The night watch had run out; a thousand long years had passed.
Time could make everything old, and the years could weather everything into decay.
When people grew old, all kinds of ailments inevitably appeared. Hope, this creation of human technology, was no exception under time's erosion.
The first time Yue Yuan woke up, he learned from the technicians that Cabin 3-145 aboard Hope had developed an air leak.
He then looked through the voyage logs and discovered that during his hibernation, Hope had suffered all manner of other failures: a burned-out thermal circulation pressurization boiler, eighteen faulty power lines in the plantation, three scrapped exterior cameras, a malfunctioning air compressor in Pipeline 777, a faulty circuit in Surveillance Camera 64, and a series of other minor problems.
During that time, the nuclear reactor had also undergone one fuel replacement and was currently running on the backup reactor.
They were all minor issues. The shift personnel had handled every one of them.
The second time he woke up, there were even more fault points, including various mechanical failures as well as the first control system malfunction.
By the third time he woke up, mechanical failures had increased significantly and become more frequent, and there had also been casualties.
Yue Yuan discovered that under such circumstances, the shift personnel had chosen to replace damaged parts with new spares from storage while discarding all irreparably damaged old components from the spacecraft.
This was not a decision made on the shift personnel's own initiative. It had long been written into Hope's maintenance regulations. Hope had always been traveling onward while throwing trash into space.
All garbage that could no longer be reused was handled this way, the aim being to reduce Hope's mass as much as possible. Of course, the gradual reduction in