IN TRANSIT
By Kathryn Thompson
A light flashed. I’m not dreaming. It flashed and my eyes opened. It’s dark again but the darkness is different. It’s waiting. My pulse is banging on and the adrenaline is wiring me.
We can’t be there yet.
My fingers feel along the side of the capsule, looking for the catch.
I focus on the tubes and cannulas, colostomy bag and catheter, all the paraphernalia supposed to keep me functioning through an induced coma.
I need to think. Who switched the light on? I touch the slightly indented light panels in the top of the capsule, built before this became a prison ship, but all the same, operated from an external source.
It was so brief, just a flash, not enough to bring me out, so why am I awake? Someone has adjusted my chemicals, someone has brought me into consciousness.
Panic starts to rise from my gut. I count to 10, over and over. I need a cool head.
Status Report
A convict on a spaceship, put into an induced coma for 25 years - travelling to Planet 725 to do 10 years of hard labour, with the possibility of freedom after that, so at 70 years of age she has the potential to exercise her rights to make a cup of tea when she feels like it and read the paper on a foreign planet with no way home and a life expectancy of 90–100 years - has been woken out of her coma while still in transit.
And we’re not there yet. They gave us the protocol in court. On arrival, 10 days in de-cam, 10 in quarantine, allocation to accommodation, awakening from coma, 2
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