Percentage of life

He rarely dropped below ninety five percent, and was rather alarmed to find that he was under eighty percent and still decreasing.

“Cerebra, run a systems check, there appears to be a malfunction in the life support system, or maybe a fault in the monitoring circuits.”

“All systems functioning at optimum, no faults or malfunctions to report.”

“Cerebra, I am at less than eighty percent, something has to be wrong.”

“Negative, all systems functioning at optimum.”

He squirmed slightly in the confines of the pod, the small movement giving a little more comfort.

All around him the ship hummed and thrummed as it streaked its way through the star system.

“Cerebra, how do you account for the drop in life force?”

“The passage of time is having a melancholy effect on your thought processes, resulting in a lowering of psychological and physical resistance.”

This was a cause for concern, if he dropped below fifty percent he would lapse into deterioration and gradually drain away into non-being.

“Cerebra, do you have any suggestions on how to halt the drain?”

“You need to have less wake time, you need to return to sleep, to recharge.”

His digits flickered over the keypad built into the arm rest, programming in for eighty light years of dreamless hypersleep.

Minute motors came to life, liquids ran through tubes, the catheter twitched slightly as it fed the corrupted juice into his bloodstream.

Sleep came, and with it came dreams.

He dreamt of home, and family. He dreamt of the seven suns and the blue landscape.

With the dreams came sadness, a longing for what he had, for what he would never regain.

As the dreams stretched through the years so his sadness deepened.

His life force trickled down to fifty percent, then below, and continued falling.


©2014 Stephen. J. Green.