The Sleepers

The sleepers

Pt. 1

My ears were ringing, and there was a bright light in my face, I couldn’t see very well, but I could tell there were people moving around.

“He’s waking up, can someone get Doctor Adams?” An excited female voice said. I groggily looked around, but could only see the vague outline of… wait.. that can’t be right. I looked the other way, the only thing there was the wall.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” The same voice asked. I turned my head again to its source, and found her directing a brighter light into my eyes.

“So far everything seems to be fine. OH, Doctor, you made it!, I’ll see to the other three.” The female speaker left. Other three… she must be talking about.. but only three? Did only four of us make it?

“Your probably wondering what’s going on kid.” Said an older sounding voice, it’s speaker sounded rather bored.

“Y-yes” I replied, my voice somewhat ragged. “I- I can’t see very well though, so that’s probably not helping.” I quipped. This “Doctor Adams” fellow didn’t seem to find it funny.

“A common side effect of long-term cryogenic stasis.” He replied after a while. “However, in your case, these might be more helpful.” He held up a small case. “Your lucky we noticed them in your pod.” He said, handing it to me.

“My glasses.. thank you doctor…” I trailed off, waiting for a formal introduction.

“Dr. Grant Adams.” He held out a hand as I put my glasses on, bring the room into much more clarity, the rest of the haziness slowly fading away as I woke up. “You are?”

“Michael North.” I responded taking his hand and shaking it. “The one woman, who was just here, she said that there were three others?”

Dr. Adams sighed deeply, looked to the ground for a minute, then looked up.

“Kid, there’s something you should know. The sleeper ship your pod cluster was part of, was little more than a mangled wreck. Your cluster was the only one still operating, and even then only just.” His words sank in, and I could feel my face paling.

“N-no one else…”

“No one could have survived whatever came through.” He took a moment, then continued. “There’s something else… and this one will probably shock you more, so if you want I can save it till your companions are up.”

I shook my head, I’d brief them on my own. There was a moment of silence, then

“Earth has been destroyed.” The words rattled me, our home world? How long did the sleeper ship have us under? How recently was earth destroyed? Questions buzzed through my head, is humankind on the brink of extinction? Did we manage to move somewhere else?

“Dr. Adams, one of the others isn’t waking up, but his vitals are stable, for now” the female voice interrupted my train of thought, I turned y head to the door and nearly jumped back into the wall, too shocked to scream at what appeared to be a spider-ant hybrid.

“Thank you, Ettyn.” Dr. Adams replied, I’ll see what I can do, for now…” he paused, looked at me then continued “actually, I’ll take Michael with me, he seems to be doing well enough.”

Ettyn nodded, and left the room, presumably to continue whatever she was doing prior to informing us one of my colleagues wasn’t waking up.

“We did find a new home world, by the way.” Dr. Adams said.

“Oh.. that’s good.” He laughed a bit ruefully

“Terra Nova is far from what earth was, but that’s not to say it isn’t close enough.” He looked to me, before saying “it was a few hundred cycles ago. Your ship was sent out another couple centuries prior to that.”

Centuries… we’ve been sleeping for centuries.

“Are we on a ship or in a hospital on Terra Nova?” I asked

“Ship. We’re a few dozen star gates from Terra Nova.” Dr. Adams said, opening the door to what appeared to be an office. “Wait here while I get the others.”

I nodded, the other three people were my last link to home. Our last link to home. As the first one woken up, I figured it was now my responsibility to get my crew, as they now seemed to me, acclimated to our new world, and then carve ourselves a place in this galaxy. The first thing we’re going to need though, is a ship.

I think it’s the way it moves?

The somewhat sexual quality of sand

My eyes lit up with excitement, never before had anyone offered to play board games with me, I had always had to ask and nag. ‘Michae your games are weird’ ‘Michael the games take too long’ ‘but you always win’ were the most common excuses I’d heard.

“Could we just… stay, here, between worlds, and play games?” I asked, deciding that if I was to die, I it to be among friends. Death, clearly surprised looked up, and if they had flesh, and eyes, I imagine they’d have a shocked expression

“You understand, that time will still move on as it was in life, and in the next, right? People will age and die, you won’t be able to return.”

I merely nodded, my time had come, and while at first I had wanted to barter for my life to be spared, death seemed as lonely a job as any.

“I think we could both use a friend.” I said, moving my first pawn forward. “It’s your turn.”

“Chess? I’ve been around since before humans invented the concept of games, so a game as old as chess would be be in my favour without a doubt. I would advice you to choose again, and pick something you’re familiar with.” Death said as they presented every board and video game ever created.

Hey, don’t cry, I noticed there’s a hundred or so people around for you to meet

hey. don't cry. 99 bottles of beer on the wall. okay?

TLDR

So I was reading fanfics again, not like, I read the fic and went back to it, but like, genuinely went back to reading fanfics in general, and this one I read was abysmally short but had a really neat premise to me because like, one it’s Percy x Charles, which I don’t see all that often and I actually love(?) but also Percy’s family was like, retconned to being Mormon, but back to my point, the other one I just finished, and like, I don’t read a whole ton of fanfics because I get weird afterwards, like I’ll be in some kind of odd funk where I’m either just blue for no reason at all(at least that I can find) or I’m just weird. Idk, it’s ambiguous and vague and difficult to explain, long story short, this one like, reminded me that for a minute I wanted to like, open up a cafe or bakery or some quaint whimsical thing like that, and like, I’ve worked in a quaint whimsical place before and I loved it, yeah my manager was a little, okay a lot, annoying and like, could not manage. But he was an alright dude most of the time. Anyway, like I finished this fic yeah, and like, I enjoyed working in a small quaint whimsical type environment, and I’m going to school for like… game design I think is my plan? Idk my plan is like really vague right now, but like, it got me thinking, why did I abandon that cafe idea before I really had a chance to mull it over y’know? So like, now I’m just sitting in my dorm before classes start wondering if I should’ve taken different classes instead, and like, yeah, I have my entire life ahead of me because I’m only turning 20 this June, which is wild to think about, but like also I don’t really know what I want my life to look like and the fact that a lot of this thought process was started by a flipping Percy x Luke fanfic is ridiculous but like I said earlier I get weird about fanfics, what was I saying? Oh yeah, like, I don’t really know what I want the next few years to look like even, and I feel like I probably should, and then there’s getting to the long term and I’ve thought even less about that because there’s really only so far you can walk along the edge of a coin and like, sometimes I hate my hyper fixating, or whatever this is, because like, now I’ll be thinking about this for a while and like it’s weird and blah, and sorry there’s like, a million things here and it’s long and I have no idea where to put it so it’s just lurking in my drafts for now, and if anything it’ll wind up forgotten or something.

Okay, but I like fixing things, so no.

You guys do know you're supposed to reblog things, right