Prologue
Matthew's fingers moved swiftly over his terminal's keyboard while he composed a message.
"Good evening," it read, "this is attempt 387 at reaching you. How are things up there? I hope Lenia is keeping you company. Don't spend too much time with her though, I've heard the sunburns can get nasty. Just kidding! My day was pretty boring too, thanks for asking. I didn't get out today, nothing to do around town. Stayed in and worked on fixing a few things up, I got that old synth to turn on but it still won't make any sound. More work for me tomorrow. Hope you're well, goodbye again." He sighed and sat back, re-reading the message a few times. He hit enter and watched it solidify into the log.
He stared past the terminal and watched the triple crescent moons peeking over the horizon for a while. The synthesizer was still in pieces on the bench next to him and he picked up one of the boards, turning it over in his hand. He noticed a black mark on the piece and brought it up close to his face, where he saw that a capacitor looked burned out. He made a mental note of it, and then checked the terminal. The message had been received a few minutes after sending, but no response had been given.
Matthew rushed out the door, still pulling his jacket on as he walked down the sidewalk. The wind was calm and the sky was clear, but the morning chill had not yet faded from the air and dew still clung to the tall grasses and shrubs that lined the street. He took out his phone and typed quickly,
"Thank you for telling me, I'm on my way over right now." He sent the message and kept walking, taking out a small pair of earbuds and putting them in. He made his way to a small neighborhood square, where he waited for the next tram, which he rode all the way downtown, and then transferred to a bus.
The bus reached the end of its line and deposited the passengers in front of a wide building made of metal and glass. Walking through the front doors, Matthew was greeted with lists of departures and arrivals, and what station they were servicing. Past the board and through a large wall of blast-proof glass there were launch towers and runways, where rockets and shuttles were being taxied around. He turned away from the gates where the public shuttles were docking, and towards the private gates. There were a few people milling around, but most were walking the same direction as him.
Matthew made it to the only occupied gate in the section, tucked away near the end of the building. A couple people were standing around already, staring out the window or talking between themselves. The door outside was propped open, and through the large glass wall Matthew could see a spaceship was sitting just outside. It was so large that Matthew had a hard time estimating the size, but he figured it was at least 2 stories tall. The ship had a brilliant white hull, unlike the grey and black shuttles around it. Even the ceramic tiles on the belly were white, only marred by some soot from the recent re-entry. Surrounding the ship was a thin crowd of people and robots, most of the people talking in a congregation near the front while the robots worked mindlessly. Matthew even noticed a handful of smaller spider-like robots were picking their way upside-down across the underbelly of the craft, replacing thermal tiles. Matthew sat down in a window-facing seat and watched the robots work.
Once all the tiles had been replaced, Matthew walked outside to get a closer look at the ship. Up close, he realized that the spider-bots that he had watched pick over the belly were nearly the size of a car, and the tiles they were handling were almost a meter tall. He stood staring for a while, his eyes scanning over the stubby wings and enormous thrusters. Most of the crowd both inside the gate and outside around the ship had dispersed.
A woman stepped up beside him. "She's beautiful, right?" she said, in Standard.
"Yeah," Matthew replied quietly, turning to look at who had spoken.
"I'm Yinen, the ship is named Ban."
"Matthew," he stated.
She repeated the name back. It sounded stilted and strange in her accent. "What brings you out today?"
Matthew gestured towards Ban, "I heard a sail-ship had landed, I wanted to come see it. I've only ever seen them in-person when I was young. What's her registration, if she has one?"
"Sol-SC 2B3D," Yinen recited.
"Sol? Far out." Matthew paused for a moment. "Say, did you guys pick up Kaskall-SR 7A3F when you were coming into the system?"
Yinen gave Matthew a strange look. "Yes, but they didn't respond to our hails. No response to routine pings, even. They seem to be running though, their beacon is active."
"She's alive, yes," Matthew confirmed. Yinen was about to ask a question, but he answered before she could, "Nobody is sure why she's out there. She hasn't sent a communication in at least as long as we've been keeping track, regardless of what people send her."
There was a long silence while Yinen mulled over the information. They both stood and watched the robots work.
"You said Sol-SC, right? What are you transporting that would bring you all the way out here?"
"Nothing in particular," she answered. "The ship is barely a cargo carrier anymore, most of the cargo bay has been taken over by other things. She would have to be registered as a passenger vessel now, if The Fed was still kicking. We carry a few things though," she said while motioning towards a group milling around a cargo elevator coming out of the belly of Ban. "Most of those crates are from Kaskall, they wanted us to bring you a new kind of engine for the shuttles. You'll get the design over the relays in a few months anyways, but you know how Kaskall is."
Matthew nodded his head slowly, and then shook his head and said "not really, no." He paused, then asked "what do you think it's like, up there?"
"What?"
"7A3F, I mean. She's alone, isn't she? There can't be anybody else on board. Wouldn't that be hard?" Yinen turned now to look at him, her glance prying. He turned away, embarrassed, and tried to correct. "Well, it makes you curious, doesn't it?"
"Is that really our business?"
Matthew made no attempt to recover his position. He let the debris of the conversation hang in the air, and tried to avoid looking at her, watching the launch preparations instead. One of the other crew waved to Yinen, and she left without a word.
When the work was done, one of Ban's spider-bots gave a wave back to the building before climbing inside the hull for good. Matthew wasn't sure if it was directed at him, but he waved back anyways. He watched the ship get towed to the launch tower far away, out past the runways, taxiways, and buildings. He watched as it was winched up until it was facing straight upwards, belly against the tower. And finally he watched the great white ship lift itself up and away from him on a plume of smoke and steam. Eventually the windows stopped rattling, and the ground stopped rumbling, and the smoke was blown away by the wind. But Matthew kept staring at the launch tower and the far-off light, twinkling against the afternoon sky. He wondered what it would be like to be looking out of the window from the ship, watching the launch tower fade away, watching the port fade away. Then watching the town, the peninsula, the continent, the planet, the system, even space, all fade away as he sped up and into the Shallows.
At some point Matthew managed to pull himself out of the seat and drag himself home. The trams and buses were mostly empty this time of day, and he caught himself staring at the eastern sky as he listened to all of the mechanical sounds around him. There was no music on the way back home.
When he was making the walk back to his house from the small square, the sky was only just starting to darken but he felt like it should be dark already. He went to his office and slumped himself down in front of his terminal to type out a message.
"Attempt 388," he wrote, "sail-ship came to the port today. Mara told me about it in the morning. Watched it leave. I imagined leaving with it. Sometimes I wish I could. And I wish that you would say something, Josephine."
Matthew hit the enter key before he could have second thoughts. He stood up quickly, and moved down the hallway and towards the door, stopping to pat down a jacket on the bottom layer of his coat rack and remove a small box from the inner pocket. He stepped outside into the warm air where he pulled out a cigarette and lighter from the box. He fumbled with the lighter for a moment before getting a steady flame, and then took a long drag.
The trail of ash worked its way down to the filter, and Matthew stamped the embers out on a metal ashtray before going back inside. As he closed the door behind him, he turned his head quickly towards the room with the terminal. There was a sound coming from the room, a soft chime playing every second or so. One of his computers, he thought, but he could not recall any of them ever making this specific sound. The sound stopped before he walked back into the room and over to his desk, where he tapped one of the keys a few times. The monitor above his head lit up with a view of the sky. There was no pop-up, and no program was vying for his attention. He panned his eyes over the room to where a rack of machines of various uses whirred away. There were no flashing lights or warnings from that corner of the room, but his eyes had caught something else. His vision came to rest on the screen of his ancient radio terminal.
Something had changed. The last entry was now only a couple sentences. Matthew stared blankly at the screen, no movement on his face. He leaned his whole body over, until the dim and garish light had illuminated his slacked jaw and unblinking eyes.
"Where did you find that name? Why are you calling me that?" the message read. Matthew kept his gaze fixed on the screen, his eyes darted over the message several times. He stood up straight, still reading, and ran his hands through his hair. He was finally torn away from the screen, and he paced to the far side of the room and back. He glanced at the screen, but the message was still there. He read the time stamp for the new message, and then the time stamp for his previous message, and then the communication delay due to distance, which was displayed in a status bar. He read over the numbers a few more times to check his work, but the conclusion was the same. The reply had been sent within a second of receiving his message.
"It was in some old records, from Kaskall," Matthew wrote back. "News articles and the evacuation list. Your captain called you Josephine in an interview as well. I don't know why I said it at all, I'm sorry." He finished and sent his new message. He expected the response this time, but he still jolted when it finally showed up.
"Understood. You said that you were looking for those records several months ago. Why were you looking for them?"
He shakily typed his own message back. "I wanted to know who I was talking to, I guess. I got curious."
"Why did you wait until now to say it, if you've known for months?"
"I don't know. I didn't want to overstep. It seemed personal. I'm not sure why I said it now. I can stop sending you messages, I don't want to bother you." Matthew sent his message and waited for the response to come again. The time when an instant response would have shown up came and went. A few extra minutes went by, Matthew was still in his chair. The terminal finally chimed.
"If I didn't want you to send me messages, I could have shut off my comms."
Matthew stared in silence at his terminal screen for a long time. He slowly typed out another message. "So, what is it like up there?"
Matthew buzzed around his kitchen in Lenia's warm morning light. He poured himself a cup of tea and sat down at the table, in front of his laptop. He connected to the radio terminal upstairs, and the device chimed quietly. There was a message from Josephine, which he opened and read as he took his first few scalding sips.
"Good morning, Matthew. I hope you are feeling well :). Did I use that right? Today I recomputed my semi-major axis as about 183,532,000 kilometers. The slight decrease from my previously calculated result may be due to gravitational influence from other bodies, notably Lenia IV."
He set down his tea for the moment, and started typing. "Good morning, Josephine. I hope you are doing well also, and you did use ':)' correctly, yes. What's your updated perihelion? You're near aphelion right now, if I'm remembering correctly. I thought today I might go down to the beach, and see some launches, it's the right weather for it." He sent the message and then picked his tea back up, waiting patiently for the next message to come in.
"Updated perihelion is approximately 146,839,000 kilometers. Orbital period has decreased by several hours. I will be at aphelion in 162 hours, it has not changed significantly since my last measurements. I do concur that the weather calls for a visit to the beach, as my sensors indicate that the temperature where you are is elevated a statistically unlikely amount above the average for this time of year. I hope that you have fun :). I am liking this symbol that you have shown me."
Matthew smiled at the message, and bid Josephine well for the time that he would be away from home. He finished his tea waiting for her last response, and then closed his laptop and packed a light bag for the day.
He took the tram to the beach, and set out a blanket on the grass above the sand, which was brown around the edges from the summer sun. He laid back on the blanket and looked out over the eastern ocean, where Lenia hung low in the sky. A light flared from the spaceport up the coast and Matthew watched a shuttle lift gracefully off the ground and arc out over the sea, leaving behind a great plume of smoke and steam. The boosters disconnected and Matthew tried to watch their distant shapes fall away from the great shining light of the still-lit shuttle engines, but he couldn't make them out from the clouds until the orange of the parachutes caught enough light to make them visible again.
Matthew laid on the blanket for a while, watching the shuttles depart from port. Something moving at the water's edge caught his eye, and he glanced down to see Mara waving at him. She was standing tall, with a surf board propped up on the sand next to her. Matthew waved back, but he was thinking about the shuttles flying high above them, and Josephine even farther above that.
When Matthew made his way back home, there was a message from Josephine waiting for him. "I am currently near what will be my closest approach to Lenia IV this orbit. I will be between it and Lenia. The day after tomorrow, for a window of several hours, I will be visible from a portion of the surface. Peak solar reflection will occur at 04:51 your local time, at which separation will be about 0.07 AU. The optimal viewing location near you would be at 19.04050deg N, 42.83401deg W. At that location I will be visible 10 degrees above the horizon, due east."
He read over the message a few times, considering the data. "That's amazing! It's too bad it probably won't be visible from where I am," he wrote back.
A light twinkled above the pre-dawn horizon, glinting against the lightening sky. It drifted slowly, not quite moving with the stars.
Matthew was at home, dreaming of her. His eyes flickered open and he saw a thin cold light coming in through the blinds. He rolled over and lulled back into sleep.
Matthew stood at the doorway and shook his umbrella before stepping into the house. Water beaded off his jacket and fell onto the wooden floor as he took off his outer layer and hung it up on the rack. He curled up on the couch with his laptop, and checked for messages from Josephine.
"Hello, Matthew. It's good to receive your communication. No significant changes in orbital parameters since we last spoke, and all other readings nominal."
Matthew cursed himself. He tried to type out a response, but every word he entered felt strange under his fingers; they felt cloying and heavy. He leaned back, away from the laptop, and let out a long sigh. He put his fingers back onto the keyboard, and tried again to write a message.
"Your responses have been shorter, is something bothering you?"
The response came back after a longer time than usual. "All systems seem to be in order. Nominal readings across the board. No, nothing is bothering me."
He read the message a few times, and then shut the laptop. He set it on the ground and then rolled over onto his side, staring out the window. Rain gathered into droplets and rolled off the wide orange leaves outside his home. There was a far-off sonic boom as a shuttle came in to land.
The keys clattered under Matthew's hands as he typed and retyped his message. His fingers stopped moving for a while as he re-read his message. He looked out his window and watched the snow falling against the night sky and onto the barren trees of the neighborhood. His attention turned back to the message and he rewrote it one more time, trying to make it sound less pleading.
The snow was beginning to slow outside and Matthew watched as the static outside his window turned to a still scene. He saw a new message come up out of the corner of his eye and he turned his head slowly to read it.
The message was curt, a single word acknowledging that she had received his transmission. "Acknowledged." Matthew felt his eyes welling up and a deep pit in his stomach, his head dropped into his hands. He stayed still for a long time.
Matthew's hands found the terminal. "I don't know what you need me to do. I'm going to Lenia station. I just want to be close to you." He sent the message, his heart racing. The chair clattered away from Matthew as he stood up from his terminal.
He moved quickly from room to room, barely looking at the items that he was tossing haphazardly into a light bag. He pulled on his jacket at the door and slung his bag over his shoulder before setting off.
Matthew rushed to find a shuttle at the port, still breathing hard when he strapped himself in. The craft was towed out to the launch tower and locked into place. The nose was winched into the air and Matthew gripped his seat with white knuckles as the cabin went vertical, turning into a tall metal silo.
There was a hissing noise somewhere below, and then a roaring. Matthew looked outside the window in time to see the ground bathed in a brilliant light. The craft shook and Matthew was forced back into his seat as the brakes disengaged and the ground outside dropped away, and then they were free of the tower. The shaking lessened as they pierced through the atmosphere. Matthew opened his eyes in time to see the city lights obscured by the dense clouds.
The main engines cut off and Matthew was suddenly falling, his entire body screaming that he was going to collide with the ground at any moment. His grip on the seat tightened even more, and he clamped his eyes shut, but obscuring his vision only made things worse. He forced his eyes back open and stared at the seat in front of him. Eventually his breathing slowed and his hands relaxed their grip. On the horizon he could see a warm arc of sun-bathed sky.
After drifting for a while and a short rendezvous burn, the shuttle docked with the station. There was no competition for aisle space and Matthew began to work his way up the silo to the port, bag over his shoulder. He struggled to traverse the space, unlike most of the other passengers, but by the time he had reached the door to the station he had enough control to get where he needed to be. He took out his phone and checked his messages at the threshold to the station, but there was nothing to see.
Matthew was sprawled out on a flat metal bench, staring out the window. The stars outside spun around lazily as the ring he was in arced in a large circle. He watched a shuttle use its smaller thrusters to move away from the station, sunlight glittering off the small white jets of gas that it sent out into the vacuum around the station. It twirled in a slow rotation before firing its main thrusters. The flash was brilliant and brief, then the shuttle was moving. He tried to keep track of it, but the station was blocking his view for part of the rotation and it was invisible against the glow of the planet. He sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes, before standing up off the bench. He put his bag back over his shoulder on his way to the elevator, and went back to the zero-gee section of the station.
He floated slowly down the corridor, checking a display board that he passed. The time on the board indicated that the sun would be rising over his town soon. He checked the directions for the gates, and started down the tube. He was looking out the windows as he floated past them, adjusting his course through the station in-between glimpses of the Milky Way through the utilitarian portholes.
Something outside the station caught his eye in the corner of his view, and then he came into an observatory module. The module was not just a cylindrical hallway like the others, but instead bloomed out into a large polyhedron. The almost-circular space inside was so large that when Matthew stopped himself in the middle by grabbing onto the central ladder, he could not have reached any of the walls with a pole twice his height. It was so large that he could see the entirety of what he had seen a glimpse of before. Just beyond the station, hanging in the void, was Josephine. Matthew's breath caught in his throat.
He finally took a gasping breath, and his body relaxed. She spun end over end, her body long and skeletal. Her matte inner structure was wrapped in a cage of glittering trusses, like an insect cradled in a web of polished steel. Light bounced off her mirrored beams as she drifted across his view.
Josephine continued to tumble until the enormous bell at her aft was pointed past the station, out into the darkness. The RCS thrusters attached to her trusses all fired in unison, and her gentle rotation came to a halt. Her large main thruster fired briefly, searing its bright plasma cone into Matthew's eyes, and then she was still against the stars. Matthew watched her hang in the air, and then her RCS thrusters fired again. She was still for a moment, and then she started to grow in the window.