A Time for Home
© 2002 Bruce McCollum
Hyper-sleep was not what I expected. The way it felt was different from anything I
had ever experienced, the initial feeling was that of loss. Not the kind of loss that
turns your guts inside out, a gentler, kinder loss, a vague sense of displacement.
I had lost awareness of myself, something that I didn't know I had. Having lost it
before I knew about it, I had no way to describe it. There it was. Gone.
But I could still feel. I could feel each part of me breaking down. There didn't
seem to be any pain involved with the process. Pain as a living entity had left me.
Leaving nothing behind in its place. Like the memory of a conversation in a
language you don't understand. It was as if each part of me, not parts like fingers
or organs, but incremental parts, parts too small to visualize, had an awareness
of their own. I had become a loosely associated collection of concepts sharing a
mutual identity.
Well, then it all ended. I was myself again. Or as much myself as I had ever
been. That and it was a year later. Ah, time, the dimension where you exist and
without which you don't exist.
The trip wasn't over. The others and myself still had another week of travel
before we would arrive at our destination. Now that I was corporeal again I
noticed I was hungry. There's nothing like traveling at a substantial percentage of
light speed to inflame a normally meager appetite.
The NATO Ship Penal 1 looked exactly as it had when we left Rhode Island.
NATO is the Normalized Association of Totalitarian Organizations. We have been
in space for a year, a year ship time, twenty years would have past back on the
marble. Hell, when you look at it that way, I'm retired now, I wonder if they will
forward my checks? You've lost everything, including your freedom and you're
still a wise ass. You'll never learn.
My old friends' pain and loss are back. There's nothing gentle about either of
them now. Oh yea, food.
"Happy New Year, Sunni" She looks great, a year of beauty rest, but then she
looked great before we left.
"Hi, Mac. geezers, you look awful. Space flight must not agree with you." The guy
looks like he needs a fix.
"Oh... I was just about to say the same about you. Maybe we could go freshen
up together."
"Thanks for the offer, but as you can see I just finished eating. I want to keep my
meal down a little longer." Of course any port in a storm they say, and it's been
raining a hell of a long time. "Get something to eat and grab a chair."
" I will, nice view. Have you been out before?"
"Yea, that's part of how I ended up here. We didn't get to talk much before
