Free This Long Vigil (A Short Story) by Rhett Bruno Page B

I
replied.
    With my task completed I began to make my way back to my
quarters. After a few steps I noticed out of the corner of my eye that I was
standing beside the only empty Life-Chamber on the  Hermes . My eyes
froze on it. My heart sank. I decided to go the other way.
    “I notice that your pulse is quickening. Are you alright?”
Dan asked.
    “Fine,” I lied. “Just been thinking a lot.”
    “Still considering which inhabitant will be your successor
again?” he asked.
    “Not exactly,” I grumbled.
    “In twenty-three hours you will be fifty-years-old. As you
know, I was programmed by my maker to ensure that there is always an
able-bodied human on watch—”
    “I know that!” I snapped, somewhat unintentionally. Last
time he told me it was thirty-seven hours. There was less than one day until my
eyes would never open again. It was going by too fast. “Sorry. I just ... I
don’t want to mess this up,” I said.
    “You can’t. There are two hundred and eleven members of this
crew who are of the required age and size to be awakened.”
    “Yet only one to choose. I wish it was easier.”
    As soon as I said that I found myself staring at the
Life-Chamber positioned directly adjacent to my quarters. The woman inside was
around the same age I was when the previous Monitor chose to wake me; however,
there was something different about her. Something which drew me that I didn’t
really understand and that Dan could never manage to explain.
    “Perhaps Inhabitant 2781 is the one?” Dan said suddenly,
startling me. “You’ve spent approximately fifteen hours of the last week
studying her Life-Chamber.”
    “Maybe,” I said softly.
    I knew he was right. I’d decided on her almost a year prior.
As much as I may have wanted to let Dan know, however, I couldn’t tell him the
reason why I was taking so long; that I wanted to be there when she took her
first wobbly steps even though I knew I couldn’t. I wanted to grasp her smooth
hands and welcome her to the realm of the living; to feel the pulse of her
veins beneath her skin—real human contact. Sometimes I’d watch as her chest
gently heaved from the air she unconsciously breathed in through her
respirator, and that was often enough to get my heart racing. All my wakened
life I enjoyed taking the time to name inhabitants like Fish. I’d make up
stories about what their ancestors might’ve been like or what they would’ve
done if they’d never left Earth. I could never think of any tale fitting for
her. I couldn’t even think of a worthy name.
    “Who am I to get to choose who wakes up and who doesn’t?” I
asked. I placed my fingers against the glass. It was warm to the touch.
    “You are the sixth Monitor of the Interstellar Ark,  Hermes.  Constructed
on Luna Station in 2334 C.E. by Pervenio Corporation.”
    “Imparted with the task of ensuring the completion of our
exploratory journey,” I finished for him. I took a long stride back from the
chamber and sighed. “Did the other Monitors take this long to decide?” I asked.
    “They were under the same restrictions that you are.
Consequently, their decisions all arrived by the required time.”
    “Was it hard for them too then?”
    “I could sometimes detect elevated levels of anxiety in them
as the date of their return to stasis drew closer, though I am sorry that I
cannot be one hundred percent positive as to what the origin of that anxiety
was in each particular case.”
    “You didn’t talk to them about it?”
    “We conversed about a great many subjects. However, they
never shared their feelings on this topic with me as explicitly as you have. I
found that all five of your predecessors remained very reclusive throughout the
final year of their service.”
    “Were you like a father to them as well?” I questioned, a
hint of jealousy creeping into my tone.
    “They never articulated it, so it is possible that they did
not feel that way,” Dan admitted. “My maker left me with many