        FROM: Amelha Santo
	TO: Amelha Santo
	SUBJECT: Journal Entry #26
	
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    Hey, Future Ame. Things have been...interesting.
    
    You know, actually, maybe I *am* Future Ame. We've been in
cryosleep for what, a hundred years? I think that qualifies as the
future.
    The Future. A grand term, full of possibility. But here I am, and
nothing's changed.
    Oh, sure, outside, things are different. Earth is a distant
memory, and we're in a whole new star system. That should be more
exciting, but I'm not feeling it. Neurological changes are an
occasional side effect of cryosleep, I guess, but it's hard to feel
like you've gone anywhere when there's just the same backdrop of
cramped spaceship and some stars when you look out the window. Maybe
it'd be cooler if the star in this system was more obviously alien, a
red dwarf or blue supergiant, but it's just the same sort of
yellow-white main sequence star as the one I left behind. 
    Maybe the problem is me. I don't miss Earth...after all, why would
I volunteer to leave it forever? "Scientific progress" and "the future
of humanity" and "going boldly where no man has gone before" are words
I might have once believed in, but now? It's just a whole lotta
nothing. Nothing out there, nothing in here.
    Well, there's aliens. Aliens. Extraterrestrials. Life, elsewhere
in the universe. We Are Not Alone. I really should be excited about
this, but I'm not. I once heard a phrase, 'dead inside'. Maybe that's
me. Dead with a small side of apprehension. Possibly the aliens are
going to gun us down any minute now. Put us out of our misery. We
could go join Parsons and Valton. That could be nice.

    ...
    
    Fuck, is this depression?
	
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