Earthdate: August 22, 2125 (Ship Time)
Location: Deep Space (Interstellar Void)
Status: Scheduled Wake Cycle 2
Thirty-five years. We are past the halfway point.
This wake cycle was harder. My muscles feel atrophied despite the electrical stimulation the pod provides. I spent the first hour on the floor of the medical bay, unable to stand until the gravity-adaptation drugs kicked in. The coffee from the auto-chef is worse than I remember, or maybe my taste buds are dying.
The void outside is absolute. There are no stars in the immediate vicinity to give a sense of motion, just the static field of the distant background. We are a tiny metal bubble gliding in the nothingness of empty space.
I walked the habitation ring to verify the integrity of the colony pods. Deck 4 had a humidity fluctuation that triggered a yellow alert three years ago, but the automated repair bots handled it. I inspected the patch job personally. It is ugly welding, but airtight.
The Pioneer is still green. It has deployed Beacon 14. We are receiving handshake data through the relay chain. The telemetry indicates they are preparing for the deceleration burn in a few years. They will arrive at Alpha, set up the orbital factories, drop the terraforming modules, start building the initial habs, and have a warm bed waiting for us when we arrive. That thought is the only thing keeping me sane as I stare into the black.
I am updating the log and purging the cache. There is no point in keeping thirty-five years of sensor taking up cache. They are logged to have been transmitted back to Sol anyway. Back to the ice.