The cruiser rattled. Septus Pertinax jolted awake, stretched out on a bunk. A ring of sweat had formed around his shirt collar.
Before touchdown on Endymion, he’d been dreaming of rooms: apartments in a manor high on a hill, each filled with light, with friends. Each of them toasted him. Each new room revealed new revelers, new hazy faces, and he drank with them in a whirling dance, every cup brimming with easy answers.
Sometimes the unraveling of a life begins simply and quietly. As lightly as the fluttering descent of a moth with a torn wing. A tiny point of light falling in the deep night sky. A moment passes, unnoticed and unremarked-upon; it is only in hindsight that everything becomes clear.
“Not a mark on him, Sarge,” Victor noted.
“You sure he’s dead?”
Sergeant Lemov could imagine what was going on behind Victor’s impassive features. He was certain that, had the robot been programmed for facial expression, he’d now be displaying a sour look. The sergeant wished he had been, because then, he could do his own part and ignore it.
“Yeah, he’s dead. You can sometimes tell by the lack of breathing.”
Home is...south? Gotta be. Everything's south.
Which way is south? Can't smell it anymore. Damn compass froze, it's so cold.
Year 11, Day 3
Yoon Min-Jung braids her daughter’s hair while she doodles a picture of Earth. When she was younger, Min-Jung loved to draw with her colored pencils, the Faber-Castell ones her grandmother gave her for her tenth birthday. But there are no colored pencils on board the spaceship, so her daughter uses her finger on an old tablet app.
Bo-Young draws a slightly lopsided circle--still impressive for a six-year-old by Min-Jung’s standards--and colors the ocean blue and the land purple.