Kael closed the book. He looked at his wrist tattoo again.
He sat up slowly. His muscles ached, not with the soreness of use, but with the hollow stiffness of deep disuse. He looked at his wrist. A small, glowing tattoo read:
He didn’t answer. He walked past her into the corridor, his footsteps echoing off the metal walls. The ship was a cathedral of solitude. He passed the cryo-bay, glancing through the thick glass window. Row after row of silent pods, faces frozen in dreaming sleep. Five thousand people. Husbands, wives, children. People with memories of rain and dogs and mothers. etap 24
Kael opened his eyes. Or rather, he remembered opening them. The world swam into focus—sterile white walls, the smell of recycled air, and the distant hum of the ship’s core. He was lying on a hard pallet, a thin sheet over his jumpsuit.
Kael felt a chill, though the room was warm. “Extended Temporal Acceleration Protocol. The ship cannot sustain consciousness for 140 years. So, it clones a single crew member in sequential stages. Each stage lives for one year, performs maintenance, then… terminates. The next stage wakes up with all the memories of the previous ones, up to a point.” Kael closed the book
“The Odyssey ,” he recited. The knowledge was there, planted like a seed. “Bound for Kepler-442b. 140 years from Earth. I am a soil analyst. My task is to test the hydroponic bays every six months to ensure the 5,000 sleeping colonists don’t wake up to sterile dirt.”
Because that was the job.
There was nothing. Just static. Just the Odyssey .