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Green Dawn Cake
4a443f
Halfway through your chicken strips, you're accosted by a polite, but somewhat... tinny voice. It comes to you almost as a shock, enough to make you jump.
"Looks like you made it just fine without our help. Although, you're up and awake ahead of schedule..."
There's a medical android approaching you, dressed in freshly-pressed scrubs. Before you can even make a dash for the exit, it blocks your only path of escape- and then seats itself next to you. You're not sure if you should be sitting down for a chat, or fighting for your life. It seems to sense your unease, as it raises its open palms in a gesture of peace.
"No need to be frightened. Besides, I'm a sworn doctor. We all swear by the same hippocratic oath, robots and humans alike."
Still, it seems like a wise thing to give it some space- so you scoot over as far as possible. "Well... Christ, you scared the shit out of me. But keep those hands to yourself."
"I suppose robots like us get a bad rap, after that nasty Seegson affair. In my defense, I'm a Schappiel Model MR-680. Not one of those shitpile budget murder-bots."
"Right. Well, let's keep some personal space in between us. Just for my sake."
"Fair enough. Listen, I have a lot of important things to tell you. Just give me a few minutes, nothing more."
"Shoot."
"First, you're going to want to keep that helmet close and take a rebreather unit on way out. The ship has lost pressurization in most compartments. For your safety, we shunted whatever air we had left into the sections you just walked through, but its barely enough for several days.”
"What? I mean, aside from the heating, everything seemed just fine."
"Appearances are decieving. Which brings me to the second topic. You might not want to hear this... But we've been stuck in orbit. For a very, very long time. We thought it was best to keep all of the colonists in stasis until we could fix the problem."
You rise out of your seat, trying to digest the news. "What about the Engineering and Command crews? Are they out of stasis?"
"No. It was evident that nobody could fix the damage onboard. It's too extensive- when the ship first shot out of warp, we immediately hit an asteroid field. Or more accurately, we stopped around it. Luckily, the habitation modules in your wing were more or less untouched. The same wasn't so for a lot of other sections needed for emergency repairs: Engineering wings, wormhole communications, heavy EVA droid hangars, sublight drives for emergency landing, and the COSMOS colonist management AI. I could go on for hours, but the vessel has now been rendered mission ineffective."
“Then why raise me at all? Omega Proxyon Corporation would have sent a rescue vessel to look for us in due time...”
"As the only acting officer, I waited for almost five decades. No rescue vessels showed in that time, so I moved onto the next portion of my directive. To wake up whoever I could, to ensure their continued survival. Without COSMOS, it was a challenge- without its authorization, I had to work around the existing software. But as expected, this put the other pods on lockdown. At this time, freeing the other occupants would be impractical without repairing COSMOS. Trying to break through the lockdown protocols could take another several decades. Maybe even centuries.”
“But why... me? Surely there's somebody better suited to the task of... Well, somehow un-fucking this.”
“You're not listening. There are no more solutions aboard the ship. I released you so you could continue your survival on the planet's surface. With only the chance to free a single person, I worked through all the data logs and personnel files... You were uniquely suited, given your background and physical ability.”
You struggle to take it all in, trying to untangle everything in your head- until you realize that you are truly alone, without the hope of seeing a single survivor out of the 75,000 souls on board. The mind struggles to grasp the prospect of being stranded, thousands of light-years from home. Words stick in your throat and you're barely able to hold down a burst of emotions- all of them unpleasant, before a heavy sense of doom weights heavily on your shoulders.
Then, you hear something strange. The medical android's voice softens, losing its stiff, inhuman tone.
“I spent ten years fighting against my own programming, stopping myself from freeing you from your sleep. I... had to figure out answers. To moral questions. I knew life aboard this ship, or on a barren planet, would have been meaningless. But when I realized that there was life on that 'rock' - sapient life, with societies and settlements; I knew there was...”
The android stops, as if he's unsure of what he's saying. But he looks up, and presses a button on a console affixed to the wall. One of the breakroom's windows begins to turn from an opaque, black material to a crystal-clear glass; and soon your eyes are greeted by a beautiful planet that seems to fill the window. Its surface almost seems to glow with blue oceans, soft white clouds, frosty polar ice caps and lush, green landmasses.
“Hope. It's a hard concept for me to grasp, but I think I understand. Even then it wasn't an easy decision. But you would have stayed dead, for all intents and purposes, in stasis.”
You sit there, awestruck at the surface of Omega Proxyon. They promised a planet that was livable, but this... Nobody would have expected a planet like this, and especially not one teeming with intelligent, civilized life.
"Even then, it was a tough decision, trying to carry out my directive to save lives. But here, you would have stayed dead in stasis. Most likely forever. Maybe it was the wrong call to make, seeing as I don't have the facilities to re-freeze you now... and if I am wrong, I'm sorry.”
You press your face against the cold glass, still in disbelief. “I'm not sure exactly what to say. This... this is amazing.”
“I made all the preparations. I loaded up one of the colony exploration shuttles with everything you might possibly need. If you find yourself a new life down there, then all this wouldn't have been for nothing.”
Staring at the wondrous planet in silence and at a loss for words, you're still unsure about everything; there are too many decisions to make, too many things to think over.
“Well, I'll take that as a thank-you then.”
“Ah- well, I suppose. Still not sure how I feel about everything.”
“You don't have time to figure that out. Since you're on your own, going through the shuttle manifest and the takeoff safety checklist is going to take us a few days before oxygen runs out. You can think about all the other things on your way down.”
“I suppose it's goodbye then. Thanks, uh...”
“Doc. Just call me doc.” The android offers a hand, and you firmly shake it.
“Now get going, son. You have a whole new world ahead of you.”
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