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His apartment was too quiet when the girls were at class.
Urle walked over to the fake windows that showed him a view of the stars. His sensors could tell it was a screen, but it still looked good.
One day, he’d be at the point he could truly be out there in the vacuum, no suit and no walls between him and the empty void, and look at the stars with eyes better than any human.
But it wasn’t right now, today.
He’d messaged Verena over the last few days, giving her updates on the girls and also trying to hint subtly about the problem she had mentioned. See if what she feared was coming to pass. She’d messaged back some brief texts, but had not attempted to come around for another dinner or to see the girls at all. And no hint on the issue.
From how clipped the messages had been, he imagined she was deeply engrossed in her work. But given she had brought up the catastrophic possibilities . . . he could only trust in her.
He wished he could still be on duty, but he did not believe himself fit at the moment. Perhaps work would have been better for him, but Brooks had not entertained any notion he’d suggested of him coming back on yet.
And the Captain was right. He was barely able to do his job as a father.
Persis’s sad mood had been quick to help lift. But Hannah was another story; she was a sensitive child, and she remembered Verena much better than her sister.
As much as he’d talked to her, tried to help her, he knew his daughter was still sad inside. She smiled now, she ate her dinner, and told excited stories of things that had happened in her day.
But in her eyes, you could still see the hurt.
And he couldn’t fix it. Not just as their father was he failing, but as he, himself, he was failing.
He had always been one who had wanted to fix anything and everything. Even himself. To find the limits of his humanity and go past them.
But for all he had improved, there remained things that were unfixable.
Sometimes, there just was no catharsis. You just had to learn to live with the pain the universe gave you.
His attention had long since wandered from the view of space on the screen, but he took a moment to focus back onto it now.
In the darkness, the stars glowed. There was no twinkle, not without an atmosphere. Just perfect pinpricks of light at all sizes. At this angle, there wasn’t even the galactic disk, just the dark and the light.
It was a simple fact that even stars died one day. But looking at them now, he felt a comforting sense of eternity.
Other Terrestrial 