Possivelmente Me chame de Mr. Positive de Tom Barlow. Eu li isso na antologia programa de medicina InterGalactic de Orson Scott Card editado por Edmund R. Schubert e Orson Scott Card. De acordo com o IFSDB, ele só apareceu naquela antologia.
Nunca aprendemos o nome do protagonista, nem o nome do navio e os detalhes da viagem. Todos nós sabemos que eles foram acordados, pois é a vez deles de tripular o navio:
It was my watch ... This was my ninth awake period of the voyage,
O protagonista faz uma checagem rotineira dos outros membros da tripulação e descobre:
As soon as I saw the first body, I knew the rest would be dead. The readouts were there in plain sight, right in front of me when I woke up, but I hadn’t bothered to look. I had just assumed everything was all right. Things couldn’t be any less right.
I checked them over one at a time anyway. Every one hurt just as much as the first, or maybe more.
They weren’t smashed-faceplate dead. They were peaceful-sleep dead. They looked like they’d died at about the same time, and not too long ago; there wasn’t a great deal of decomposition
A história não é o protagonista lendo o log, mas sim escrevendo entradas no log. A história é uma série de entradas de log.
No final da história, o protagonista volta ao seu grupo:
I hadn’t admitted it to myself yet, but I was finally ready to get in the pod. Afraid my courage would evaporate if I looked at it too carefully, I let my mind go blank as I dressed and prepped the pod. I slid in, and was about to close the lid, but I couldn’t shake the notion that I’d left something unfinished.
I got up and wrote these words so that the log has some sort of an ending, in case things don’t turn out well. I’ve always hated books that end “To be continued.”
I thought long and hard about these, perhaps my last words. I was looking for something profound, something you could carve on my gravestone if you want to, but couldn’t think of anything. Only that I’d rather be floating dead through space with five of my friends than be alive and alone.
See you in six months. Call me Mr. Positive.
The end.
You know what’s funny? The cabin? It has a night light.