Four Thousand Mornings

Arlen Ward applied to become a guardian aboard Eos because he did not want to leave. The programme sought pilots, doctors, and technicians for a colony ship bound for Viridia. Four thousand people would sleep through the seventeen-year journey. One guardian at a time remained awake for six months to monitor systems and wake specialists. Arlen expected to fail the first round. He was forty-eight, widowed, and a test-flight accident had ended his career.

The panel asked why he applied. ‘My daughter is on the passenger list.’ ‘Then you want to accompany her.’ ‘No. I want to know somebody is watching while she sleeps.’

Mira was twenty-three, a biologist. She only told Arlen after accepting the colony place. Viridia needed people who could build soil. Earth needed many things too, Arlen argued. Mira pointed through the window at the brown Manchester sky. ‘Which Earth do you mean?’

Climate collapse had not ended the world. It had divided it into contracts. Clean air, drinking water, and cooled homes existed if one could pay. Colony programmes were advertised as hope but functioned as outsourcing. Useful people were allowed to go. Those remaining were told to feel proud for financing them.

Arlen considered Viridia a beautiful lie: green world, two small suns, shallow seas. Nobody had been there. Probes measured atmosphere, not the feeling of waking beneath an alien sky. Mira said every future was a lie until someone lived in it.

After five months of tests, Arlen was accepted. The panel valued his experience and limited social attachment. He read that phrase twice. His wife Dana had died six years before, his friends withdrew during the accident inquiry, and Mira would be asleep. Perfect loneliness had become a qualification.

Eos was larger than a city. Its cryo decks rose like levels of a blue forest. Each capsule carried a name, profession, and small baggage compartment. Colonists could take twelve kilograms. Mira chose seed, data, Dana's old teapot, and a red jumper. Arlen warned that it weighed too much. She sacrificed shoes. ‘Dad, we're building a world. Somewhere we'll manage to make a second shoe.’

At Capsule 2-118, they embraced. Mira tried to look brave until the canopy descended. ‘When you're awake, tell me something beautiful later.’ Arlen reminded her she would be sleeping. ‘Tell me anyway.’ He promised. Her hand remained against the glass until sleep lowered it.

The journey's first months were full of voices from launch crews, control centres, and families. After the first jump, delays grew. By the fifth year, answers took months. In the ninth, Earth fell silent—not in a catastrophe, but through signals weakening until nothing arrived. Eos continued.

Arlen kept a diary for Mira. He described nebulae, stars, and small things: a pump that sounded like a snoring dog, algae forming a perfect spiral, the first loaf he baked from ship's yeast. He wrote beauty because he had promised. Fear went into a second encrypted log.

In year eleven, Guardian Chen suffered an aneurysm during her watch. Arlen was awakened out of sequence and could not save her. The rotation changed; every remaining guardian stayed awake longer. Some capsules showed unstable cells. The system recommended waking those passengers early, but Eos carried food and space only for scheduled guardians.

Arlen made decisions that would once have required committees. He woke an engineer to repair the cryo circuit, then returned her to sleep. He rejected a recommendation to sacrifice twenty older colonists for younger ones. ‘No cargo optimization,’ he wrote. ‘They are people.’

In year fourteen, a micrometeor struck the seed store. In a damaged drawer, Arlen found his family's pear seeds, secretly registered by Mira. Dana had preserved them from her grandmother's garden. Holding the packet, Arlen wept for the first time since departure.

The journey aged him—not biologically as fast as Earth would have, but in the weight responsibility gave to time. Every walk through the cryo decks became a visit to a sleeping city. He knew birthdays, allergies, professions. He greeted people who could not hear.

He often stopped at Capsule 3-044. Aila Nwosu, nine, slept there with her mother nearby. Before launch she had written to ‘the person who watches us at night.’ Arlen was to open the envelope only on arrival. Two yellow suns were drawn across it.

In the seventeenth year, Viridia appeared as a green point. Breathable atmosphere, stable seas, vegetation denser than predicted. Arlen should have cheered. Instead he checked the data repeatedly. Too much hope made people careless.

Three months before arrival, Capsule 3-044 failed. Aila's temperature rose; automatic revival began and could not be stopped. Arlen ran through the blue rows. A waking child could not spend the final months alone. Yet every additional person strained the reserves. Her mother slept one deck above, stable and unreachable without endangering the circuit.

Arlen opened Aila's letter before arrival. In uneven writing it said: Dear Night Person, if you are afraid, you can come to me. I will be asleep, but then you are not alone.

The canopy lifted. Cold air spilled out. Aila opened her eyes and gasped. Arlen took her hand. ‘Are we there?’ she whispered. Viridia glowed on the nearest display, still small, but green. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But the sky is already waiting.’