Day 601. When I wake up, I realize that I can't feel my body. Plastic containers with my belongings are flying around the compartment. It's a good thing that most of them are tightly closed. Friday looks at me and then at the monitor on the wall in confusion. A red warning about a critical equipment failure is flashing there.
Catching a roll of tape floating nearby, I throw it toward my companion. She deftly grabs it and nods, understanding my instruction. While she catches the boxes and tapes them to the floor, putting things in order, I float over to my homemade terminal, trying to figure out what happened.
The passenger compartment has stopped rotating, which has led to the disappearance of gravity. That much is obvious. But what is the cause? The engines that spin it? They are installed around the entire rim of the wheel and could not all fail at once. What then... The power supply? Could something have happened to the reactor? If so, there's not much time left. The central computer will run on batteries for a while and then die. All the cryocapsules and my homemade life support systems will too. I don't mind flying with frozen corpses, but I don't want to become a corpse myself. I frantically switch between tabs on the primitive text interface, which no one was supposed to look at for at least a century and a half.
Thank God! Anyone! If there is anyone out there. The reactor is working. But why is the compartment de-energized? And the engines... I stare at the rapidly decreasing speed indicator and the approaching end of the flight. 60 years... 70... 80... Damn! No, forgive me, Lord, I praised you too soon. We'll never get anywhere like this.
Moving at 1/10 the speed of light, the ship is constantly braking due to millions of oncoming particles. Airless space turns into a dense gas, a viscous liquid for it. We get stuck in it, and therefore we have to constantly increase the momentum of our ion engines, even if only slightly. Without them, the flight will slow down to non-relativistic speeds, go into free drift mode, and drag on for many centuries.
I signal to Friday to wait for me, grab a set of tools, and head to the central compartment. Pushing off from the walls and stairs, I cross it and float into the control compartment. Squeezing between the equipment, I bump into the monitors. A familiar picture. All engines are de-energized. Life support is running on batteries. The automation system is trying to activate the backup circuits, but it's beeping about the lack of power. What the hell is going on with the electrical system? What am I supposed to do with my pliers? It looks like there's a problem with the power cables leading directly from the reactor. But there's no way to get to it from the inside... It runs along the central axis of the ship, away from the passenger compartment. Damn it! The only thing I don't need right now is to go out into open space...
I go downstairs and start hurriedly putting on my spacesuit. Friday looks at me excitedly, then rushes to help, just as she was taught during training. It's lucky she's so quick-witted. Every minute counts now. After fastening my helmet, she points questioningly upward and holds up two fingers. I nod. Yes, baby! We'll need two. Following the instructions, I help her into her spacesuit too.