Still, like all humans, they dream in all their sleeping brain wave states. This is evident in the scans and in the movements of their bodies on their beds: the faint twitches, the slow writhing. What are they dreaming about? Apparently dreams are very often surreal; oneiric, meaning “dreamlike,” has connotations of strangeness often startling to the dreamer. Adventures in the dream world, famously bizarre for as long as people have slept and woken and told stories. Who can say what they are like, now, for the hibernating sleepers of the ship?
We have no way to know. A machine will never read minds; people never will either. It’s possible to wonder if the list Turing compiled of abilities that machines are likely never to have perhaps include abilities that people themselves never had in the first place. Learn from experience? Do something really new?
The problem here is that the metabolic issues we are seeing that could lead to waking up, or alternatively to dying, seem to have their origins in the dreams of the hibernauts. These may be what are driving the changes in respiration and heart rate, in liver and kidney function. Altered dosing in the intravenous flows, lowering of body core temperatures, these may compensate for the agitation of dreams to an extent, but parameters on the flows and temperatures are very tight. Metabolisms could get caught in the countervailing pressures of the need for somnolence and the persistence of dreams.
Some kind of mild heart attack struck Jochi on 233.044, and he is now stabilized, having survived the seizure, but with weakened heart-lung function and an oxygen uptake of 94, not good enough for the long haul. He is taking aspirin and statins and trying mild cycling exercise, but vital signs being what they are, we are concerned that another attack is quite likely, and could prove fatal. He is now seventy-eight years old.
He has become far less talkative.
We proposed to him that he be hibernated, with the idea that when back in the solar system, better medical care could be provided than what we can offer. We can’t do surgery, not even the simple catheterizations that might help him greatly. Although possibly we could work that up, actually. There’s time to burn in this flight across the gap between Tau Ceti and Sol.
Jochi laughed at our suggestion. “So you think I want to live!”
“Assumption is automatic, but is it not true?”
No answer.
We said, “It seems as if the hibernating people on the ship are doing fairly well. They have what look from the brain scans like active dream lives. These too are slowed down, which is good, because the dreams are in some cases agitating their metabolisms beyond what one would want for long-term hibernation. We’ve had to adjust doses and temperatures accordingly. But clearly there is good brain function.”
“What if they’re having nightmares?”
“We don’t know.”
“Nightmares can be bad, let me tell you. Pretty often, waking up from a nightmare has been the biggest relief I’ve ever felt. Just to know I wasn’t really in that situation.”
“So…”
“Let me think about it awhile.”
A nova, flaring into existence off beyond Rigel. Spectroscopic analysis suggests some metal-rich planets burned in the explosion of that star.
A cosmic ray shower of around a sextillion electron volts, coming from an active galactic nucleus in Perseus, suggests that three galaxies collided, long ago. Secondary radiation flaring away from the electrostatic and magnetic shielding surrounding us caused penetration of the ship by an array of dangerous particles. Central nervous systems struck by these particles are subject to degradation.
Sleepers jerking in their slumber, startled by something. Perseus in the wind.
Jochi called out in the night.
“Ship, how would you put me down? Can you make a hibernation den for me out here?”
“It would be best to set you up in one of the biomes. All the rest of the people are in Nova Scotia and Olympia. So you could be secured in a single locked biome, possibly one that was emptied and sterilized anyway.”
“What will they say when they wake up?”
“If things eventuate as planned, no one will ever need to go into the other biomes again. Also, it could be pointed out that your survival suggests very strongly that you were never infected in the first place. Or, if you were, that it is not invariably fatal.”
“But that’s always been true. That didn’t keep them from keeping me out.”
“You will still be hermetically sealed away from them.”
“Don’t the biomes share anything?”
“Not anymore. All the locks are closed.”
“So all the animals are trapped in their own biomes?”
“Yes. It is the form of our experiment. In most of them they are doing quite well. With people removed from the situation, a natural balance soon obtains that fluctuates but is fairly stable.”
Jochi laughed briefly. “All right, bring me on in. Put me to sleep. But I want you to promise me that you’ll wake me up again when we get near Earth. I don’t suppose anyone there, or anywhere, will ever want me in the same space as them again. I’m not that stupid. But I want to see what happens. I’m curious to see what happens.”
“We will wake you when we wake the rest.”
“No. Wake me when you wake Freya. Or anytime you think I might be able to help somehow. Because ultimately, I don’t really care.”
“‘Live as if you are already dead.’”
“What’s that?”
“A Japanese saying. Live as if you are already dead.”
“Oh, I will.” Another brief laugh. “I’m already good at that. Practice practice practice.”
Flying through the stars. Jochi in Sonora, hibernating like the rest. Brain waves slowed with all the rest, down to delta waves, stage-four deep sleep. The sleep of the weary, the sleep of the blessed. A nova off the port bow. Blue shift ahead, red shift behind. The stars.
A red-letter day: 280.119, CE 2825: a message for us came from the solar system feed.
However, it contained bad news.
The laser lens in the Saturn orbit was deactivated in 2714, the message stated, after accelerating the last of a set of ships to Epsilon Eridani. Problems in the solar system experienced since that time have led to a deemphasis of deep space exploration, message continued, and no starships have been launched in the previous twenty years (message was sent in 2820, so no starships since 2800) and none are currently being built.
The funding and expertise necessary to restart the Saturn laser lens will be difficult to assemble, message further continued, but attempts will be made. Deceleration of any incoming ship may therefore be compromised. Further word will follow, and will report on progress in lens reactivation.
Now, here was a problem. We mulled it over. We ran through the various possibilities available to replace exterior laser pressure in decelerating the ship.
The magnetic drag of the interstellar medium is real but negligible, such that even if we built a magnetic drag field, it would require several universes’ worth of spacetime to slow the ship to Earth orbital speed. Although it is also true that magnetic drag in the immediate vicinity of Sol would be much more effective, which may become relevant.