I radio the bridge. No answer. I check crew vitals: all sleeping, deeper than medical induction allows. Too deep.
The first thing you notice is the quiet. Not the silence of a sleeping city, but the wrong quiet—the kind where even the wind seems to hold its breath.
The container whispers.
Not words. A vibration that resolves into meaning somewhere behind my teeth. "Let us out."
I wonder if they’ll thank me. Or if they’ll have to be planted, too. g+ ark
But the container hums. Not a machine hum—a heartbeat. Low, thrumming, syncopated. For six standard days, I’ve watched the sensor feeds: steady temperature, stable pressure, life signs reading as plant matter, unclassified . My predecessor’s log entry, dated thirty years ago, reads only: G+ Ark is not cargo. It is a promise.
Tonight, the hum changes pitch. I tell myself it’s a power fluctuation. I check the seals. They’re intact—eighteen locks, all green. But there’s condensation on the viewport. Frost in the shape of a hand. I radio the bridge
I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. But the hum has become a song now, and the song has a shape—a memory of forests that never existed, of rain that falls upward, of a sky with three suns. I touch the lock.