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I couldn’t save her.

I’d watched as Ling’s head had rolled limply to the side. In the glassy reflection of her sightless eyes, I’d instantly realized she was already gone.

So, I’d turned. I’d run – leaving the lifeless body of my only friend behind me.

I sit up sharply, gasping desperately for air in the complete darkness, and slam my head hard against the top of my metal sleep compartment

Holy shit.

I shouldn’t surprised. It was the same dream again – the same haunted nightmare that follows me every night.

As always, I’d awoken panting and drenched in sweat. The realization thatthiswas reality didn’t help calm me.

Three hard bangs come in response to the sudden pain in my head.

The man in the cubicle above me was slamming his fist against the bottom of his thin-walled sleeping compartment.

“Shut the hell up!”

I feel anger flood my veins – but despair quickly drowns it. Instead of yelling in response, I close my eyes and slow my breathing instead; bringing myself back to reality the same way Ling had taught me.

That had been one of her first lessons, from back when she’d originally taken me under her wing. I can genuinely say that it’s the only thing that’s allowed me to cling onto my sanity more times than I’d care to remember.

As reality coalesces around me, I look around – and sigh.

My sleeping compartment is the size of a coffin.

It might as well be one, given the way this transport ship is held together. I think the structural integrity of this tub is maintained by tape and bubble-gum.

It might well end up being my final resting place.

I’d booked this “room” on the transport ship Elnor without any expectation of luxury – but even I’d been disappointed in what I’d discovered when I’d stepped on board.

If you can call a slab-like bed that extends from the morgue-like shelf a “room” then I question your sanity. This sideways closet is nothing more than a human-sized box adorned by the thinnest mattress technology could develop. Instead of room service, or chocolates on my pillow, I’d received nightly doses of claustrophobia - interspersed by the coughs, moans, and groans of the other two-hundred-odd passengers crammed into the sleeping compartments of this dormitory unit.

It’s just one dormitory of many – interchangeable units attached to the Elnor’s central spire, resulting in a transport ship laden with ten-thousand desperate souls. Each of them – each ofus– is risking the wildest space in the sector to make it to Planet X12.

I’m just lucky I’d found one of the only space-faring ship captains still brave or foolish enough to cut that year-long journey into a month – by taking a dangerous shortcut through Untamed Space instead of the protected routes.

But at what risk?

I roll over in my coffin-bed – reaching out to feel for the sack of seeds I’d stowed with me. I curled my hands around the heavy bag and sigh in reassurance.

I’d spent my life’s savings on these seeds. Bio-engineered, they could grow in a desert. Perfect for someone like me who has never grown a crop in her life. .

These seeds are my ticket to a new life – a newme.

Soon, the Elnor will make planetfall. There, the deed to my new property has already been digitally registered to my DNA; all stored and communicated through my smartwatch.

I’ll scan my watch the moment the Elnor reaches Planet X12.

In two weeks, I’ll start my new life.

While the alternative journey would have taken a year, waiting even a month is like torture to me. The old me wouldn’t have tolerated it. I’d have paid for passage on arealship – one that could Orb-Shift, and complete this month-long journey in an instant.

But that was before the risks became more widely spoken about. In recent times, Orb-Shifting has become dangerous. Ships have been disappearing when they Orb-Shift – snapped out of reality, and lost in that place “between.”

The place you go to when you leave this point of reality, but before you snap back into form at your destination.