It is the thirty-third time that my ship, the Hypnos, has woken me from cryosleep, and the sensation is like fire in my veins.  I open my eyes to the domed canopy of my cockpit, face to face with an endless expanse of stars.  Adrenaline and a cocktail of other chemicals burn through me, but I can’t even control my atrophied mouth enough to scream.  Updates on my location and messages from Earth are projected across the glass, but it takes all my effort just to keep my teeth from chattering.  My senses return to me in fits and spurts as my blood gets used to flowing again.  

The computer walks me through who I am with an artificial voice that is almost worse than the cold.  Your name is Riley Ivasiv.  You are a cosmonaut on an exoplanet survey mission designated Hypnos IV.  You are thirteen light-years from Earth.  Your sleep cycle lasted 1.334 years.  It has been 49.556 years since you left Earth.

The numbers make me dizzy.  From my perspective, I only left Earth a week ago, waking to do these check-ins every year or so to ensure the hypersleep hasn’t caused any brain damage.  I’m not so sure that it hasn’t, but I don’t tell the computer that.

The Hypnos gives me commands to check my motor reflexes.  Nod.  Shake your head.  Stick out your tongue.

I see my dad outside the canopy.  He smiles at me, waves.  My heart breaks again.  He died when I was in my first years of adulthood, chasing the dreams that brought me here.  But he’s there, clear as day, watching me as I follow the computer’s commands obediently.  He looks healthy.  He looks happy.

I don’t report the vision.  I’ve seen it almost every time I wake up, but I never report it.  I just follow the computer’s commands.

Lift your left pinky.  Wave your right index finger in a circle three times.  Tilt your head to the left.  Now the right.  Show me three plus two.

I hold up five fingers and watch my father’s ghost spin in the dark of space.  If I report it, the computer will tell me it’s a hallucination, a symptom.  If I don’t report it, my dad is still with me.  A little bit of magic, just for me.

Your diagnostics have come back green, Hypnos says.  Do you have anything to report before you return to hypersleep?

“No,” I say.  I’m not alone, I think.

“I’m ready to keep going.”