FROM: Amelha Santo

TO: Amelha Santo

SUBJECT: Journal Entry #26

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Hey, Future Ame. Things have been...interesting.

You know, actually, maybe I *am* Future Ame. We've been in

cryosleep for what, a hundred years? I think that qualifies as the

future.

The Future. A grand term, full of possibility. But here I am, and

nothing's changed.

Oh, sure, outside, things are different. Earth is a distant

memory, and we're in a whole new star system. That should be more

exciting, but I'm not feeling it. Neurological changes are an

occasional side effect of cryosleep, I guess, but it's hard to feel

like you've gone anywhere when there's just the same backdrop of

cramped spaceship and some stars when you look out the window. Maybe

it'd be cooler if the star in this system was more obviously alien, a

red dwarf or blue supergiant, but it's just the same sort of

yellow-white main sequence star as the one I left behind.

Maybe the problem is me. I don't miss Earth...after all, why would

I volunteer to leave it forever? "Scientific progress" and "the future

of humanity" and "going boldly where no man has gone before" are words

I might have once believed in, but now? It's just a whole lotta

nothing. Nothing out there, nothing in here.

Well, there's aliens. Aliens. Extraterrestrials. Life, elsewhere

in the universe. We Are Not Alone. I really should be excited about

this, but I'm not. I once heard a phrase, 'dead inside'. Maybe that's

me. Dead with a small side of apprehension. Possibly the aliens are

going to gun us down any minute now. Put us out of our misery. We

could go join Parsons and Valton. That could be nice.

...

Fuck, is this depression?

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