Charlie looked down into the first cooling unit. “Too tall.” During the last five of the fifteen days that had elapsed since the ship had awakened him, he had developed the habit of talking to himself. It had taken him only 10 days of no-hurry labor to do all the minor maintenance the space ship required. When he returned to his cooling unit to go back into deep cooling for the rest of the voyage, the computer kept saying his unit was unusable at the present. It would be fixed in ten days.
“Why did the computer wake me? There are other maintenance technicians in the cooling units. At least there were when we left earth ten years ago.” He looked down into the second cooling unit at a young blonde woman. He estimated her to be in her early thirties. “Not my type.” In the third cooling unit was a brown, dry shriveled mummy. He shuddered lightly and kept looking into the others. A large TV came on showing the same movie that was on in the previous room. He scanned the ceiling for a camera, knowing that somehow the ship’s computer was keeping track of him. “I wonder if it is a camera or just a heat sensor.”
He had searched the ship from stem to stern during the first few days. The maintenance computer had printed out a list of jobs and a map only of the rooms needing maintenance. In a few rooms, he was denied entry. A loudspeaker would warn him to stay away. Saying he did not have the necessary clearance to enter these rooms. Whole floors were off-limits. It was only yesterday that he had stumbled onto this room where ten women were in deep cooling.
The ship’s maintenance computer had monitored Charlie’s movement since it had given the command to wake him. When the man went back to his cooling unit, the computer wondered what to do with him since the cooling unit was unfixable. A valve carrying coolant had been closed after Charlie left the unit. Now for some reason it would not open and the backup was stuck in a closed position after thirty years of inactivity. The computer learned from mistakes and now it regularly opened and closed all backup valves and used all back up circuitry once a month.
After the second day of the man doing nothing but roaming around the ship, the maintenance computer concluded something had to be done. The man was eating too much of the ship’s reserves. He was polluting the air with an excess of carbon dioxide. Worst of all, the man was looking at other people in deep cooling. Sooner or later, the computer realized, the man would attempt to wake up someone to keep him company. The man had to be done away with was the only avenue that would cure all the problems. The man would not be missed when the ship reached it destination. His genes wouldn’t be needed since the ship had millions of sperm and egg packets in small compartments along the outside covering of the ship’s hull. The outside temperature in deep space between the stars usually hovered at minus 375 degrees. The ship reached this conclusion in only two seconds but had mulled over what to do and how to do it for a total of five seconds.
During the first day after its conclusion to do away with the man, the maintenance computer gradually lowered the temperature in the rooms where the man lived. But the man had put on more clothes and had gone out into the general area where the temperature couldn’t be lowered without damaging plants that were used to purify the air.
Charlie looked into the third unit. “Nice.” He looked at her for another ten seconds. “I wonder how she’d like being woke up.” He grinned at himself. “About a 100 years ahead of time.”
He slowly walked past the remaining cooling units, briefly stopping at each. At the last unit, he walked around to the side and looked down. “Now she is nice. I wonder who she is.” He paused a few seconds. “Or better yet, what is her specialty? It would be nice if she was a doctor.” He got down on his hands and knees and read from a metallic sheet riveted to the end. “Betty Morris, kindergarten teacher, 10877.” He stood up and looked at Betty again. “I really don’t want a kindergarten teacher around for the rest of my life. She’d go crazy with nobody to teach. I wonder what that number stands for?” He thought for a few seconds. “She couldn’t be the 10,877th person in cooling units. I don’t think the ship is that big?” He got down on his hands and knees again and began crawling around the unit looking for more writing, hidden buttons to push, anything that would help him.
The sound from the movie stopped. An automated female voice replaced it. “Charlie, what are you looking for under the cooling unit? There is nothing under there of any interest to you. You are not qualified to do maintenance on cooling units. Please leave and return to your quarters. We will soon have your cooling unit fixed.”
Charlie walked over and stood three feet away from the TV. “How soon are you going to have it fixed?” He looked around again for a camera. He gave up and grinned at the TV. “Why don’t you wake up one of these lovely young maidens to keep me company while you are fixing my unit? Pick one that won’t mind being with me for a few weeks. Someone nice and sweet, good looking, someone that wants to snuggle up under a blanket these cold interstellar nights.” He gave the TV a big wink.
Static came on the screen for two seconds. “There is no one on the ship’s roster that fits that description. No one wants to be awakened 100 years ahead of time.” Snow appeared on the TV for a split second. “Also, none of the women stated a preference for you. Whoever we woke up would sue the ship. We don’t want that to happen, do we?”
“I don’t give a damn about that. How is she going to sue the ship?” Charlie paused and glanced at the ten cooling units. “I suppose you brought some lawyers along. Why did you do that? The last thing this new planet needs is lawyers.”
“No world can survive without lawyers,” the metallic female voice said. “Return to your quarters at once. We will soon have your cooling unit repaired.”
“Who are you trying to kid? It’s 200 degrees below zero in my room. I’ll go to the lounge instead. Put a movie on that I haven’t seen, an old Three Stooges film.”
Snow appeared again for a split second. “I’m afraid you have seen the ship’s entire collection for the Three Stooges. I will put on a musical, how about finishing South Pacific?”
“Anything,” Charlie said becoming annoyed with the voice from the TV. “Just have it ready when I get there. I want a regular beer. Not this dehydrated junk that I have to mix with water. It tastes like piss.”
The computer ran a few thousand calculations and decided not to reprimand Charlie for using vulgarity. It had other more important calculations to perform about Charlie.
Charlie continued through hallways in the dim light toward the lounge. He clicked on light switches that never worked. Weak light always came on when he entered a room and went off as he left. He glanced at the recessed strips of florescent lights in the ceiling. “I’d like to see bright lights again. I must have eyes like a cat by now.” A sliding door opened and he stepped into the lounge. The only light came from the TV where Mary Martin was singing.
Charlie did not have any idea where the microphone was so he kept talking to the TV. “It’s cold in here, dammit. Crank up the heat. Use some of those solar panels on the outside of the ship. They must collect plenty of heat.”
Mary Martin voice faded. “The ship is approximately 2.8 light years away from the nearest star. At that distance the panels absorb barely enough light to maintain the ship’s vital functions. Very little energy can be spared for your rich life style. As the ship travels farther away from the star it may become necessary to curtail some of your extravagant living habits.”
“My extravagant life style!” Charlie put his face only inches away from the TV. “What in the hell are you talking about? I’m walking around in all the clothes I can find. You keep the lights so dim I can barely see. The temperature i
n here is only a few degrees above zero.” He backed up a step and lowered his voice a notch. “Have a heart and turn on the damn lights for a little while.”
Mary Martin flicked on and off for a second. A different female voice came on reminding Charlie of his mean third grade teacher. “I will grant some of your requests. Please refrain from using profanity. It is not allowed in the lounge.” A nice looking woman’s face appeared on the screen. She spoke with a soothing quality in her voice. “Heat and light will be increased to this room and your cooling unit room. We will have your cooling unit fixed in 2 hours. You are to take a thorough shower and get yourself ready to be cooled for approximately 90 years.”
“Whoa! I thought you said my unit was unfixable. What did you do to it?”