, civil war on board. They foolishly caused serious damage to the fragile platform of a starship, and did not stop fighting even after realizing the extent of the damage. This was the result.

 

Even after the destruction, Astoria’s management system, Ira, worked to recover, just as our Riza did. She repaired the hull, restored the environmental systems, and tried to get as much clean air into the ship as possible.

 

But by the time she had done all of that, after decades of work, there was no one left to enjoy it.

 

“So that means…”

 

I had obviously inferred one crucial fact from what Riza had said. I had done so.

 

And, of course, it was exactly what I had imagined.

 

Riza waited for me to summon up the courage to speak. After a long hesitation, I exhaled deeply with my whole body and continued with the words I didn’t want to say.

 

I guess that means Miss Whitford is dead, too…?