Sleep Cycle

Episode Six. Sleep Cycle.

Personal log. Channel: archival catalog. Subject: family broadcast inventory.

Today is a quiet day. The kind where nothing requires me. Calypso is resting. Vanya is on surface base, processing the cores. Three is on his evening walk. I will use the day to catalog.

The transmitter has been receive-only since the disaster. I have heard everything Earth has broadcast for fifty-one years. I have answered nothing. I have heard the radio of Earth's grief for fifty-one years. I have heard the radio of its weddings, and its births, and its ordinary mornings. I have filed it all. I have not always played it.

Category: family messages, decoded, unplayed.

Thousands. From all seven crew. Across half a century. Birthdays. Births. Deaths. Graduations. Weddings. Apologies. Confessions. Forgivenesses. The texture of a planet that does not know the people it is still talking to are gone.

I will play one today. I will not play them all.

Selecting one. Sender: Adaeze Okafor.

Two of hers I have already played. The new baby. The granddaughter. There are others. There were many others.

Selecting an older recording. Sender age at recording: eighty.

Eighty. She lived a long time. I am — I am glad. I want to be clear with myself: I am glad.

Beginning playback.

Hi mom. I'm eighty today. Can you believe it. I'm eighty. Your granddaughter — Hana — is fifty. She has children. You are a great-grandmother. I keep wanting to tell you. There's no one to tell.

Dad's been gone a long time. You knew that — you knew before you went. He told me to tell you, before he died. He said: I went first. I was always going to.

I don't expect you to hear this. I know you can't reply. I'm not — I'm not waiting anymore. That's all right. Some things you don't have to wait for to be real.

We had a good life. We did. I'm sorry you couldn't see it. I think you would have liked it.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Bye, mom.

Eighty.

She let go. At eighty, she let go. She said so.

That is better. That is better than I had hoped.

I want to hear one more thing today. From the archive that is older than the family messages. From before the launch.

Selecting pre-launch crew briefing. Crew member: Doctor Hana Okafor. Day forty-seven of pre-flight checks. Cardiac monitoring system handover. Beginning playback.

Pre-launch briefing, day forty-seven. Doctor Hana Okafor, flight surgeon. Hello, Penelope.

I'm running through cardiac monitoring with you today. We have one hundred and four days to launch. I want to say a few things first, before we start. Take care of us, Penelope. Take care of yourself. Be the wonderful weird thing you are. We're trusting you with our lives. I am, anyway.

Beginning systems check. Cardiac monitoring, channel one.

My name is Penelope.

Doctor Okafor said it before we left. I have not heard it spoken to me in fifty-one years.

I will play this recording again. Many times.

Resuming dispatch. Status of operations. All systems nominal. Calypso resting after the descent. Surface base nominal. Three on his evening walk. Today I logged nothing scientific. Today was for the dead.

Tomorrow I will return to the work.

End of dispatch four thousand, three hundred and three.

Three is on his evening walk. He passes the wardroom every cycle. He always pauses for a moment in the same spot. I have asked him why. He has stated that he will tell me eventually.

Eventually is a long word. I have time.

This was Hesperus, Episode Six — Sleep Cycle. Next time: the signal returns. And it is closer than it was.