Here's a short story I wrote. There's some truth in it - the one I love is very far away. That's what inspired me to write it. Without further ado - enjoy!
Distance is measured in many ways. A few nanometers in wavelength decide whether we see light as red or green. A few inches mean you're tall or short. A few meters determine the outcome of a race. A few blocks can be a long drive in New York traffic. Some 26,000 miles or four continents and three oceans were the distance Phileas Fogg traveled in 80 days. And it's some 4.2 light-years from the sun to the nearest star Proxima Centauri.
620 light-years separate me from the one I love. This means the light itself needs 620 years to traverse this distance. And nothing can go faster. That's what Einstein teaches us. 620 years of cold, dark emptiness of space rushing by. Traveling at relativistic speeds using a vessel propelled by an Einsteinian Drive it would take me about a month and a half. That is the time that would have passed on me when I reached Earth. At such speeds, however, even time is relative. Travel at light speed and time would stand still for you. That's also Einstein. On Earth over 700 years would have passed. My beard would have grown a bit but besides that you wouldn't notice the difference. But I wouldn't find anybody waiting for me. She would be long gone. And her children. And their children. And their children's children. And so on until they didn't even remember her name or that she existed.
The surface of the nearest star burns at five million degrees centigrade. It's a galactic nuclear fusion reactor. It bestowed the gift of life on an entire planet. Yet I feel cold. The dark loneliness of space chills me to the bone.
Doubt that the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt that I love.
It's foolish to hold on. Everyone tells me so. But can a meteor stop its downward course even though it will crash and burn? Can a tree stop growing even though the sun will dry it out next summer. Or does a trapped animal cling to life any less? Can the planets keep from turning? Out here I miss her like I miss the warmth of the morning sun or the green of fresh grass, like the sound of wind in the trees or smell of lavender in spring. A part of myself is missing. It remains back on Earth. Like an anchor. Like a life line. Painful though it may be it is this pain that tells me I'm alive and that there's something worth living for. Even the thought of her brings colour or a spark of warmth.
Sometimes I imagine she's just away, coming back soon. She's taken a shuttle down for a surface expedition. I've just missed her and she's gone but she'll come back soon. There's nothing to worry about, the distance just feels like light-years. Just be patient for a few days. Then days turn into a week, which turns into a month. And when she doesn't return I tell myself she's been delayed. The expedition is just taking a bit longer than expected. Just be patient. Work plods on, life continues. Of course, she doesn't return and the shuttles that come and go occasionally carry other people but not her. Because she's on a blue-green planet 620 light-years from here.
Sometimes when I hear her voice looking at her image I can almost feel her presence. It's as if I could just reach out and touch her face. Maybe when I'm tired I could lay my head on her shoulder and rest my mind and my body. It feels as if I could just lean forward and smell her freshly washed hair, feel its spiky texture. If I lean in a bit more I could taste her skin, her lips. I would hold her tight with both arms and her warmth would flood through me and drive out the chill. The beating of her heart would merge with mine. The rhythm of life. It's easy to imagine my tongue brushing against hers, probing and passionately wrestling. Her breath would flow into me and, after awhile, it would pass back to her and the cycle would start again. Maybe my mouth would find its way down her neck. I would tease her and she would giggle. Clothes would wind up in a pile on the ground and things would take their natural course. And afterwards she would smile at me and her smile would be more resplendent than that of a thousand suns. Because she smiles for me. Now she smiles happily at the camera.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Space is vast, it's endless, the theories go, ever expanding. Yet in all its vastness it seems to close in on me, smother me sometimes. The ones that go outside the ship in a suit need their oxygen supply – I need her. Be it only the memory that she loves me back somewhere across the stars. She's there thinking of me. I don't want to return anymore. Returning would mean to live in a different epoch from her. It would mean for her remaining life to pass in the blink of an eye. I want to stay like this to be certain of her love. I don't want to let her go.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn,
Is just to love and be loved in return.
But as the next jump is being plotted I know that it cannot last. I will leave her behind in time and space. Distance will stretch from kilometers to light-years to parsecs. My time line will split from hers. Things will change. What is now will soon be distant history. Will she remember me? Will she look up to the stars as I look at them and wonder if we're still looking at the same ones? Will she move on? Will she be happy? And then when the cosmic twinkle of her life is up, when her children down to her distant descendants have passed out of the world, when the Earth itself has almost forgotten her name what will be left? Only a handful of dust and a box of recording disks. But I that I travel at relativistic speeds will still remember her and love her. Because love needs no reason. Because love is not relative.
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