Another android walks through the door as the familiar chime of the event leaves it’s resonance in the Starport – “ding!”
Her eyes don’t blink. Her gaze fixed. She’s still looking out in to deep space from her window seat. Wired from the 2nd cup of coffee she can’t sit still but can’t put her energy to good use either. The only act of creativity she had made in the past week was the epiphany that increasingly vast scientific advances have left no place for the philosophers, the poets and romantics. Maybe even that was wrong. Maybe she just can’t cope with the way things have turned out.
Space seemed to stare back at her like a dull eye close to death, stripped of it’s creativity and life-force while simultaneously holding all the answers.
Alex wasn’t happy with where she found herself; Alone. On a ship. In the middle of deep space, without a paddle to get back to what she lost. What she lived for before everything changed.
If she could at least convey the pain to someone it would help. But all anyone wanted were the stats of the day, the new prediction models and the reasoned explanations of events. A cathartic outburst wouldn’t bode well on this ship and she didn’t want to rock the boat. She needed to feel creative but couldn’t – she was too late to that party and now the premise had been laid there was no turning back. She lived in a cold reality and had no love to lighten her life. She needed him back and his memories only made her belly ache.
“One more for the road!” she laughed at the waiter “…make it a double”. The was no road. There was only her afternoon shift – another fifth spent plugged in to that buzzing engine. It was turning her in to part of it. She was a mental cog in the ship’s logic machine. It was rarely wrong but it was never even close to real. Real, she thought, was a planet with an ecosystem. Real, was being part of something organic, being part of another person’s ecosystem.
“Alex…” the waiter says as he approaches from behind the counter “… enjoy”
She checks the time as she stands up and downs the coffee in one, taking it straight off the serving tray.
She’d be back tomorrow for more. Maybe then the view would have a better answer for her musings…
“ding!”
