After Tomas stopped logging small deviations, he began noticing them more often.
Not because there were more of them.
Because now each one felt like a decision.
Not a malfunction.
A decision not to notice it.
The captain was the first to break procedure.
It was trivial.
During the evening check, she skipped reviewing one of the backup power units.
The system showed everything was fine.
The check would have taken three minutes.
She closed the panel.
“Tomorrow.”
No one said anything.
The next day the doctor was handing out medication.
The mechanic asked:
“Are my vitamins out?”
She looked at the box.
Two tablets remained.
“I’ll restock tomorrow.”
She knew she should do it right away.
But tomorrow seemed close enough.
That evening Tomas passed by the technical bay.
The door was ajar.
The engineer had already left.
A screwdriver lay on the table.
A small thing.
Tools were always supposed to be in their place.
Tomas paused.
He could have put it in the cabinet.
He didn’t.
He closed the door.
Walked on.
No one talked about things like that.
They weren’t even worth mentioning.
On the ship there were hundreds of rules.
Not because all of them were necessary.
Because none of them, on their own, seemed important.
A few days later the screwdriver was still lying on the same table.
Gloves had appeared beside it.
A day after that — a roll of insulating tape.
The technical bay didn’t become messy.
It just became a little less tidy.
At dinner the mechanic unexpectedly asked:
“Do you remember how in the first month we all used to apologize?”
No one answered.
“Not anymore.”
The captain looked up.
“What would we have to apologize for?”
“I don’t know.”
The mechanic shrugged.
“Just remembered it.”
The conversation ended.
That night Tomas couldn’t fall asleep for a long time.
One thought kept returning to him.
He could no longer remember the last time he himself had apologized for something.
Not formally.
For real.
A week later the lights on the ship went out.
Just for an instant.
Barely a second.
The emergency lighting came on.
Then everything returned to its place.
The system reported:
Power switchover successful.
The engineer reviewed the records.
“Found nothing.”
The captain nodded.
“So everything’s fine, then.”
She said it so simply that no one else asked a single question.
Before, they would have looked for the cause.
Now it was enough that no consequences remained.
That evening Tomas went to the observation dome.
Rojus was already sitting there.
He said nothing.
Just looked into the darkness.
“Sometimes it seems to me,” Tomas said quietly, “that we’ve all become more patient.”
Rojus smiled.
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“We just got used to it.”
“Used to what?”
Rojus didn’t answer right away.
His gaze stayed fixed on the stars.
“To the fact that not everything has to be done.”
For a long time they were both silent.
Tomas didn’t like those words.
Not because they were wrong.
Because he couldn’t remember when he himself had started thinking exactly the same thing.
Back in his cabin, he opened the log.
He held the pen over the blank page for a long time.
Finally he wrote one sentence.
A person doesn’t change the moment they cross the line. They change when they stop noticing it.
He read it.
Didn’t cross it out.
Closed the log.
For the first time, it seemed to him that he hadn’t written that sentence about the crew.
About himself.