He awoke to alarms and bright lights that made no sense. For a moment the astronaut remembered the edges of a dream where the stars were so bright and cold. He felt the warmth of a woman's hand brush his face and felt sad to leave her behind for the claustrophobic and overwhelming present. A memory of music threatened to pull him back into the dark, but he swam towards the discordant and insistent call of the alarms that started to make some sense. He was awake and something was very wrong.
The computer was supposed to wake him slowly feeding him the drugs to wake his mind, nutrients and stimulants for his body, and then information he needed to get out of his sleepcoffin ready to take over his mission. He had trained half his life for this planned moment when he would climb out and see a hopefully habitable, but alien planet with his own eyes. The computer would have seen it for years as he travelled and built an approach and mission plan. The astronaut would then review the plan, adjust as needed, report back to earth and get to work. That was the plan. That is what he had rehearsed till it was second nature.
The alarms were wrong. The dreams were wrong. He was confused and weak. Blinking was hard. Staying awake was a fight. The lights . . faded . . . and came back like a nightmare.
He had trained for this kind of contingency plan of course. Days of simulations for what to do if he had to wake suddenly and make quick decisions or repairs. Many simulations had no winning solution, no way that he could fix the problem, but they all required him to start by deciding to fight through the fogginess of artificial sleep, disconnect himself from the machines, and choose to act, to do what he could, even if it was impossible and all he could do was try to send a message home. Communication was a success, even if death was inevitable.
So he decided to act. Step one in his emergency checklist complete. Next figure out what kind of mess he was in so he could build the next steps to check off.
