Sulily sleeps suspended inside a transparent, cylindrical womb filled with luminous blue fluid. Her suit sticks to her body like a second skin. Knobby nodes run up the length of her spine and end at the soft helmet’s base at the back of her neck.

From the center of the helmet, wires fan outward and upward, gathering at the control center at the top of the container. Her mouth and nose are covered by a breathing apparatus with a serpentine root that coils and stretches down to the base of the cylinder.

From time to time, her eyelids flicker and her fingers and toes twitch. Otherwise, she simply floats in suspended animation, unaware of even the small, robotic jellyfish that swim around her, monitoring her vitals and the state of the life-preserving fluid.

Her unconscious body has already been floating inside the cylinder for three years. She will sleep like this for two more years, awaken for three then sleep again for two more years. When she awakens for the second time, this space-age mermaid and her companions will be orbiting a whole new world. At least, that’s the plan.

Sulily dreams in hypersleep.

She doesn’t dream of the friends and family she left behind on Ceres or of the vast distances between stars. The dauntless pioneer doesn’t dream of the new life she will begin on a new planet or of the many adventures and hardships to come.