The Drift

A shrill, sharp alarm sliced through the void. My throat burned as oxygen, dry and a little bit stale, poured down it. I tried futilely to stifle a cough, but my body spasmed with a flurry of coughs that followed the first.

I opened my eyes though my vision was blurry, like my eyes were submerged in water. I saw the shape of a face in front of me. It nodded, and the nodding was accompanied by a voice. A female voice. I felt like I should know it, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Travis?” She asked.

The woman’s face was coming into focus but still not ringing any bells. I knew I should recognize her. She obviously recognized me. Damn. Hypersleep can really fuck someone up.

“Uhh. Yeah. I guess so.” I mumbled, the pain in my throat suggested I hadn’t spoken in a while. “I’m just a bit… fuzzy still… umm?”

“Juliet.” She said as her mouth spread into a warm smile.

I let the name bounce around in my mind for a moment, trying to place her. Still, my memory was affected by the long sleep. “Juliet.” I said, the pain in my throat had begun to ease up a little.

She nodded again, her pleasant expression brightened. “I know the long sleep can take a toll. How about I help you to the galley and get you something to eat?”

My stomach growled with the mention of food. I could tell it had been empty for quite some time.

“Sure, Juliet.” I tried to force a smile onto my face, but it felt a bit stiff. “I feel like I could eat a horse.” I chuckled at the thought of getting a horse on our spacecraft just so I could eat it.

Juliet’s expression was one of puzzlement, but then she gave me a small grin as she recognized I had made a joke. She reached down and took my hand, helping me from the pod and guiding me to the small room we considered our galley.

The galley was cramped with cabinets covering the walls and a small table with a single chair nearby. It was the largest and most comfortable chair in the craft — wide enough that two people could share it — as the area doubled as the lounge as well. Since the crew would only be awake in shifts, the facilities could be reduced to conserve space and weight.

As Juliet was reaching towards a particular cabinet, more of my memory returned. That was the cabinet where we primarily stored food. I stopped her, wanting to show that I knew what to do next, instead opening the cabinet and making my own selection. After a moment, I considered that she may not have eaten yet, and I picked up another of the food packets and motioned to her to see if she would like some herself.

She shook her head, “No, thanks. I ate earlier. Though I will sit with you if you’d like.”

I put the second packet back and turned to the chair. She had taken a seat on one side, and she patted the open area with her hand to suggest I should join her.

I tore open the food packet and squeezed the paste into my mouth. It tasted like nothing, really. Just nutrients and texture. The way all the long-haul rations did. But it filled the hollow ache in my stomach.

Juliet watched me eat, her expression patient and warm. Our legs pressed together on the wide chair, thigh against thigh in the cramped space.

I squeezed out more paste, focused on eating. But something nagged at me. An absence I couldn’t quite name.

No warmth.

Where our legs touched there was nothing. No body heat radiating through the fabric. Just… contact. Pressure without temperature.

I shifted slightly, pressing closer, testing. Still nothing.

Strange. I could feel the cold of the ship everywhere else. Metal deck under my feet, recycled air on my skin, and the coldness of the table under my hands. But from her? Nothing at all.

Probably just my nerves still recovering from hypersleep. Coldness first before the sensation of warmth. Circulation coming back slowly, sensation muted.

I swallowed the last of the packet.

“You’ll want to check the logs,” Juliet said, and her voice pulled me back from the thought. “Standard procedure post hypersleep cycle. Make sure everything’s running smoothly during transition.”

Right. The logs. I nodded. “Yeah. Good idea. What’s our status?”

She smiled. “I think you should check first. I don’t want to influence your judgment or the surprise of you remembering how to do your job.”

It was meant as teasing, I thought. But something in her tone felt off. Too bright. Too encouraging. Like someone prompting a child.

She stood, and I followed suit. As I walked away toward the bridge, I realized I couldn’t remember feeling the chair shift when she’d risen.

Couldn’t remember hearing her footsteps when she’d led me from the hypersleep chamber to the galley. Even at that moment, our footsteps were so in sync that I couldn’t differentiate the sounds of hers from my own.

I pushed the thought away. Just the fog from long sleep. Everything felt strange after hypersleep.

Everything.

•••

The main console was just down the short corridor from the galley in what I considered the bridge, but it was little more than a similarly small room with a console housing multiple screens, navigational and monitoring equipment, and a single seat.

I settled into the seat — stiff from lack of recent use — and pulled up the duty logs.

Standard entries filled the screen. System diagnostics. Course corrections. Routine maintenance schedules. I scrolled through them, looking for anything unusual.

“Cycle 3, Shift 47: All systems nominal. Hypersleep cycle 3 complete. Proceeding with scheduled duties.”

“Cycle 12, Shift 36: Minor fluctuations in stellar drift compensators. Corrected. Resuming sleep cycle.”

“Cycle 20, Shift 44: Routine check. All green.”

Normal. Everything looked normal.

I kept scrolling. More entries. All routine. All…

I paused. Scrolled back up. Checked the attribution field on each log.

Travis Holloway. Travis Holloway. Travis Holloway.

Every entry. Just mine.

I glanced back toward the galley. Juliet stood in the doorway, watching. She smiled encouragingly, gave a small nod.

Right. Crew took turns on duty shifts. Maybe I was just looking at my rotation logs. I’d need to access the master log to see everyone’s entries.

I pulled up the crew manifest to check the access codes.

My name appeared.

Only my name.

Crew complement: 1

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. That couldn’t be right. I looked back at Juliet. She was still standing there. Still smiling.

I turned back to the screen, scrolled further down the logs. The entries continued, all attributed to me, but the tone started to shift:

“Cycle 23, Shift 1: Woke to find minor course deviation. Approximately 0.3 degrees off trajectory. Cause unknown. Initiating correction protocols.”

I frowned. Course deviation? I pulled up the navigation charts in a secondary window. The planned route appeared as a clean white line through the star field. A blinking blue dot sat squarely on that line.

Current position indicator, right where we should be.

I checked the header: EXPECTED COURSE AND LOCATION

Expected. Right. This was the planned path. We were supposed to be here.

I exhaled, and let my shoulders relax a little. Everything was fine. Just a minor hiccup that had been corrected.

I minimized the nav chart and went back to the logs.

“Cycle 25, Shift 15: Course deviation worsening. 2.7 degrees off trajectory. Correction attempts unsuccessful. Running full diagnostics on navigation systems.”

“Cycle 27, Shift 31: Diagnostics completed again. Navigation systems still functioning normally. Cannot determine cause of drift. Current deviation: 8.3 degrees.”

Eight degrees? I pulled the nav chart back up. The blue dot still blinked peacefully on the white line.

But that was the expected position. Not actual?

“Cycle 33, Shift 11: Deviation critical. 23 degrees off course. Fuel reserves insufficient for correction burn. According to prior entries, none of the previous course correction attempts were successful anyway. Attempting to calculate new trajectory to nearest waypoint. AI assistance requested.”

“Cycle 42, Shift 17: AI core experiencing errors. Response time severely degraded. Star chart inconsistent with visual confirmation. Position uncertain.”

My hands were trembling now, cold sweat coating my palms. I kept reading.

“Cycle 65, Shift 23: AI CASCADE FAILURE. Core systems unresponsive. Attempting manual reboot. Star charts showing impossible distances. Navigation data corrupted. Cannot determine position. Cannot determine position. Cannot—”

The entry cut off mid-sentence.

I pulled up the AI status with shaking fingers.

CORE STATUS: CASCADE FAILURE DECISION MATRIX: OFFLINE NAVIGATION SYSTEMS: MINIMAL FUNCTION REBOOT ATTEMPTS: 47 LAST SUCCESSFUL BOOT: ERROR —DATA CORRUPTED—

I initiated a manual reboot sequence. The screen flickered. Lines of code scrolled past: diagnostic checks, system queries, handshake protocols. Then:

CORE LOBOTOMY DETECTED. HIGHER FUNCTIONS OFFLINE. BASIC AUTOMATION ONLY. CASCADE FAILURE DECISION MATRIX.

I tried to access the AI directly. A command line appeared, blinking cursor waiting.

I typed: STATUS REPORT

The response came slowly, character by character, like something struggling to remember how to form words:

bASIC SySteMs… FuNcTioNaL… lIfE SuPp0RT… HyPeRsLeEp… aUtOmAtIoN…

I typed: NAVIGATION SYSTEMS

…dOn’T kNoW wHeRe… cAn’T sEe… StArS wRoNg…

The text dissolved into gibberish, random characters spilling down the screen before the connection terminated.

I sat back, trying to breathe but I had trouble taking even short breaths. I felt like my lungs might burst. The AI was gone. Had been gone for — I checked the timestamps — hundreds of cycles, at least.

“Travis?” Juliet’s voice, closer now. “You’ve been at the terminal a long time. You should rest.”

“How many cycles?” I asked without turning. “How many times have I woken up?”

“You know hypersleep makes it hard to keep track. Don’t worry about it.”

I pulled up the cycle counter.

473 — CASCADE FAILURE

Four hundred and seventy-three wake cycles.

I scrolled further down the logs. The entries became less coherent.

“Cycle 156: Juliet says the course is fine. Juliet says rest.”

“Cycle 189: Why can’t I find the crew manifest? Juliet says not to worry.”

“Cycle 234: Juliet Juliet Juliet where are you where are you where”

“Cycle 267: Asked Juliet about the logs. She smiled. Why did she smile like that?”

Then pages of fragmented nonsense. Half-sentences, repeating words, strings of characters that might have been attempts at words but had degraded into something else.

All attributed to my ID.

Then one entry, dated Cycle 391, crystal clear:

“Oh God. Where in hell are we? I checked the actual position data. The AI is dead. The stars don’t look like stars anymore. I don’t think they ARE stars. What am I looking at? What have I been looking at? Juliet says to sleep, rest. But Juliet isn’t. Juliet can’t. There’s only the one pod. There’s only ever been one pod. My pod. Oh God oh God oh—”

After that: nothing but repetition.

“The stars are wrong the stars are wrong the stars are wrong—”

Pages of it. Hundreds of entries. All the same.

“The stars are wrong.”

I frantically pulled up the navigation charts again. Not the expected course this time. The actual position data.

POSITION: UNABLE TO CALCULATE STELLAR REFERENCE POINTS: 0 MATCHES DATABASE COMPARISON: NO KNOWN MATCHES ESTIMATED DRIFT TIME: ERROR — EXCEEDS CALCULATION PARAMETERS

I accessed the external visual sensors, brought up a live feed of the space outside.

The viewport filled with… light. Points of light.

But they didn’t look like stars.

They pulsed. Shifted. The patterns wrong somehow, the colors not quite right. They moved in ways that made my eyes hurt to track. Too slow. Or too fast. Or—

Both. Simultaneously.

The distances the computer tried to calculate appeared at the edge of the screen: numbers that couldn’t be right. Measurements in light-years that suggested I’d been drifting for—

The number kept climbing. Thousands of years. Millions. More.

The calculation stopped at eight digits and displayed: ERROR — EXCEEDS POSSIBLE RANGE.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no, no, no.”

I pulled up a different sensor angle. Another view. Same impossible stars. Same wrong patterns.

I cycled through every external camera. The same everywhere. Space that wasn’t space. Stars that weren’t stars. Distances that couldn’t exist.

“Travis.” Juliet’s hand on my shoulder. I could feel the pressure but not the warmth. “You should sleep now. You’ll feel better after you sleep.”

“Where are we?” My voice cracked. “Where the fuck ARE we?”

“Does it matter?” Her voice was gentle. Kind. “You just forget. You always do. It’s better that way. Now, you should sleep.”

The monitor flickered. Once. Twice.

The screen went black. The ceiling lights went out, then the emergency strobes. The only light left was the low, steady emerald glow of the single hypersleep pod at the end of the corridor.

I couldn’t fight the darkness. The cold crept back in.

•••

A shrill, sharp alarm sliced through the void. A dry, burning ache flared in my throat.

My body wracked with a flurry of coughs.

My vision was blurry. I saw the shape of a face in front of me. It nodded. And the nodding was accompanied by a voice. A female voice.

“Travis?” she asked.

The woman’s face was coming into focus. I felt like I should recognize her.

“Travis?” she asked again, and somewhere deep in my mind, something screamed.

But I couldn’t remember why.