Across the Universe

… beat…

…

Ed jerked my eyelids open. Plop! Cold, yellow liquid filled my eyes, sealing them like gum. Plop!

I was blind now.

One of them, maybe Hassan, tapped on my chin, and I opened my mouth obediently. Apparently, not wide enough — the tubes hit my teeth. I opened wider.

And then the tubes were forced down my throat, hard. They did not feel as flexible as they had looked; they felt like a greased broomstick being crammed down my mouth. I gagged, and gagged again. I could taste bile and copper around the plastic of the tubes.

“Swallow it!” Ed shouted in my ear. “Just relax!”

Easy for him to say.

A few moments after it was done, my stomach tingled. I could feel the wires inside me being pulled and tugged as Hassan plugged the little black box to the outside of my very own shoebox coffin.

Shuffling noises. The hose.

“Don’t know why anyone would sign up for this,” Hassan said.

Silence.

A metallic sound — the hose being opened up. Cold, cold liquid splashed on my thighs. I wanted to move my hands to cover myself there, but my body was sluggish.

“I dunno,” Ed said. “Things ain’t exactly peachy here now. Nothing’s been right since the first recession, let alone the second. The Financial Resource Exchange was s’posed to bring more jobs, wasn’t it? Ain’t got nothing now other than this P.O.S. job, and it’ll be over soon as they’re all frozen.”

Another silence. The cryo liquid washed over my knees now, seeping cold into the places on my body that had been warm — the crease of my knees, under my arms, under my breasts.

“Not worth giving your life away, not for what they’re offering.”

Ed snorted. “What they’re offering? They’re offering a lifetime’s salary, all in one check.”

“Ain’t worth nothing on a ship that won’t land for three hundred and one years.”

My heart stopped. Three hundred… and one? No — that’s wrong. It’s three hundred years even. Not three hundred and one.

“That much money can sure help a family out. Might make the difference.”

“What difference?” Hassan asked.

“Difference between surviving or not. It’s not like when we were kids. Don’t care what the prez says, that Financial Act ain’t gonna be able to fix this kinda debt.”

What are they yammering about? Who cares about national debt and jobs? Go back to that extra year!

“A man has time to think about it anyway,” Ed continued. “Consider his options. Why’d they delay the launch again?”

Cryo liquid splashed against my ears as my shoebox coffin filled; I lifted my head.

Delay? What delay? I tried to speak around the tubes, but they filled my mouth, crowded my tongue, silenced my words.

“I have no idea. Something about the fuel and feedback from the probes. But why are they making us keep all the freezing on schedule?”

The cyro liquid was rising fast. I turned my head, so my right ear could catch their conversation.

“Who cares?” Ed asked. “Not them — they’ll just sleep through it all. They say the ship’ll take three hundred years just to get to that other planet — what’s the difference in one more year?”

I tried to sit up. My muscles were hard, slow, but I struggled. I tried to talk again, make a sound, any sound, but the cryo liquid was spilling over my face.

“Just. Relax,” Ed said very loudly near my face.

I shook my head. God, didn’t they know? A year made the world of difference! This was one more year I could be with Jason, one more year I could live! I signed up for three hundred years… not three hundred and one!

Gentle hands — Hassan’s? — pushed me under the cryo liquid. I held my breath. I tried to rise up. I wanted my year! My last year — one more year!

“Breathe in the liquid!” Ed’s voice sounded muffled, almost indecipherable under the cryo liquid. I tried to shake my head, but as my neck muscles tensed, my lungs rebelled, and the cold, cold cryo liquid rushed down my nose, past the tubes, and into my body.

I felt the finality of the lid trapping me inside my Snow White coffin.

As one of them pushed at my feet, sliding me into my morgue, I imagined that my Prince Charming was just beyond my little door, that he really could come and kiss me awake and that we could have a whole year more together.

There was a click, click, grrr of gears, and I knew the flash freezing would start in mere moments, and then my life would be nothing but a puff of white steam leaking through the cracks of my morgue door.

And I thought: At least I’ll sleep. I will forget, for three hundred and one years, everything else.

And then I thought: That will be nice.

And then whoosh! The flash-freeze filled the tiny chamber. I was in ice. I was ice.

I am ice.

But if I’m ice, how am I conscious? I was supposed to be asleep; I was supposed to forget about Jason and life and Earth for three hundred and one years. People have been cryo frozen before me, and none of them were conscious. If the mind is frozen, it cannot be awake or aware.

I’ve read before of coma victims who were supposed to be knocked out with anesthesia during an operation, but really they were awake and felt everything.

I hope — I pray—that’s not me. I can’t be awake for three hundred and one years. I’ll never survive that.

Maybe I’m dreaming now. I’ve dreamt a lifetime in a thirty-minute nap. Maybe I’m still in that space between frozen and not, and this is all a dream. Maybe we haven’t left Earth yet. Maybe I’m still in that limbo year before the ship launches, and I’m stuck, trapped in a dream I can’t wake from.

Maybe I’ve still got three hundred and one years stretching out before me.

Maybe I’m not even asleep yet. Not all the way.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I only know one thing for certain.

I want my year back.

2 ELDER

THE DOOR IS LOCKED.

“Now that,” I say to the empty room, “is interesting.”

See, there are hardly any locked doors on Godspeed. No need. Godspeed isn’t small — it was the largest ship ever built when it was launched two and a