This is the revised version of Years Apart that I submitted to the 2020 Writers of the Future short story contest. I trimmed some of the excess and reworked the story structure, ultimately resulting in the same story, albeit with much better pacing and character progression.

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My eyes fixed upon the white panels of the ceiling.  They didn’t focus like they used to but, in all truths, there was nothing of interest to look at up there anyways.  One hospital ceiling is just as uninteresting as the next hospital ceiling.  The smell of flowers was just strong enough to drown out the scent of cleaning supplies and sanitized bedding.  The mid-afternoon light illuminated room brilliantly, chasing any shadows deep into the corners of the spacious private quarters that I had chosen to die in.

The door opened, followed by the dull footsteps of the orderly.  He went about his business, empty garbage cans and throwing away dead flowers.  I didn’t bother to look up at the man as he worked, knowing that any small talk would just be a hinderance to his very busy schedule.  I simply lay in my bed and listened as he walked across the room tidying and cleaning as necessary.  The sounds of the footsteps made their way to the window and following a small click, a burst of air rushed through the open portal and rolled over my frail body.

The feel of the air carried me back to my youth.  I was in my early twenties again, and the air from the stopping train crashed over me.  The train skids to a stop, positioning one of its portals directly in front of me as it had done so many times before.  Shabby metal doors slide apart with a loud hiss and I take the large step across the small gap, entering the car.  Without missing a beat, I step to the right and grab the first available plastic seat, stealing it from the longing eyes of some uptight-looking businessman.  He glares at me disdainfully before shuffling through the crowd in a desperate search for somewhere to sit and peruse his Wall Street Journal.

A jerking motion rocks me in my seat as the train begins to accelerate towards its next stop.  The conductor mumbles something over the intercom that is almost completely incomprehensible that was almost universally ignored by all onboard.  I reach over my shoulder and flick my hood over my head to find some solitude in the crowded commuter car.  I pull my phone from my pocket and slide the ear buds into my ears.  The busy noise of the train fades away, replaced with the serenity of Frederic Chopin.

I gaze at the screen and notice a small envelope icon in the upper corner.  The sound of the notification must have been drowned out by the crowd.  I unlocked the phone and tapped the icon to read the mail.  Before I even made it into the body of the message my heart plummeted to a pit in the center of my chest.

It was her.

Some may say I loved her, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that point.  Our relationship had been fast paced and passionate.  From the moment we met, it seemed like every moment we could spend together, we did.  From late nights with friends to sleeping in together on the weekends, we were inseparable.  Even the worst of times with her far outweighed the best of times alone.

Fate and time had different plans for us unfortunately.  The brief time we had together was cut short by the callings of opportunity.  Her parents, both renowned astrophysicists at the top of their field, had been recruited to be part of the first manned interstellar mission.  They had accepted the role on one major condition; their only child, their daughter, a medical school student, be allowed to join the crew.

Time’s cruelty was far worse.  The ship they were travelling on would be constantly accelerating for the first half of the journey, always inching closer to the speed of light but never surpassing it.  Time starts to play tricks at those speeds:  while barely seven years would have passed for those on board, nearly forty would be gone for those that were left behind on Earth.  Time compresses and distorts at the speed of light, and in this case, it also steals from those separated by it.  Einstein warned of this with his theory of relativity and unfortunately it proved to be a universal truth.

When they first left, I was simply angry all the time.  Anger was far easier to work with than sorrow.  I used that anger to shield myself from attachment, a defense mechanism against the pain.  Her messages used to come regularly in the early parts of the journey, and each time they shattered that shield of anger and left me a miserable mess.  As time grew in between each message, the damage felt that much greater.  I wondered how long it would take to recover from this most recent message.

I fight back the tears as I lean back against the seat.  The dull metallic ceiling of the train stares back at me through tear blurred eyes.  I thought to myself how much easier life would be to not feel anything at all.  The dulcet tones of Chopin’s Etude #3 fade away, leaving only the sounds of my heavy heart, continuing on despite the pain it felt.

When my eyes opened, the view cleared and that vaguely familiar ceiling was once again above my head.  A few deep breathes helped the memory slide back out of the forefront and deep into the recesses of my mind.  I wipe away the fresh tears with the dry skin of my hand.

The orderly had come and gone at this point, leaving me in solitude once again.  Things were easier when it was just me inside this room.  My busy schedule of eating a few times a day and having my IV’s changed and occasionally visiting the restroom left me all the time in the world to do what I want.  I could have spent that time buried in a book or watching the latest program on the holo-caster.  Like most days, I instead found myself buried in reminiscence, thinking about the work I had done in my youth and the time I had spent alone.

Many of the great accomplishments of my life happened in my solitude.  I traveled the globe and helped those less fortunate than myself.  As the climate worsened from decades of neglect, I volunteered my time into assisting those that were impacted the worst.  When half of California fell into the Pacific Ocean, I was there to pull people from the rubble, only to fly across that great expanse of water and help the people in those countries that the resulting tsunami left desolate.  Unable to bear watching the Earth decay any further, I made the decision to slip gravity’s bond and venture into the great nothingness above.

My frail fingers found the button to raise the back of my bed, gently pushing me into a semi-upright position.  Screens and machines sat next to my bed, monitoring my various failing life signs, and keeping my bodily systems in just enough balance for me to be comfortable in the twilight of my life.  I relaxed my body and tried to remember what it felt like when floating in the darkness between our world and her moon.  I closed my eyes and exhaled deeply, imagining Earth’s gravity releasing my aged body.

When my eyes opened, I was in one of a dozen shuttles that I knew so intimately for so many years.  There was always work for a competent pilot in moving cargo in Earth’s small pocket of space.  I had just completed a passenger trip to the lunar starport in the Sea of Serenity and now was making my way back to Earth orbit with a full load of heavy metals mined from deep within Luna.  I gazed at one of the screens and saw that my approach velocity was just a little too high this close to the station.

My fingers worked the shuttle’s control panel deftly as my eyes were locked on the viewscreens in front of me.  The massive metallic structure filled the entire screen, its edges extending far beyond what I could see.  In the direct center of my view I watched as a sheet of metal slid open, revealing a port just big enough for my shuttle to dock in.  Yellow strobe lights marked each of the gate’s corners, the pulsating glow illuminating my destination as it grew steadily larger during my approach.

I reached up and flipped four switches above the window.  The small shuttle began to vibrate noticeably as the docking jets burst to life, slowing the approach.  My right hand wrapped around the control stick and with a series of small motions I triggered the various maneuvering jets which lined my shuttle up with the gate.  The lever in my left hand gradually eased towards me under my steady pull, increasing the docking jets strength to bring the ship to nearly a crawl.  I switched through a variety of views on the screen while continuing to gently adjust the jets that maneuvered the shuttle into the port.  A dull thud echoed throughout the cabin as the shuttle locked into place, securely attached to the massive orbital station.

My seat shuddered as the docking umbilical connected to my shuttle cabin.  My body shifted in the pilot’s seat as I became accustomed to the slight motion of the station.  I felt my internal organs settle back to their normal positions and quickly unstrapped myself from the pilot’s seat.  With a soft push of my feet I propelled off the floor towards the ceiling of the cabin.  My hands met the cold metal and I walked hand over hand towards the rear of the small area.  A small handle above the door leading into the main portion of the shuttle swung open with a single pull along with the metal plate it was attached to.  I reached in and pulled a brown pack out of the cabinet, promptly closing it once the bag was clear of the door.  My hands wrestled with the two snakelike straps as I positioned the pack to the spot between my shoulder blades.  The ends of the straps came together diagonally across my chest with a snap, signaling the pack to pull in any slack and tighten around me to lock it safely in place.   I checked it for tightness before pulling myself through the cabin door.

I floated quietly in the micro gravities of the high orbit station and allowed myself to relax after the long shuttle flight.  The recent surges in orbital traffic left me constantly on edge whenever I was in the pilot’s seat.  There was little to no room for error when piloting between the various stations at a few hundred kilometers per hour.  A single piece of space junk, whether as large as a satellite or as small as a screw, would be catastrophic if its orbit crossed paths with the shuttle.  The company told us that there were contingency plans in place for exactly those events: recover the shuttle and send the pilot’s ashes to the next of kin.

I agreed to those conditions a decade ago when I decided to slip away from Mother Earth.  I fell in love with space from the first moment I felt gravity loosen its grip on me.  Something about the freedom you feel in the absence of gravity was absolutely intoxicating to me.  When I left Earth, I contracted with SpaceX to fly regular transport missions in the Earth sphere of space.  From low orbit to the moon and Lunar Lagrange points, I hopped around the space near Earth moving people and product alike.

I watch as ships of varying shapes and sizes pass by the viewport in front of me.  A colony ship here, a police cruiser there, and countless shuttles darting amongst them.  Humanity had begun its exodus into space, bringing all the good and bad with us.  It was beautiful to watch yet I silently grieved for all the horrors we would visit upon the many untapped worlds that sat ready for us in the vast cosmos.  Having witnessed the devastation wrought on our one and only home firsthand, I truly hoped we had learned our lesson and would avoid those mistakes on the many virgin worlds that shared this vast cosmos with us.

A three-note chime echoed inside of my ear, audible to only me.  I admired the dancing starships for a few more moments before retreating into the privacy of my shuttle.  Once away from the prying eyes of coworkers and tourists alike in the station thoroughfare, I pulled the message out on the nearest wall panel.  I couldn’t help but let out a slight laugh when I read the first line of the lengthy email.

It had been twenty years since I last heard from her, at least relative to my time.  For her no more than three years had passed.  They had hit the midpoint of their journey into the depths, her voyage still in its infancy.  They would spend the next three years decelerating towards the target system, followed by a decade of exploration and research.  Once they prospected and mapped the system in depth, they would finally begin their long return trip.

I smiled as I read through the message, enjoying her musings on the vastness of space in between the stars.  Her perspective felt the same as it did all those years again.  Part of me felt like I was reading something out of my own past.  A lot had changed for me in twenty years.  Watching the world creep towards death and seeing both the best and worst of humanity during that time had left me a bit jaded.  The decade of isolation in space had only furthered that feeling, leaving me a bit detached from the rest of the human race.

Feelings of warmth welled up inside of me before they were replaced by something stronger.  I remembered the pain of hearing from her last and how profoundly it had affected me at that time.  Deeply wounded by her loss, I spent two decades with only the company of strangers and the rare friend, an effort to keep myself from the pain I felt so long ago.  Now, after hearing from her again, I couldn’t help but wonder what I had missed out on had I let myself open my heart to those around me?  My thoughts of her were no longer pain, they were fond memories of companionship and love that I found myself longing for.

I closed the message and took a deep breath.  A smile crossed my face.  I propelled myself towards the hatch, leaving the shuttle with a new outlook, ready to face whatever tomorrow brought me.  I pushed myself through the hatch and just let myself float freely in the open expanse of the station.  For the first time in a long time, I felt excited for the future.

The wind had blown my bathroom door shut with a bang, rousing me from my memories.  Back in the hospital once again, I cautiously rolled out of bed and carried my ancient bones around the room, inspecting the various flowers that decorated my humble abode.  Attached to every vase were loving notes from my various children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  The smells of the flowers brought pleasant memories of times spent with all of them throughout my long, long life.

I carefully seated myself in a chair by the large window.  To my right was a framed picture of my late wife and myself, taken on her one hundred and twelfth birthday.  An aneurism took her from me a week later.  That was over a decade years ago to the day.

Thoughts of the life we lived brought a smile to my old face.  She blessed my life with three beautiful children after we met in our fifties, relatively young considering how long people live these days.  We travelled the solar system, from the cloud tops of Venus to the moons of Saturn, exploring as much as we could together with the time we had.  Few could say they lived a better life than we did during the second half of our first hundred years.

Our children continued our legacy, traversing the system and helping pave the promising path forward for humanity’s diaspora into the stars.  My youngest son even took the opportunity to explore the twin stars of Sirius, the twenty-year trip aging him less than five.  I admired his adventurous spirit as I myself had never travelled any further than Neptune; never taking a chance to play with the rules of relativity and add years to my life.  No, I was more than content to stay inside the confines of conventional physics and live time in the straight line it had provided me.

The sun began to dip into the San Andreas bay.  My last visitors, my great granddaughter and her partner, had brought flowers earlier today and promises to return tomorrow to spend time with me at length.  I didn’t foresee myself expiring overnight so I took a moment to value the time to myself as I returned to my bed.  I watched the sun sink into the pale blue-green ocean.  I bid Mother Earth a fond farewell until tomorrow and quietly enjoyed the calmness of the evening sky.  I closed my eyes and simply bathed in the warmth of the last few rays of light.

I heard the door open and some footsteps followed.  The door shut lightly as the feet made their way to my bed.  I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to disturb whichever member of the hospital staff had come in to do whatever task they were instructed to do.  The steps stopped near the edge of my bed and a petit hand slipped into mine and gripped tightly.

My nose was filled with the scent of passionfruit with just a hint of citrus, not too strong but impactful enough for you to notice.  Memories are inexorably linked to our senses, with the sense of smell being one of the strongest memory triggers. There are a few things you never truly forget:  The smell of your first love’s perfume is near the top of that list.

My eyes opened slowly, and I turned my head towards the person attached to the hand that so tightly clung to mine.  Through eyes welled with tears and strained with age I recognized the ghost.  A few decades older than I remembered but the same specter of my youth.  In her NASA jumpsuit, raven black hair pulled laying over her shoulders, with her hazel eyes just looking down fondly at the decrepit old man I had become, the ghost of my past had returned after all these years.

Tears filled her eyes as I smiled at her.  Me, one hundred and twenty-eight years old, and her barely out of her thirties.  Time had played the cruelest of tricks on us but even after all this time; years, decades, and lifetimes later, I was able to finally say what I never thought I would be able to.

“Welcome home.”