Random stories

The world passes us by without us even realizing. A day, month, year? Just numbers put to the passing of something we so desperately wish to control.

So, when I was asleep for those three short millennia I barely even noticed. It could have been just a day and I wouldn't have even known the difference. Difference between another day in my bed and a day so far in the future that everyone I'd know was long gone. Maybe my bones ached more, just a little. But the cryo pods were meant to prevent such things.

We, the crew and I, didn't know what we'd expect when we'd left. A distant planet with lush forests, a new star bringing adventure. Anything but this: a *human* opening my pod hundreds of years too soon, yanking me free of my slumber. She looked to me with deep blue eyes.

"Hello sleepy...you made it." her voice was sweet, carrying softly through the bay.

I looked up to her with wild eyes. Not one of my crew. Not a friend. My hand reached down for something heavy but found only air. She stumbled back in fear

"Wh-who the fuck are you."

"No need to be alarmed! I'm a friend. We just showed up earlier than you. Welcome to Valeria!"

My eyes adjusted to the light in time, and I could better make out her face in front of the fluorescents. Beautiful, was the first word that came to mind. Uncanny, was the second. Too beautiful. Too friendly. Too nice. My muscles tightened.

"When did you arrive? How late are we?"

"Is now the best time-"

"Yes." I looked down to her uniform to see the stars and stripes. "Commander. Tell me what this is."

"One-thousand and fifteen years... They kept telling us you'd arrive one day. The pioneers of this place...they were just faster."

I sat up in my pod in disbelief. Ten, maybe eleven lifetimes. We were not only late, but a thousand years too late. We were floating around on nothing more than a relic, might as well have put us in a museum, if this new place had those. Floating while humanity built something better, faster.

"So then we-" in that moment, sitting up in my pod, I noticed the others, empty. Not opened, but broken straight through. Above my head a red light faded in and out. An alarm somewhere off in the ship. My heart raced. The corner of her lip twitched.

I stood up with hesitancy and stumbled to the window of our ship, a massive framed glass. Behind I could feel her eyes on my neck, but I was too busy, something outside had caught my eye. Out of the window were cities, more than cities, a massive metropolis practically glowing in gold. It was an entire civilization. While we were floating around they built. While they had families ours had long since died. In the time it took us to arrive they both rose, and fell to whatever stood behind me, no doubt. Something lurched.

My heart raced as I reached the wall where my...our suits were. Next to it the pistol, in case of emergency they had told us. Insisted we were top shots.

"Wow. It's all so much to take in...should we get going then?" I gripped the handle of my gun tight.

But behind me was no voice in reply, was no sweet sultry song of a blue-eyed woman, too beautiful to be real. Instead it was replaced by a wet growl. I turned to see the woman from before now nothing more than a hollow suit on the floor, a mess of hair-like appendages crawling from her skin. I took the shot on instinct. Then another, and another, each finding a neat pocket of air to slice through and planting itself into the parasite before me. Each shot caused it to recoil back and further away, the black tendrils trying to find some semblence of safety between rounds.

"Wait! You dont understand-" the woman's voice spoke through a mouth not her own.

Then it reached out to me with a mouth full of needle like teeth, ravenous with hunger, but I was too quick. I hadn't traveled the galaxy to die to some parasite. To a bug. To fall as the others surely had. I placed the gun to its head and unloaded until the beast burst into a small ball of fire and burned at my feet.

As the last of its remains burned to ash I slumped against the wall, the red light still fading overhead. I could taste its blood on my face, metallic and bitter. Outside that port window the city now seemed less magical. Less welcoming. It was too silent to be real, and now as my adrenaline fell I could see its wear clearly.

With a groan I got up and crawled back over, back into my pod. I feared what may lurk. The bodies of my crew, animated once more. Given a second life. A new purpose.

"Ship...how far off course are we?"

Above a woman's voice replied: *You have arrived at your destination. Perfectly on course pilot.*

As I feared.

"How long till the next candidate?"

*Five-hundred forty-six years*

I laid down back in the pod and pulled the cover closed once more, letting the drugs lull me back to sleep.

"Alright. Wake me up then."

---

Submitted by GrunkleStanwhich on Fri, Dec 09, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You spend 3000 years in hypersleep, traveling to a distant star only to wake up at the destination and be greeted by a full human civilization because they invented a faster space ship 50 years after you left.