The crew of Avalon awoke on schedule, 120 years into their voyage, just four months before arrival at Homestead II. As Captain Norris made his way to the Grand Concourse, he expected clean walkways and dormant shops—what he found instead was life.
A tree stood tall in the center of the atrium, its roots breaking through the floor panels. Around it were planters full of vegetables, climbing vines along the columns, and a makeshift irrigation system tapped into repurposed plumbing. There were lights modified to simulate day and night, and seating areas fashioned from furniture never meant to weather time.
And in the middle of it all: two graves.
The crew stood in silence as the AI initiated a message labeled "Final Log – Lane/Preston."
Aurora's voice came through, calm but brittle.
"This is Aurora Lane. If you're hearing this, it means the crew has awakened, and Jim and I are gone. We died decades ago—but we lived."
"Jim woke up first. A malfunction. A flaw in a perfect system. He tried everything to go back to sleep. He failed. Then I… woke up. Not by accident. He chose me."
She paused, the weight of the truth hanging in the silence.
"I hated him for it. And then I loved him. And then I forgave him. But the decision never stopped mattering."
Images accompanied the audio—snippets of their life together: building the farm, swimming, repairing the ship, growing older. A flicker showed Jim in his final days, pale and thin, working on a hydroponic pump.
"We restored as much of the ship as we could. We saved lives. Maybe you'll see that. Or maybe you'll only see the crime. I won't argue with either."
"We made a life in a place where there shouldn't have been one. And now we leave it to you."
What the Crew Did
There was no vote. No grand declaration. The crew moved through the ship in silence, processing what they had found.
They reviewed the logs—decades of journal entries and maintenance reports. Jim had fixed structural systems that would've failed years before Avalon reached Homestead II. Aurora had compiled years of psychological notes, documenting their mental decline and recovery. She even left files titled "For Future Therapists," anticipating how people might respond to their story.
But not everyone saw their sacrifice as noble.
Captain Norris gave a closed briefing: "The passengers do not need to know how they survived. Only that they did."
The graves were sealed off. The garden was quietly dismantled. Any references to the Lane/Preston logs were redacted from the public record.
What the Passengers Thought
They woke up as planned, none the wiser.
The Concourse had been restored to its clean, corporate perfection. The ship's AI offered limited information when asked about crew history, citing "system data loss due to long-term hibernation."
A few noticed subtle changes—certain power systems running more efficiently, patches on bulkheads that weren't original. A couple of engineers found older code in the maintenance logs labeled "JP-modified", but it was quietly buried.
Only a few of the crew kept the truth alive, sharing it in whispered conversations long after colonization had begun.
And every so often, someone would walk alone to the edge of Homestead II's new forest, where a tree from Avalon's garden had been secretly replanted. There, beneath the shade, a small plaque remained, buried beneath the roots.
Jim Preston and Aurora Lane
They were never supposed to be awake. But they gave us everything.