Contaminant

Geck0

Moooooosh
This was a relatively short journey. Transporting sensitive equipment from the Asteroid Belt to the Kuiper. A journey of a few months, as the devices being carried were so fragile even half a G of acceleration would be enough to damage or break them. The solar cycler carrying this equipment had a crew of one: an engineer currently in a chemically induced coma. The trip wasn't long enough to justify the more expensive cryogenic methods used for extrasolar transit, but this did have the minor disadvantage of causing muscular atrophy during the journey.

So it was, that the rather confused engineer being awoken, found himself in a world of pain as his body was woken early by an automatic system. It would take days to properly recover in these conditions, as the computer hadn't the proper know-how for a comfortable awakening. Eyes still adjusting to the dim light, the foggy-minded engineer squinted at the small computer screen in the only airtight chamber on the kilometre-long cycler vessel.

Even squinting, the engineer only gave it a glance. His brain still foggy, as he'd only been conscious for a few minutes, immediately shoved the warning to the back of his brain. If the ship didn't have loud blaring alarms it couldn't be more important than his breakfast of rations and painkillers. And then some time to get reacclimated to his surroundings, maybe some video games. Point was, whatever issue it was, it could wait.

Thankfully for his aching body, he only had to push about two metres across the room, and there was no gravity to speak of in the cycler, so it was a simple task of floating over to the "kitchen" which was effectively just a cupboard with a month of food and water, with some options to flavour the water and heat the food if desired. So he picked a lovely looking chicken soup satchet, heated it, and grumbled as he drank it through the straw the packet came with.

He took his sweet time enjoying his first meal in months, especially since it helped wash out the taste of drymouth. He glanced again at the little computer screen, frowned, and lazily floated over to it. Ignoring the warning on it again, he changed the screen to match the external cameras used to monitor the cycler's exterior. As expected, there was nothing catastrophic, just a dull pink smear somewhat close to the comm array. A little more alert, the engineer noted that was probably what woke him. It looked like the cycler collided with a person or something. Not impossible, it was said there was something like a hundred million freeze-dried humans floating around the solar system, mostly a result of space burials. Before finishing a lap of every camera, the one internal camera briefly forced the engineer to get a view of his own ugly mug.

He sighed as he confronted the virtual mirror of his visage and changed to find a catalogue of entertainment. A perk of cycler runs, is when you wake up, you get to spend a lot of time entertaining yourself and getting caught up on the latest developments in your vocation. This is how the engineer spent their next few hours. Exercising to recover muscle volume, and mental exercises and sci-fi to recover mental faculties and get sharp. However, he eventually grew tired, and made the decision to sleep.

Strapped into his bed, the engineer slept quite well. He had attached diodes to himself and was receiving electromuscular stimulation to rehabilitate while he was unconscious - though as he was attaching the diodes he did wonder why this wasn't used to avoid atrophy in the first place. Waking much more quickly from this sleep than he did from his induced coma, and already feeling much better, the engineer detached the computer screen from its wall mount and drifted over to the kitchen, where he enjoyed a caffeinated breakfast smoothie and listlessly flicked through the cameras. There he noticed something odd: he didn't grow very much facial hair even in the several months he was unconscious, and only managed a dirty looking scruff. That pink smear looked the same at a glance, but he'd still probably have to clean it off since it could present a biohazard issue when the cycler arrived at its destination, which meant a space walk. Those are fun, if a little terrifying.

(will be continued in future posts)
 
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