"Hit me," Maggie said, pointing at the shot glass she had just emptied and placed back down on the bar.
Winn filled it back up and Maggie downed it once again.
"Hit me," she said again.
"I am programmed to stop serving drinks when people begin to get rowdy," Winn warned her even as he filled up the glass.
Maggie picked up the glass and looked around the empty room. "Well as much as I may like for it to get rowdy, I don't think that is going to happen to the people."
She downed the drink once more signaled to him. "Tell me Winn, what would you do if you were stuck on a ship, alone, and you were going to die on this ship alone."
Winn gave her a slight cock of the head, a signal that he was processing how to respond, before saying, "I don't know, I have never been stuck on a ship alone."
Maggie laughed, not because she found it particularly funny, but just at the absurdity of the situation itself.
Winn leaned over, his elbow on the bar – "If you aren't happy in your current circumstances, you should look at changing your circumstances."
"Oh believe me, I have tried," Maggie said.
"As far as I can tell you haven't changed much, you come here at the same time every day and drink the same drink," Winn said. "Perhaps you should change things up. Try and have some fun. This ship is outfitted with various entertainments for its passengers."
"Have fun, eh?" she said. "Sure, why not?"
….
The next day – after her hangover cleared up - -Maggie visited one of the kiosks to see what types of entertainment this ship had to offer. Examining the list, she first got directions to the basketball court, already feeling the loneliness of playing a team sport by herself. Still, she spent time shooting hoops, although her percentage of made shots as displayed on the wall showed she was only shooting 42 percent.
After a shower, she visited the movie theater and watched two movies back to back. Throughout it, she couldn't help but looking around at all the empty seats around her.
That night she again ended up in front of Winn at the bar, but this time she ordered a cranberry vodka to drink to change things up.
"How was your day?" Winn asked.
She shrugged, "Ok, I guess, I took your advice and tried other things today."
"And how did that go?"
"It seems like most of the stuff on this ship was designed for groups to do together – you know for us to get to know each other," Maggie said. "Kind of hard to do when you are the only one here. Still, it kept me occupied."
"That is something," Winn said.
"Yeah," she said, even as she thought that it wasn't enough.
The next day though she was at it again, working on her basketball moves, even trying her hand a virtual golf game and batting cage. She would watch movies, dine at some of the restaurants on the ship and this went on for weeks and weeks.
But after a month and half passed, she decided she had enough. The ship had woken her up so someone on this ship needed to answer for that – even if it meant she had to wake them up. She had already sent a message back to Earth to the company but it would be decades before she got a response, assuming she got one.
Taking equipment up to the crew quarters she began the process of trying to break into it.
For days, she tried everything. She tried rerouting power away from the door lock mechanism. She tried welding through the door and even used a sledgehammer to beat away at it – all for nothing.
After that she spent two days in bed, unable to bring herself to even go get something to eat because she felt the futility of the life she was now being forced to live.
When she did get up, it was only because she refused to lie there anymore like that. She wasn't going to give up and die while lying in a bed, so she got up and headed down to the cafeteria to get something to eat. While eating – again the basic meal afforded her by her ranking as a passenger – she thought about how unfair it all was, not just her pod malfunctioning but by her still being bronze class passenger she couldn't even enjoy everything the ship afforded. Even her room was boring and made her not want to spend time there.
As she thought about it, she realized that she had her run of the ship, which means she could find better accommodations. Before her attempt at breaking into the crew quarters she had broken into her own room as a test and it was ridiculously easy as it took nothing more than a flat headed bar and some leverage. Hurrying through her breakfast, she began searching the ship directory for the luxury suites.
Finding one she thought might suit her, she got into the elevator to go down to room to get her stuff. As she was heading down, the elevator suddenly stopped but not for her destination. The doors opened and closed quickly and Maggie moved carefully toward them only for the elevator to begin to drop again – so fast this time, the gravity turned off and she found she was floating. Then just as fast, it stopped and she came crashing to the ground.
She got the wind knocked out of her briefly, but she was fine. Slow to get up still, she approached the doors which took an extra second to open than what they normally did. Swiftly getting off it, she decided to not use that one until she got the chance to run a diagnostic on it – assuming she could.
Shaking off the odd occurrence, she made her way to her room and grabbed all her stuff – not much as it turned out, but this was just the stuff she had for the ship voyage. She had two crates stored on the ship with the rest of the passenger's luggage. Choosing a different route to avoid the malfunctioning elevator, she went up to the room she selected and pried her way into it. As she stepped into the spacious – two story room – she couldn't help but laugh.
"So, this is how the other half lives," she said just before jumping onto the couch.
The new room gave Maggie a bit of resurgence, as she began spending more time enjoying different things on the ship. She even found a simulated game that let you play different instruments and you had to hit the right notes with the songs. She had never been much into music and it showed as the first several times she played it she failed miserably.
As time moved on, she got better at it, got better at basketball, got better at other games, except for golf, but the one thing she couldn't get any better at was dealing with the loneliness. It was worse at nighttime when she would often go to the observation deck and look out at the stars.
She was surrounded by an infinite nothing.
The stars no longer appealed to her and she wondered not for the first time, why she had chosen to come out here.
The months continued on and Maggie merely was going through the motions of life. Nothing meant anything to her and she couldn't get out of the funk that daily plagued her.
Lately she had been going down to where the hibernation pods were and looking at the people inside of them. She would look at their names and wonder about the lives they led on Earth. She knew each one of them had a bio on file in the computer system, but she hadn't bothered looking at any of them. Knowing who they were would not make her feel any better about her own situation.
One day when she was down there, she noticed a door she hadn't yet explored and going into it she found a series of space suits. Examining them, she called up the files in the room to see what they were for.
Once she read up on it, she began the process of putting one on – she was going to take a space walk.
Nervousness flooded through her as she stepped into the air duct. The computer had instructed her on how to put the suit on and it scanned her to make sure it was on correctly. She got to the end of the short corridor and reached over to the lever that would open the door, but before doing so she remembered that she had to put the magnetic boots on. Once she was firmly attached, she pulled the lever.
The door opened in front of her and she stared down at the expanse. Slowly stepping out she heard the computer say it was attaching a tether to her but she was barely paying attention to that as she continued to stare.
It was beautiful and sad all at the same time.
Maggie walked to the edge and bent over slightly before pushing off. She went floating into space. She turned so as she floated she was looking up and not down. Was this what it was like for the first men to go into space, she wondered. Did they feel the enormity of it?
She didn't know how long she stayed out there but as she returned she felt a profound sadness – more so than what she had felt previously. There was so much out there – star, planets, moons, entire universes, and she was here alone. Taking off the helmet she stared back at the door.
She was alone. She had come on this trip alone. Would anyone notice that she never arrived on Kronos? Would it matter if she died?
Before she realized what she was doing, her hand was on the release lever for the door once more. Her eyes went in that direction and she thought about what it would mean to just push down on it and leave this life forever.
But even as she thought about it, she fled from the hall, puking as soon as she was safely back in the room.
Stripping off the suit as quickly as possible she ran all the way back to her room.
…
Maggie had stopped dressing properly a long time ago so she was still wearing a pair of pajama pants and a tank top when she entered the elevator to go down to get some breakfast. Maybe she would spend the day in the theater, she thought. Or her other past time of late, going through the cargo bay to see what people brought with them.
Although she knew what she should be doing – fixing things on this stupid ship. It seemed like more of the cleaning robots had malfunctioned this week but she had yet to get the motivation to repair them.
As she stepped off the elevator she stopped.
Was she still asleep? That was the first thought that came into her brain as she saw a woman walking in the main concourse, looking around as if searching for something or someone.
"Hello?"
The voice nearly startled her.
Stepping forward, the woman having not seen her yet, she kept things slow, afraid that if she moved too quickly this mirage would disappear.
"Hello? Is anyone here?" the woman said.
If this was a hallucination Maggie didn't want to it to end. Still she moved forward again, this time saying, "Hello."
The woman turned toward her and Maggie's first thought was that she was beautiful and she almost wanted to cry for the sight of her.
"Hi," the woman said coming toward her. "I was beginning to think I was the only one awake."
Maggie didn't answer, only continued to stare at her.
"I'm Alex," the woman said offering her hand.
"Maggie," she replied taking the hand. The feel of a human's touch did cause a tear to come free from her eye.
"Are you ok?" Alex asked, taking away her hand.
"You, you're really here," Maggie said.
"Yes," Alex said after a slight pause. She was now looking at Maggie like she was a crazy person, but Maggie didn't care. "Are you sure you are ok?"
"Yeah," Maggie said. "But there is something I should tell you. We are alone on this ship.
