~~~

There’s no dawn. No sun. Just a panoramic view of the black, cold spaces that stretch from one end of oblivion to the other. Sprinkled with light- each speck- a brilliant lie of hope, like a lighthouse many miles distant before drowning.

All evidence of home, obliterated before an indifferent, red giant, is contained within this life pod’s memory banks. I am the sole caretaker of this knowledge, the last of an extinct species. Time is my undertaker, in partnership with Death, who has whispered a promise he intends to keep. All my thoughts are recorded and amplified within these long silences between stars.

We saw it coming, and raced against time, sacrificing all for technology that could outrun mankind’s fatal bullet. We made a machine powerful enough to shoot men into deep space, cryogenically frozen in a box the size of a school bus to preserve man’s arrogance, or perhaps his defiance toward the inevitable- a lasting testament carved into the void that reads, ‘Man was here’.

Well, mankind had it wrong, and since I am the first and the last, and all other life pods that were launched after mine never escaped our dying sun’s grasp, then my word is also the final authority on all matters.

I wasn’t supposed to wake until reaching Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, and I will succumb to madness long before then. I continue to hear Death knocking on the door to my capsule. He’s telling me, that my debt is long past due and he’s been waiting to collect. There are no celestial maps to gather my bearings upon this infinite, black sea, no distress beacons that will be heard, no prayers that I can offer to a long absent god.

I know that I haven’t crossed a fraction of the distance needed, and yet, I am over a thousand years old.

My body continues to function in this hellish sleep-state. My mind stays awake- just a ghost in the machine.

The console continues to record my bitter thoughts. I pray these words will be my last:

Man, in all his glory and achievements, has gone through extraordinary measures to send its last remaining descendent beyond the edge of known space… to be buried alive.

~~~