Jim could not for the life of him figure out whether that had gone well or poorly. The part of him that thought it had gone well pointed to the fact that Pam had not run screaming out of the room when he revealed just how much time and effort he’d put into planning a wedding for her that wasn’t even his. It also emphasized how she’d actually reached out and touched him when she hadn’t had to, even leaving her hand on his arm, seemingly without realizing it, in one of the more quietly intimate moments he could remember actually having with her without either of them pulling away. Most crucially, it noted, it had been Pam who had checked in about whether they were OK—who had intentionally and directly met his eyes to ask. After all the pulling away that they had both been doing over the past day, his optimistic part concluded, that had to be a good sign.

His pessimistic—it would say realistic—side was equally adamant that none of that was a good thing. She wants to go back to the way things were, it screamed. She just wants your friendship, nothing more. She wants you to be OK with your stomach burning and your heart in a twist; she’s happy laughing with you and touching you precisely because she’s convinced herself there’s nothing there.  But if Jim had realized one thing in the past twenty-four hours, it was that his knee-jerk, instinctive desire to run was deeply self-sabotaging, because Pam “just” wanting his friendship was not actually the end of the universe. It sucked, no doubt, but she didn’t actually owe him her love—at least not her romantic love—especially because she had been clear from the outset that she was with someone else. She’d never actually led him on; she’d just let him in, and he refused to let himself be the asshole who didn’t accept that when she was clear about it. She’d been right when she asked him if what he’d done had actually looked like love. It hadn’t. It had looked like possessiveness, like the need to ensure that she was his and not Roy’s—and while he might prefer that outcome, if he really loved Pam, if he really respected her, without which love wasn’t really love, he had to accept her choice. And that in turn meant that he couldn’t, in all fairness to either of them, tell her that they couldn’t be OK if she didn’t love him. His friendship was not a hostage to be bartered or ransomed for her love.

He’d need space, of course. He was still going to be up in primary for the wedding, not in the chapel; he was probably going to have to pull away at least a little bit from her once she got married, just to protect himself. But that pulling away couldn’t be a punishment—she didn’t deserve that and he wouldn’t let himself do that to someone he genuinely cared about. It would just be the natural consequence of her binding herself more tightly to someone else: “forsaking all others” as the old language in the vows used to put it. And even though she didn’t think of him that way, she would be forsaking him as she married Roy, and that would naturally put a distance between them. Their relationship would change, and that change itself would protect him. He hoped. If he couldn’t be more than that he’d be less than that, because it was really being that that hurt him: being the one who was there for her, who was closest to her, without being the one who was most important to her. A husband—even a boorish, frozen one like Roy—was meant to take that place, and while he’d mourn being pushed into a further orbit, at least this one was less likely to plunge his heart into the sun.

As he was contemplating this new reality (O brave new world, that has Pam Anderson in it!), he noticed a strange indicator pinging across the display in secondary command. Secondary command, of course, as the name implied, was still a command station and so all the signals routed to primary command were duplicated here as long as it was powered up, even though it was not technically a duty station outside of emergencies, takeoffs, and landings. This wouldn’t normally have distracted Jim, as he was used to filtering the command display instinctively and ignoring all but the most crucial or unusual information it projected (while at the same time letting his subconscious mind look for patterns or trends in the more prosaic information it put forth). This, however, was not ignorable: there was a distinctively power surge typical of the equipment in Cryogenics, a ping from the Warehouse, and a responding signal from Cryo that was triggering the movement of a cryopod into the resurrection chamber.

Now, this was scheduled to happen about every second or third day, starting today with Madge, who had been designated as the first resurrection due to her exemplary work record, and then Roy for his wedding. But Madge’s resurrection had already gone through during their shift: he’d noticed, not just because of the distinctive energy spike but because Ice had disappeared for a good twenty minutes to go orient their new passenger and the bridge had fallen deathly silent until Kelly had come back chattering about how Madge had enjoyed waking up so efficiently because she, Kelly, was the best at what she did. So if Ice wasn’t resurrecting Madge, because she’d already done that, who the hell was waking up?

Fortunately or unfortunately, he knew he had the access from here to find that out. He briefly considered the self-restraint that he’d shown earlier in the day by not looking at Pam’s logged-in console, and then decided that was no longer appropriate in the current circumstances. He was a bridge officer, even if he wasn’t actually at the primary bridge or on-shift right now, and that meant it was his duty to investigate unexplained or unusual power drains. Especially ones that weren’t the result of his own pranks on Dwight.

Actually, he thought as he frantically pushed buttons and gestured towards the central console, looking for the command screen he was sure had to exist, this would have made a perfect prank. Fake a resurrection spike—since the initial power readings didn’t actually indicate where the energy use was coming from, just that it existed (leaving it to the trained analyst to note that certain equipment typically used certain quantities and types of power) this would be relatively easily done by simply causing some other system to artificially spike to the same level from the same source as Cryogenics typically did. Then have an accomplice in the Warehouse send a message to another in Cryogenics in such a way as to suggest that the two systems, rather than two individuals, were communicating. This deception would be surprisingly easy. After all, almost no officers ever went down to the Warehouse; even Ice managed it remotely from Cryogenics, and the one time they’d let Captain Scott down there he’d almost run over two cryopods using the manual setting on the forklift and they’d all been formally warned from using that again except in an emergency. It wouldn’t be a deep, lasting prank, of course, because the follow-up readings would clarify both the specific source of the power surge and the nature of the communications between the bays, but it would probably cause the officer on duty to freak out—just as he was doing now, in fact.

However, for all that it would make an excellent prank (and he was definitely filing this one away for reference) he was pretty much certain that was not what was going on right now. He’d finally reached the screens he wanted and the power surge definitely did originate in Cryogenics, and the body count in the Warehouse was one short (well, two if you considered Madge). He briefly pondered the possibility of hacking that system or manually hiding a cryopod for the sake of a prank then noted the corresponding second surge out of Cryogenics that indicated someone had, in fact, been awakened—or at least, was currently being so, as the real resurrection spike (as opposed to the one that indicated only the start of the complex process of bringing a human back unharmed from cryodeath) was a prolonged event that was not yet finished. Since interfering with a cryo-revival was, both legally and ethically, murder, he waited out the spike lest anything he was doing should interrupt it, and then went back to the Warehouse records to examine whose pod might have been revived.

It didn’t take him long to figure out that it was Roy’s.

He decided he needed a drink.

Technically, the room he entered (after closing down secondary properly and floating down several corridors) was the Climate Analysis and Crop Projection Room, a small area of the ship only used after arrival at the destination planet to help determine optimal colony locations for the habitability and long-term stability of the new settlements. In that capacity, Chief Human Officer Flenderson would run it from orbit while the rest of the crew did more hands-on activities to ensure a safe planetfall for their passengers—or, as Captain Scott tended to put it when the subject, “Toby, no one wants you on the planet because you smell bad, so you have to stay up here.” It was widely believed that Toby also preferred to keep an entire atmosphere between him and the captain, when possible.

Informally, however, the Climate Analysis and Crop Projection Room was known by the name of the publication whose role it would take in the future colony: the Almanac. And since it was intended to remain unused until they reached their destination, it also served (by mutual agreement) as a place for the crew who would have to remain awake for the whole trip to blow off some steam, put up their feet, and come to grips with life. In other words, a bar.

Jim didn’t really frequent the Almanac, but he was very glad of its presence right now. Someone had set up an automat in the corner and hacked it to dispense alcoholic beverages of much higher proof than was authorized for shipboard consumption: as of yet, no one had reported it to the maintenance system as broken, and Pam had sworn she’d even seen Stars and Schrute having a long debate that had ended with Angela agreeing to suspend judgment until they arrived “at the site of a proper authority.” Since this was for many of them a one-way trip, that was as good as a promise not to interfere at all—though since Pam had also said that conversation had been ended with a kiss, Jim still stood very skeptical that it had ever happened. Still, the Almanac was still operable, and one could always get moonshine, or even a beer (as long as you didn’t mind the lack of hops onboard). He programmed in a dark ale, took his dispensed glass, and leaned up against a projecting surface intended to provide detailed readings of watersheds.

Roy Anderson was awake.