Beauty

“It isn’t fair. I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not dying, love. They say it’s just like going to sleep. You’re really very lucky, I wish I were a Positive.”

“I wish you were too. Or I wish I weren’t.”

“I’ll tell my daughter all about you.”

“I don’t know if I want you to.”

“Only good things, I promise. There isn’t anything else to say, after all.”

“Did you know me in Academy?”

She laughed. “Well. Just because you’re a Pos doesn’t mean you have to be perfect.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“You’ll wake up before you know what’s happened. I’ll miss you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault you’re a Pos, and it isn’t my fault I’m not. But I’m sorry too, love.”

Rosamond lowered herself into the cryo chamber. It was like a cross between a bed and a coffin.

“Do you want me to do it for you?”

Rosamond shook her head. “It’s hard enough for you as is.” Taking the syringe in one hand, she plunged the needle into the first finger of the other.

Rosamond lay there, peacefully, as the door of the chamber drew closed. Though it was correct that she would not feel any sensations apart from those which accompanied settling down for a nap, her body was being changed at the molecular level. Brain activity was being artificially slowed due to the injection, and the chamber was forcing her body temperature down far below freezing. Reversal of these processes would only occur upon arrival of the ship at the nearest Earth analog. This was expected to take place in roughly 200 years. To avoid artificial malfunctions or conscious rebellion, her particular cryo chamber could only be unlocked using the mitochondrial DNA of one woman (who also happened to be Rosamond’s Academy sweetheart), passed down through the generations to her great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great granddaughter. That was, of course, assuming that the thousands of variables somehow each yielded the correct outcome at the correct time at the correct place. But, well, statistics was no match for the power of human hope.

Rosamond shivered. Her eyes fluttered open. There was a face looking down at her, a face very familiar to her despite the fog she felt, which was a feeling rather akin to the confusion of waking up from a long nap.

The face smiled down at her, with a mischievous smile that had been passed down through the generations.

“Hello! You must be Rosamond. Wonderful to meet you. My mother told me all about you.”