Dream Job
Lying still in bed, blanking my mind, meditating to fall asleep, I see him. He’s a passenger on a spaceship, going into hibernation and wondering what new world he’ll wake up in, what new life he’ll live.
Little does he suspect that he’s actually on a spaceship heading to Earth, and that in artificially induced sleep, he’s being fed life stories of one earthling after another so he’ll be prepared to imitate one on arrival.
But he’s becoming more human than he’s programmed to be. He’s developing a conscience and a sense of right and wrong. He’s feeling pangs of guilt for things he hasn’t done yet. He has an urgent need to confess, to warn the earthlings and ally himself with them.
But he knows that humans will never believe him. The only way for him to stop the invasion is to bring himself out of hibernation and sabotage this vessel, killing himself and the millions of others on board. Does he have the moral fortitude to make that trade — millions of his kind to save billions of them?
The earthlings wouldn’t know what happened. And headquarters would presume mechanical failure. They would just launch another spaceship like this one.
Using the implant they all had in case of emergency, but never used because of the shame of admitting such weakness, he appealed to his creator, the creator of his entire race.
No response.
Was his implant defective?
Or was there no creator?
Or was there no Earth?
Was this whole train of thought just mental gymnastics, intended to keep him entertained and in top working condition for the duration of the thousand-year flight?
Or was that a fallacy, too? Like the implant and the creator? Was he actually a human dreaming this?
Who was so insane as to doubt his own existence?
