text: With my eyes open I clung to the tiny speck of freedom I felt, even if for just a moment. I was not yet a prisoner within these walls. A part of me was hoping not to be greeted by the same, weakly lit ceiling that I have grown to hate over the last few weeks every time I wake up, but to my dismay, it was there, greeting me. I did not return the gesture. It would take more than fourteen days of complete isolation to get me to talk to inanimate things. I rubbed my eyes with my left hand and pet Sam, who lay beside me, with the other. His fur was soft, his breathing quiet and shallow. The hydraulics-system in his torso gave him an almost lifelike appearance. I wondered if he grew as hungry as I did. Tiny cubes, made out of some sort of solidified gas, used to roll down a hatch in the wall directly into his silver bowl. This was all he ate for the past two decades. He didn’t need to eat, but I guessed they wanted him to appear more real. And it helped, we had eaten together, almost every day. Everything felt so normal in his presence, as if nothing had happened. Sam was also the reason why I hadn’t lost my sanity in this time. He listened to me and offered me company. He had suffered through my outbursts when the sense of doom became too much and did not judge me for the manic laughter that had always followed after. When I had been well, I talked to him about Esma. How I missed her and that I did not intend to return to my cabin. Sam was alright with this. There was nothing I could do for him anyways. With no power and the emergency generators not powering his little bed in the corner of the room (which acted as a charging station), it was only a matter of time until he was gone. Did he know? Would I want to know, if my end closed in? I tried not to think about it. I was still young and had enough rations with me. Ever since the great migration I had always carried them in my backpack, which never left my side. Sam’s movement was imperceptible. His battery ran on its last legs. Poor thing. I took comfort in being able to lie next to him in his last minutes. I dozed off. There wasn't much to do here besides sleep anyway. When I awoke, my head was turned to the left and I looked outside the window. An endless panorama of black whizzed by at a speed of hundreds of thousand meters per second. Though something ele got me thinking. Almost infinitely many white points painted the dark background and gave it life. Every single one of these stars was home to who knew how many different kinds of celestial bodies, some of which could even house sentient beings. I liked to imagine what their day-to-day life looked like. Unlike us, they had no desire to conquer the universe. They felt no need to leave their bloody footprints on any other planet, that they called their own. If they could see us, they would be shaking their heads. To them, our mission of settling on a planet that no one even knew if it really existed, was as arrogant as it was folly. Intergalactic imperialists, that is what they would call us, and they would be right. In creating a generation starship, we had proven to ourselves that we had no shame to reduce us, the passengers, to the absolute minimum of our humanity. Progress through sex. I agreed with them. They had no idea how right they were about us. Just a few centuries after we had left Earth, roughly a thousand years ago, another ship had already been built. There had always been rumors that a faster, modernized spacecraft would catch up to us. Nobody really knew where these rumors came from, though some had their suspicions. Oftentimes I wondered if the Penultimo had stumbled upon us through mere coincidence or if it had hunted us like prey from the very beginning. The more I thought about it, the sure I was that it was the latter. Technology, energy and populace. With the promise of an easy life, almost the entirety of our people had boarded the newer ship without hesitation, when it docked onto us. Once the people had started migrating, we had hidden in various wings and sectors of our ship. In places that we had known the others would not care to check. Agonizing were the days we had spent in literal garbage, not making any sound. Luckily for us, our appetite wa suppressed by the olfactory torture we had endured. The thirst, however, had became unbearable, even for the toughest of us. All we could have done was hoping that whoever had been next would die as silently as everybody before them. Fourteen of us had found their demise there. I turned to my right. With each passing minute the solitude solidified itself again. Sam was there and I felt even lonelier now. A mechanical companion was of no help to me in this situation. Nor were the thoughts of an alien that hardly knew me, if at all. My eyes wandered the length of the room that I could see while lying in my bed. Chaos had taken over, I was just a guest and an unwelcome one, at that. It was even colder now but there was nothing else I could use as a blanket. If there even was anything left of use in here, I couldn’t see it in this darkness. The universe outside was unkind, it did not care to illuminate my chamber enough to see properly. Most of the light came from above. A thin red line, powered by what I could only assume to be an emergency generator. It ran from the middle of the ceiling to the door, one and a half meters or so away. Outside was the corridor that led to the various wings and, most importantly, the dining hall. This was where we all had met after we had felt the ground shaking. The Penultimo had taken off. We felt safe. Esma had been there as well, happier to see me than I her, it seemed, despite my foul fragrance. I enjoyed thinking about the time we spent together before the migration. The hours we had spent in this bed, uncaring about the rules or curfew or anything. Times like these reminded me of how much of humanity we had lost. We didn’t mind visiting each other, even if it meant walking for hours to reach the other one's sector. She gave me strength. Was she well? I hoped she was, and that had been able to convince the others to wait for me. Two days, that was the plan. In two days' time we should have met again in the dining hall, after every single one of us had scavenged as much as we could carry, before we would set out and map out more distant parts of the ship. “I have enough provisions for three days in my room. Might last longer if we eat a bit less,” I had said to them. With a promise like that, how could they not wait for me? I wish I had told the others where I went. Esma might have known, though I couldn’t blame her for not trying her luck when some sectors of the ship were completely dark. What would they even do if they found me? There was no opening this door. A safety mechanism made sure of that. How could I have known that forcibly opening the fridge would lock the door and keep me prisoner in here? With no power there was no other way of getting the food out. The absurdity of my circumstance made me laugh again. Sam purred weakly. That was two weeks ago. The rations that were meant for the five of us were already half gone. I wasn’t sure if I had eaten more than usual, though it felt like it helped. With every meal I hoped to replenish some brain power and come up with an idea to get me out of this mad situation. To no avail. The door was shut tight. My fingers rested on Sam’s head. I couldn’t feel him breathing anymore, nor any other movement. There it was. The end. I stood up and looked at him. He was alone there. And now I was as well. I picked him up and put him in his little bed. My fingertips were cold. My breathing became faster. I was standing in the middle of the room and felt like a giant, there was no space above me. I needed to get out of this old and sad air. When I looked at Sam, all I could think of were the last twenty years that he had spent inside. Why? Real cats longed for freedom, for adventure. But Sam wasn’t real. My love for him was more real than he was. His lifeless body filled me with anger. This anger was real as well. I was thankful that his eyes were closed. I wouldn’t want him to see me like that. It was funny. I tried not to laugh but I couldn’t stop myself. It was the most honest reaction I had since I got stuck. Laughter turned into desperation. My backpack flew across the air and slumped to the ground. I picked it up to throw it at the window again. Again. No stopping. Again. And again. With all my might I continued hurling the heavy thing at the glass. Again. The aliens must have enjoyed the one man show. A sight to remember, surely something that they would tell future generations. Again. Oh how they loved it. My ears hurt. I could not stop screeching. After my nineteenth throw something happened. The sound of a backpack hitting a glass was missing. Replaced by a dull noise, produced by the metallic curtain that had come down crashing to protect the window from breaking. It was shut, and the room was... brighter? Everything had changed. I fell to my knees. It took a while until I realised what had happened. With the window now shut and the illuminating stars gone, lighting had changed. My only source of light was the emergency sign on the ceiling. And a new one on the ground... I rubbed the sweat from my eyes and slowly followed the white line to a gap in the door. New light. Like an animal I rushed to it, crawling on the ground as fast as I could and, to my surprise, was able to open the door completely, without issue. I put my foot outside. Freedom. I had served my sentence and I was now free. Back on my bed, I started stuffing my backpack with everything I deemed even slightly useful. With the fridge in the doorway to prevent the gate from suddenly closing, I sat there for a moment. What now? Back to the dining hall? That would be a start. I doubted that the others were still there, I couldn’t blame them for thinking me dead. Surely they had left a message somewhere, considering the amount of food I had promised to bring. Or what was left of it. I took a last look around. It had been a long time since it was so bright in here. Sam was still in his bed, it looked like he was sleeping. It was thanks to him that I did not succumb to despair in the last two weeks. What would have happened if his charge had run out sooner? There was no reason to think about that now. I petted my friend’s head one last time and said my goodbyes. It was time to leave, there was someone else who was waiting for me. It was time to find Esma.