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The Long Road Home (story)
Sep. 13th, 2002 08:46 pmThis is my first in a while. It has no title. Read.
The stars wrapped around the Dauntless like a kaleidoscope as she spun through the void. Alexa moved her hands over the controls without looking, her eyes on the spectacle rotating slowly outside. Somewhere in her memory the image of the night sky twinkling through atmosphere twitched--out here there was no twinkle, but the tapestry was richer and full of light unseen from Earth.
With a soft beep her chronometer came to life; she shut it off automatically. It had been three months since she needed it, but she couldn't bring herself to stop setting the alarm. The action was a relic, a fragment of routine from another lifetime; and every time the thing went off she felt a quiet stab of memory. But even as her mind brushed away the past, her hand reached over to put the machine on standby for tomorrow.
There was a job to do, and she needed to do it. As she reached for her bag of coffee, Alexa tried to get herself into the frame of mind for work. It wasn't that the job was particularly difficult--she cataloged asteroids for mining out here in the belt--but doing it well required an almost zen-like state of openness. There were a lot of little bits and pieces floating around out here, and she couldn't afford to tag them all with tracers; which meant that she always ran the risk of double-cataloging, or of mistaking that one new rock with the crucial minerals for one she'd already seen. The only way to do the job was to get to know every rock by sight... and that meant long periods of just looking out there without distraction.
Usually Alexa could detach that part of her brain to just deal with things as they came; while her hands and her voice would interact with the computer, somewhere in the back rooms of her head there would be Berlioz playing, or letters being written, or dreams being digested. Sometimes she was thankful for that freedom, but today it just gave her a little mental rope to hang herself. Today was Mail Day.
The Dauntless was designed to operate independently for weeks, and even when Alexa had to check in for new supplies she never had any actual human contact. The depots were automated factories that produced the prepackaged food, water, and air that she consumed, and delivered it to her ship when she docked. She hadn't talked to another human being for 57 days, and the last time had been one of those rare occasions when she'd run across another surveyor. The conversation had been mercifully brief, as both of them tried to find some kind of common ground and failed. They just didn't have anything to talk about.
But today was different. Mail Day was the day when her ship was scheduled to receive transmissions from Earth. The Dauntless would maneuver itself outside the belt into a prespecified clear space and wait for the tight-beam transmissions that were the only way to cut through the noise. Most of the messages would be business-related, but the company--in a gesture of humanitarianism--also footed the bill to transmit any personal messages from family and friends. Last Mail Day had brought belated birthday greetings, a package of videos from her friend Lincoln's wedding, and a brief, chaotic message from her kid sister.
The thought clenched like a fist inside her as she corrected an error in her catalog. On 59 out of every 60 days she was her own person, but on Mail Day she was someone else--someone who was attached to things again. She wished that they didn't have to be in cleared space to receive the messages--at least then she could keep herself busy until she was ready to read them. But as it was, she spent an hour just waiting to get there... and hour that was always too long and never enough.
Today she spent the time making up in exhausted, dreamless sleep the hours she had lost last night.
* * *
She watched her messages with the sound turned off. They talked without speaking, part of a world separated by more than mere physical distance. Alexa watched like a voyeur into her own life, clinical and detached. The messages were just moving pictures, just decorations on her wall.
There were only a few videos this time. She couldn’t tell if her mother was flushed or if it was just the lack of fluorescent lighting at the house. Kristoff kept looking away from the camera, then snapping his gaze back with a guilty grimace. And April was her usual self, surrounded by strange plants growing in the low Martian gravity.
The text messages, however, were numerous. Work orders, catalog corrections, bills, advertisements, company circulars, more bills, environmental notifications, new books, course projections, and a few random bits of personal trivia that she moved to the overflowing electronic folder marked "TO DO."
As she rifled through the list, deleting every other message without reading them, she almost missed the flashing blue TBCC icon. It took a few seconds after she’d skimmed past it for the memory to dredge itself from the depths of her mind. Then slowly, as if underwater, she touched her finger to the screen and read the text.
The message was short, polite, and congratulatory. All the color drained from her face as she read it; then reread it. The screen flickered as she hit it, but she wasn’t really looking through her tears.
Three years. Why did it take them three years?
The computer took her attack as a command and reacted accordingly. Kristoff’s dark rasp filled the room. "You should know that there’s still time, Lex. It’ll wait until you get back. I can wait."
I wasn’t waiting, Kris! I left, remember? I left!
"I... just wanted you to know. How I felt. It seemed like the right thing to do."
She cut the playback before he could say anything else. She knew he was right... it was the right thing to do. But she didn’t want to hear any more. In her head the fairy tale was already unraveling itself.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who fell in love with a handsome prince. They loved each other more than anything, and the only thing they desired was to have a child they could share with each other. But the land was already full of children, and the king’s men told them to wait.
So they waited, and they waited, and nothing changed. The land was still full, and they still could not have a child. After a time, the prince and the princess were surrounded by thoughts of children; by the toys they had bought for their child, by the room they had made for their child, and by the dreams they had built around their child.
But there was no child. And the thought of the child that they would never have became unbearable to the princess. So, saying her goodbyes to the prince, she struck out for a new land and to start a new life, and left the land without children far behind her.
Until now.
And for the first time in a long time, Alexa shed mournful tears for the princess she had known, once.
* * *
She turned the recording equipment on.
"Kris... thanks for understanding. I don’t know when I’m going to be coming back, and if I do come back I’m not sure what I want to do. I think space probably changed both of us... and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for that.
"It’s vast out here, Kris. Vast and quiet and deep, and full of thoughts you don’t have when you’re planetside. You know what it’s like when you’re alone in a church... how you feel small and big at the same time, like you’re just this infinitesimal piece of things but somehow the center of everything. It’s like that, but a thousand times more.
"I’ve been the center of everything for a long time now----years. And I’m not sure if I’m ready to give that up. When I come back you’ll be the first to know; but I can’t make any promises. Not this time.
"Don’t wait for me, Kris. The Lex you want won’t be coming home, and the new one isn’t done being born yet."
She paused, trying to finish the letter. "Maybe next time it will work out better," she whispered. "I hope so."
Lex wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how much she owed him, and how sorry she was.
Lex wanted to cut him off, to tell him to find someone else to obsess over so that this thing wouldn’t keep hurting both of them.
But Lex was only a part of the woman who reached over to type the send command. That woman closed her eyes and opened them to see the vast cathedral of stars. And as she pointed the Dauntless back into the night, she told the computer to take the long road home.
9-13-02
The stars wrapped around the Dauntless like a kaleidoscope as she spun through the void. Alexa moved her hands over the controls without looking, her eyes on the spectacle rotating slowly outside. Somewhere in her memory the image of the night sky twinkling through atmosphere twitched--out here there was no twinkle, but the tapestry was richer and full of light unseen from Earth.
With a soft beep her chronometer came to life; she shut it off automatically. It had been three months since she needed it, but she couldn't bring herself to stop setting the alarm. The action was a relic, a fragment of routine from another lifetime; and every time the thing went off she felt a quiet stab of memory. But even as her mind brushed away the past, her hand reached over to put the machine on standby for tomorrow.
There was a job to do, and she needed to do it. As she reached for her bag of coffee, Alexa tried to get herself into the frame of mind for work. It wasn't that the job was particularly difficult--she cataloged asteroids for mining out here in the belt--but doing it well required an almost zen-like state of openness. There were a lot of little bits and pieces floating around out here, and she couldn't afford to tag them all with tracers; which meant that she always ran the risk of double-cataloging, or of mistaking that one new rock with the crucial minerals for one she'd already seen. The only way to do the job was to get to know every rock by sight... and that meant long periods of just looking out there without distraction.
Usually Alexa could detach that part of her brain to just deal with things as they came; while her hands and her voice would interact with the computer, somewhere in the back rooms of her head there would be Berlioz playing, or letters being written, or dreams being digested. Sometimes she was thankful for that freedom, but today it just gave her a little mental rope to hang herself. Today was Mail Day.
The Dauntless was designed to operate independently for weeks, and even when Alexa had to check in for new supplies she never had any actual human contact. The depots were automated factories that produced the prepackaged food, water, and air that she consumed, and delivered it to her ship when she docked. She hadn't talked to another human being for 57 days, and the last time had been one of those rare occasions when she'd run across another surveyor. The conversation had been mercifully brief, as both of them tried to find some kind of common ground and failed. They just didn't have anything to talk about.
But today was different. Mail Day was the day when her ship was scheduled to receive transmissions from Earth. The Dauntless would maneuver itself outside the belt into a prespecified clear space and wait for the tight-beam transmissions that were the only way to cut through the noise. Most of the messages would be business-related, but the company--in a gesture of humanitarianism--also footed the bill to transmit any personal messages from family and friends. Last Mail Day had brought belated birthday greetings, a package of videos from her friend Lincoln's wedding, and a brief, chaotic message from her kid sister.
The thought clenched like a fist inside her as she corrected an error in her catalog. On 59 out of every 60 days she was her own person, but on Mail Day she was someone else--someone who was attached to things again. She wished that they didn't have to be in cleared space to receive the messages--at least then she could keep herself busy until she was ready to read them. But as it was, she spent an hour just waiting to get there... and hour that was always too long and never enough.
Today she spent the time making up in exhausted, dreamless sleep the hours she had lost last night.
* * *
She watched her messages with the sound turned off. They talked without speaking, part of a world separated by more than mere physical distance. Alexa watched like a voyeur into her own life, clinical and detached. The messages were just moving pictures, just decorations on her wall.
There were only a few videos this time. She couldn’t tell if her mother was flushed or if it was just the lack of fluorescent lighting at the house. Kristoff kept looking away from the camera, then snapping his gaze back with a guilty grimace. And April was her usual self, surrounded by strange plants growing in the low Martian gravity.
The text messages, however, were numerous. Work orders, catalog corrections, bills, advertisements, company circulars, more bills, environmental notifications, new books, course projections, and a few random bits of personal trivia that she moved to the overflowing electronic folder marked "TO DO."
As she rifled through the list, deleting every other message without reading them, she almost missed the flashing blue TBCC icon. It took a few seconds after she’d skimmed past it for the memory to dredge itself from the depths of her mind. Then slowly, as if underwater, she touched her finger to the screen and read the text.
The message was short, polite, and congratulatory. All the color drained from her face as she read it; then reread it. The screen flickered as she hit it, but she wasn’t really looking through her tears.
Three years. Why did it take them three years?
The computer took her attack as a command and reacted accordingly. Kristoff’s dark rasp filled the room. "You should know that there’s still time, Lex. It’ll wait until you get back. I can wait."
I wasn’t waiting, Kris! I left, remember? I left!
"I... just wanted you to know. How I felt. It seemed like the right thing to do."
She cut the playback before he could say anything else. She knew he was right... it was the right thing to do. But she didn’t want to hear any more. In her head the fairy tale was already unraveling itself.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who fell in love with a handsome prince. They loved each other more than anything, and the only thing they desired was to have a child they could share with each other. But the land was already full of children, and the king’s men told them to wait.
So they waited, and they waited, and nothing changed. The land was still full, and they still could not have a child. After a time, the prince and the princess were surrounded by thoughts of children; by the toys they had bought for their child, by the room they had made for their child, and by the dreams they had built around their child.
But there was no child. And the thought of the child that they would never have became unbearable to the princess. So, saying her goodbyes to the prince, she struck out for a new land and to start a new life, and left the land without children far behind her.
Until now.
And for the first time in a long time, Alexa shed mournful tears for the princess she had known, once.
* * *
She turned the recording equipment on.
"Kris... thanks for understanding. I don’t know when I’m going to be coming back, and if I do come back I’m not sure what I want to do. I think space probably changed both of us... and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for that.
"It’s vast out here, Kris. Vast and quiet and deep, and full of thoughts you don’t have when you’re planetside. You know what it’s like when you’re alone in a church... how you feel small and big at the same time, like you’re just this infinitesimal piece of things but somehow the center of everything. It’s like that, but a thousand times more.
"I’ve been the center of everything for a long time now----years. And I’m not sure if I’m ready to give that up. When I come back you’ll be the first to know; but I can’t make any promises. Not this time.
"Don’t wait for me, Kris. The Lex you want won’t be coming home, and the new one isn’t done being born yet."
She paused, trying to finish the letter. "Maybe next time it will work out better," she whispered. "I hope so."
Lex wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how much she owed him, and how sorry she was.
Lex wanted to cut him off, to tell him to find someone else to obsess over so that this thing wouldn’t keep hurting both of them.
But Lex was only a part of the woman who reached over to type the send command. That woman closed her eyes and opened them to see the vast cathedral of stars. And as she pointed the Dauntless back into the night, she told the computer to take the long road home.
9-13-02