Author : Lewis Richards
Today is my 456th birthday.
Growing up everyone is made to think space is a dangerous place full of Alien space pirates and impending doom, ( I’m looking at you, Sigourney Weaver). But as it happens, space is just empty. The majority of problems come from us just not being as ready as we thought for the great beyond. Take me for example, nothing says adventure like signing up to travel billions of miles to a new planet, all in the ‘ Luxury comfort of our new cutting edge Hibernation Chambers’ great sales pitch there.
This is where I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a pickle. Apparently, in some very rare cases, Suspended Animation entails that while your body is completely, and I mean completely dormant, you may or may not remain aware of every – single – second – that ticks by. To put this in perspective, there are 259,200 seconds in 3 days. And I have been in suspension for 158,410 days. I know right. What a time to be alive.
Fortunately, I’m pretty sure we’ve started to decelerate, which should mean I have a paltry 3 weeks left until we begin orbiting and somebody gets around to waking the rest of me up. Of course, I could be way off the mark here, I’m basing this thoroughly well thought out assumption on the fact the tingle that was on my left leg for the past few hundred years is now on my right arm. Because what else have I got to do but think about thrust dynamics.
Given my current predicament, I think it might be fair to say I’m going to be writing a strongly worded letter to the geniuses who put this machine together, because honestly while it is comfy, which I suspect the quite wonderful mixture of drugs that have stopped me from aging ( yay!) and kept me physically paralyzed ( boo!) for the past 4 centuries has a fair bit to do with. Even if it does take another thousand years to get a reply.
I haven’t even mentioned the worst (and most pressing) part of this whole journey yet. It is heavily recommended that you excuse yourself to the little boy’s room before you get into the chambers. I, however, decided to join a few of my fellow Hibernatees, now blissfully unaware, in a last quick celebratory Beer before we went to sleep.
Bad Move past me. Bad move. I’ve needed to pee for 400 years.
Ouch, 400 years!
I liked the simple narration.
Reminded me of the old Rowan Atkinson ‘welcome to hell’ sketch and it being ‘damnation without relief’. Nice and wry and that goes a step or two above the old Shadowrun maxim of ‘never stiff a street doc’ 😉
All the better for the straightforward narration, this one raised a smile.
Could have done with another editing pass, though.
That’s gotta hurt. Humorous story.
I expected this to go in the usual insanity direction. What a delight to both not retread common ground, and instead inject some humour. It made me laugh out loud, and I needed that. Even the protagonist has a sense of humor at it allowing us to laugh with him instead of at him.
He’s mistaken on one point though, Sigourney Weaver was right about something: In space, no one can here you scream, “I’ve got to pee!”