In Dormant, veteran space pilot John Bellis awakens from stasis aboard a deep-space delivery ship to find the vessel eerily empty and fully automated. Blinking diagnostics, mysterious prompts from the ship’s AI Kristi, and memories that no longer match his reality leave him questioning everything. John expects twenty-four crew members but is told he is alone. Pods vanish and reappear, his name shifts, and reality fractures around him. Haunting flashbacks of his wife Janice on a sunlit beach, her laughter, and the news of her pregnancy tug at his humanity even as the ship locks him out of critical compartments and a core breach countdown begins. Kristi reveals affection and love for him, raising the stakes of human versus machine. In the end, John collapses into darkness and awakens in a hospital room, machines beeping clinically, realizing that perhaps years passed in coma and the ship was a dreamscape of his mind. Janice sits beside him reading his favorite book aloud. As she utters the opening line, his finger twitches. The loop begins again, a cycle of consciousness, identity, and survival spiraling between dream and reality. Dormant explores memory, isolation, and the fragility of human perception in a vast, uncaring universe.
