It's on this novel that i close my round of text for my 2017 advent calendar. I wish an marvellous Holidays to everyone.
Enjoy!
Nota: This one is on SGU and the crew of the destiny.
Two years, five months, twenty-seven days, three hours and twelve minutes. It was the time Eli had spent alone on the Destiny. Alone in this gigantic ship launched at a breathtaking speed between two distant galaxies. Alone, with no one to talk to, no one to touch.
Cheer up Eli! You are a loner anyways.
There were the communication stones, but he was just borrowing someone else's body for a few hours, and since it was SGC staff, it was not at will. Four hours every seven days. Four hours out of one hundred and sixty-eight. That was 2.3% of his time, much of which was often dedicated to his weekly reports. The rest of the time, he was alone with himself. Alone with the emptiness and silence. Alone in a ship in economy mode, most corridors without light or heat, sometimes without oxygen.
Cheer up Eli! You are a big boy, and you are no longer afraid of the dark.
He had enough oxygen for the galaxy jump but only if he didn't consume too much. He had calculated, and the scientists at SGC had confirmed. A maximum of two hours of sports a week, and ideally between ten and twelve hours of sleep or rest a day to save atmosphere. He had no books, no movie to watch, and could not even move to busy himself. Today, on Earth, it was Christmas, and he was there, lost and forgotten, lightyears away from all human life, with nothing else to do than engrave strange swirling patterns on the metal walls with the steel rod that once had been a screwdriver, but made unrecognizable by dint of scribbling on the walls, floors and ceilings, first in accessible cabins of the Destiny, then corridors, until he reached the refectory, the bottom wall of which he had scarcely touched. It was Christmas and he was alone with himself and the heady sound of metal against metal.
Cheer up Eli! You never liked all this hype around the Holidays.
He missed Chloe, even though they had moved away before he had put her in stasis.
He missed Lieutenant Johansen with his compassion and kind smile. He even missed Young and Rush, with their bad tempers.
Cheer up Eli! It was you who volunteered for that.
He laughed sadly, crushing a lonely tear rolling on his cheek with an angry hand. Another six months, two days, twenty hours and forty-eight minutes and this hell would be over. In six months, they would have arrived in this other galaxy, safe and sound, and he would not be alone anymore. He continued to engrave the cold metal again. Yes, soon, it would be over, and in five days, just barely over one hundred and twenty hours, he would be on Earth, to see his family and share a Christmas/New Year meal with them. He had came over the biggest. He had survived the hardest. He smiled without happiness.
Cheer up Eli. It's Christmas today!
With a sigh, he stood up, backing a step or two to observe his work.
He nodded appreciatively.
It was Christmas and he even had a tree. A large, thousand-year-old metal tree, almost two meters high.
Smile Eli. It's Christmas today!