Forgotten alone in the depths of the storage vault, Hao Ren could not imagine what that must have felt like. Yet everywhere in this tiny room, he could see traces the old man had left behind over the past nine hundred years, offering glimpses into his life. He had once forced himself to continue standing watch according to plan through discipline and willpower, because he had been the finest talent on the ark. He had also given up on himself for a time, squandering his time and rations in this cramped room, because he was only an ordinary human. Then he had awoken from that false self-discipline and meaningless waste, spending the final decades of his life recording every piece of history he knew, because he was the last "parent" this civilization had left.
"I only came to my senses during the latter half of my life, so I had to work twice as hard to make up for the time I had wasted," the old man muttered in a low, indistinct voice. "The only thing worth celebrating was that I really was healthy. The doctors had been right—I could live a long, healthy life. That lifespan should have been used for rebuilding, but I was trapped in this room, so I spent nearly twenty years leaving those things behind. Our history, our culture, our traditions, where we came from, why we left our homeworld... That was the longest period of clarity I ever had. I worked day and night, and every time I discovered another white hair, I was terrified. I nearly went mad, but I didn't dare return to the hibernation pod, because I didn't know whether I'd be able to climb out again once I lay down... I grew older and older. During my final years, I