You weren't supposed to be able to voluntarily waken from cryosleep. If you could call his untimely return to consciousness "voluntary".
He'd woken with a frightened start, his heart hammering. He'd been dreaming of running. Of being chased. The muscle stims must have been working, keeping his muscles from atrophying during the long cryosleep. He'd felt both his thigh and calf muscles twitching, even as he'd come to, his heartbeat and respiration elevated. Additional somniforics should have been automatically pumped into his blood stream, as soon as his pulse quickened, to keep him unconscious. Either that hadn't happened, or his own bodily functions had overridden the cryobed's systems. In either case, he was awake.
He glanced blearily around his enclosure. (Funny, he'd never realized how coffin-like these beds were). To his right, the bed's chronometer showed that they were only 47 years into the 344 year journey to AlphaTau. The other readouts, much smaller, were still just a blur to his artificially lubricated eyes. The inside of the bed's clear dome was misted with a light film of condensation, the outside surface covered with frost, obscuring his view of the cryochamber beyond.
The cryobed was not designed to release him before the preprogrammed time, unless in the event of an emergency. But there had been no proximity alert, no malfunction alarm, nothing.
Even if he could leave the artificial cocoon, the ship would not be habitable. The onboard life support systems were in stasis mode, and the cryochamber and the rest of the ship would be almost as cold as the black void of space surrounding it.
So. Here he was. Awake.
What a time for insomnia.
