IT JUST SAT THERE , blinking at me.

I knew the trip would be long, and that I’d have a lot of quiet time. The seven months to Mars Rendevous would pass by more quickly, I had said to myself, if I just had enough to read and work and keep me busy.

So for two months before the trip, I had carefully prepared, scanning in all of my old print publications that had been stacked up for three years, along with a series of hasty purchases of various audio and video novels.

As a passenger, I knew the “net” would be unavailable to me, with the minimal off-ship bandwidth being exclusively reserved for operations staff, a reasonable restriction.

But no matter: I had loaded up my 40-terabyte internal drive of my laptop with plenty of material. Plenty to read. Plenty of time to write my thoughts, my memoirs. Yes, finally, writing down the story of my life.

But my laptop just sat there and blinked at me.

I had forgotten the password. I tried everything. Access denied.

It was going to be a long, long trip.