Miroslav sighed as he folded the paper. There was nothing new in it, there never was. Political unrest, sports upsets, a new celebrity game show. He had given up hope a long time ago that something new might happen. Aliens might make their first appearance, he supposed. Or maybe politics would stabilise. He could fantasize, but that’s all it would be, fantasy.
No, he was a man who had to deal with reality. Cold, hard, delicious reality.
He dropped the paper and picked up his coffee cup again, sipping it gently. He savoured the bitter taste on his tongue for just a second, before swallowing. That was something consistent. The coffee at Chayka’s was still the best in the world. It always would be. Family recipe after all.
The sun was warm that day. There had been a time when Chayka’s was hidden away in the old town, crumbling yet towering building’s obscuring the sun. A couple of decades ago, the city had undergone some major refurbishments. The cramped streets turned into broad thoroughfares, big enough to roll a ship down. Clean and quiet. He missed the character the old buildings had.
Of course, the refurbishments were the first thing Miroslav had noticed as he stepped off the ship at the starport. As soon as his paperwork was finished and the cargo checked (a process that had gotten hours slower over the years, no one knew what they were doing these days), he had hurried through the unfamiliar streets. Finding Chayka’s still there, the same wooden sign over the café’s front, had been his greatest relief.
For a hundred years, this simple café had been his one rock, a place that had stayed consistent. He was overjoyed to see the replacement stood in the same spot.
He had finished his coffee ten minutes ago when Vasyl appeared, picking up the empty cup to take it away.
“Will you be having the usual, sir?” He asked.
Miroslav smiled and didn’t look up at the young man. “I don’t make an order often enough for that to be possible.”
“Yet I know exactly what you will order next.” The young man replied.
“Another coffee, please.” Miroslav smiled then. “And I think I will have a pastry with it this time.”
Vasyl raised an eyebrow at that, but went and got the order. As Miroslav started drinking the new coffee, Vasyl pulled up one of the metal chairs and sat beside him.
“How did your father pass?” Miroslav asked quietly.
“Cancer, in the end. It was quite sudden.”
“That is a real shame. I would have liked to see him one or two more times.” He sipped his coffee. “He would have been really proud to see you carrying this on. You make coffee just as good as he did. Mind you, he was proud of you from the moment you came out.”
“Really?” Vasyl asked with a smile.
“Oh yeah. You must have been two when I first heard. He was so excited to tell me. He was practically shaking, you would have thought he was the one who’d drank far too much coffee.” Miroslav burst into a raucous laugh. “Have you any plans to start a family then?”
Vasyl shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. “My husband and I have been talking about adopting. When we’re older, though. Now isn’t a good time for us.”
“Wow, you are very modern. Adopting. I thought surrogacies were all the rage?”
“Maybe fifty years ago, old man,” Vasyl said with a laugh.
“You know, your grandfather used to call me that all the time. You have more of his look about you than you do of your father’s.”
“So I’ve heard. To think for you he’s been gone for only a few years.”
“Only a few months.” Miroslav’s mouth twitched into a melancholic expression. He wiped it away with a bite of the pastry. “Mmm, your food has improved. I guess some things do change.”
His two weeks off flew by as they always did. He didn’t mind that so much. The weeks were well spent, drinking good coffee and ignoring the world. It was all he had ever done, if he was honest, just now he was paid to be disconnected from it all.
He checked into the starport at his usual time, two hours before his shift. He needed the two hours so they could update his ID card and double-check his bank details. Twice now his bank had gone bust during his shifts. The ID card wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t insist on updating the technology so often.
The new chief engineer, Valentyna greeted him, briefly running him over the new safety protocols they had installed in the hauler ships. They sat in the departure lounge. The great glass wall gave them a view of the landing platforms. Miroslav nodded absently, watching them fuelling up his ship. It was just protocol to update him of the protocols. It wasn’t like anything ever went wrong with the ships. Ships designed for NAFAL travel couldn’t be anything other than overdesigned.
A group of civilians that were disembarking and meandering into the check-in caught his attention for a moment. He wondered where they were coming from. One of the colonies? Workers returning from shifts far more gruelling than his own on some remote mining station? Maybe they had been born out there and finally brought their way to earth. He glanced up. He couldn’t see the NAFAL ship they must have taken in orbit above them. Or his own. The cloudless sky was devoid of all such pockmarks.
“Will you be alright?” Valentyna asked, noticing that he was distracted.
Miroslav nodded. “Of course. Nothing has gone wrong so far, after all.”
“I’m talking psychologically. No one has done this many shifts before.”
“That’s been true for the last six,” He pointed out.
She sighed, rubbing her temples. She must have been late thirties, maybe into her forties. Same age as him. Last time he had set off, she had been a junior engineer. An impressive career trajectory, he thought. He wondered how many more shifts until she was dead, like all the others.
“I had better set off,” He said, slapping his knees and standing.
“We’ve had some psychologists ask if you’d come in for tests. When you’re back, of course. They’re very interested to see what’s happened to your brain,” She said casually, standing up as well.
“Do you think something will have gone wrong in my brain?”
“It’s not my field, I couldn’t say. But you are unusual. Psychologists love the unusual.”
“I’ll think about it. I’ll get back to you in a decade.”
“Very funny,” She said dryly. “Yes, you had better set off.”
The launch was as uneventful as always. The shuttle shook and screamed as he was fired into space. It passed through the atmosphere and into low orbit. He took time to enjoy the view, but not too long. It was a lonely trip. There used to be a pilot in the capsule with him, but they’d automated the whole system a few shifts back.
He finally caught sight of his ship as he drifted in a slow orbit. On the back were the enormous NAFAL engines. The size wasn’t what made them go. The engine itself was no bigger than that of a petrol car of his youth. The casings that made it the size of a mansion were all the safety measures. It turned out the universe didn’t like it when you bent the laws of physics.
The body of the ship was just like a body. Once you’d stripped the flesh off. A ribcage dangling in space, the single corridor making up the spine with the ribs now mostly filled with the shipping containers. At the head of the ship was Miroslav’s living space. An ugly shape the size of a house where everything he needed for the trip would be.
The last of the containers was just slotting into place as his capsule docked with the front of the ship. He disembarked, loaded all of his personal possessions onto the ship, and hit the return button to jettison it back to earth.
He headed upstairs to the control room and hit a few buttons to get it fired up. In an instant, chatter screamed out of the console as the engineers did the last-minute checks. While they argued over the nonsense he couldn’t understand, Miroslav stowed his stuff in the living space below.
It was plain; a bedroom, a kitchen, a washing room, and a sitting room. Yet it was comforting in its stark decoration. He didn’t add much to it. His personal effects were little more than mugs, some comfortable clothes, and a flask of coffee from Chayka’s. And, of course, a stack of the latest books on interstellar physics.
Arguing for it had been hard the first time he’d brought the books with him. Every kilo of weight adds to the fuel cost, they said. Firing you through space at NAFAL speeds isn’t simple, they said. Take it out of my check, he had said. Since it was considered a tradition at this point, the engineers no longer complained, just adjusted their calculations.
Finally, he strolled along the spine to check all the containers were secured and reading safe levels. He’d never seen any container in danger of exploding, or depressurising, or falling off. It must happen occasionally. But like the engine, everything about the ship was so overdesigned, he couldn’t see a reason it would fail.
With the checks done, he got settled into the captain’s chair, as he called it. Captain of an empty ship was still a captain, he had decided. He read out a few numbers from his readout, confirming them with the engineers back on earth, then they gave him the all-clear to launch.
It took a few minutes for the thrusters to position the ship on its trajectory. Naturally, the ship was capable of correcting its course on route, but it was more fuel-efficient if they had the right direction lined up. He lowered the shielding, he wasn’t allowed to see out of the windows, and then launched the NAFAL drive.
There was a slight hiccup, as he moved out of normal time. It felt like being sick, like you were being spat out of someone’s gut. Or like diving into a pool of jelly, except the jelly was also you. Miroslav had spent some time trying to figure out the best description. After all, few other people had spent as long as him at NAFAL speeds. Once the engines got up to speed, he returned to a state of normalcy.
As so he settled in for his next week of travel. His week. The week of time he existed in. For the rest of the universe (or at least the rest of human-occupied universe, he wasn’t considering blackholes or anywhere else time went fucky) five earth years passed.
The advent of Nearly As Fast As Light technology had been revolutionary for space transit. Its drawbacks were obvious. Your life and the world you knew could slip away from you in the blink of an eye. Einsteinian physics and time dilation, damn them, were unforgiving.
Miroslav had spent the last hundred years of the world, ten months of his life, reading all about the physics of it. He understood maybe half of what he read on a good day, but that was fine with him. He understood time dilation in a way no physicist who spent their whole life theorising could, he believed.
The week went by quietly. He checked the status of the containers regularly. He did some exercises (time dilation could cause adverse effects on the body, he had read). He slept and read and relaxed.
When he was younger, there had been times where he wished the world would slow down. He could lay his head down and sleep for a hundred years but no time would pass. He was experiencing the inverse now. Yet it gave him the rest he had long longed for. He tried not to reflect on that too much; introspection could be dangerous, he had decided.
He watched with intensity as his timer ticked down for the end of his journey. Preparing himself for the sensation didn’t make it much better, but it was better than being caught unaware.
Falling out of NAFAL was exactly like going into NAFAL except backwards. In the same way that running out of a maze backwards is the exact same as running into it, only if you were also blindfolded on the way out. And also, if a minotaur was chasing you, but behind you, so you were approaching it not it approaching you. And somehow it was still a threat.
Miroslav realised he was starting to lose his metaphors. One day he would find the right way to describe it.
He didn’t get shore leave at his destination. Instead, he raised the protective shielding and stared out at the moon below while hailing the port authorities. He was expected, but it was still polite to say hello as the automated systems began to switch out his cargo containers. It would be a few hours at most. He would barely have time to land on the moon in that time.
It was bigger than the earth’s moon. Designated Yaga 352-3. It was, when the first colonist had arrived, little more than a lump of rock orbiting a gas giant. It felt smaller than the moon with the monstrous planet floating behind it.
“This is New Pripyat Port Authority hailing NAFAL hauler ship designate Tsar 654-9. Do you read?”
“Hearing you loud and clear,” Miroslav said, resting his feet on the console.
New Pripyat had been a joke name for the colonists. They had been using it for a while when he had first made the trip. The name stuck though. There were colonists who were fifth or sixth generation now, who had never known Earth. He wasn’t sure they got the joke.
By this point, New Pripyat was looking much nicer. Once a barren red lump, greenery now grew over it like a mould. Life-giving mould. All mould is life-giving, in its way.
“You are really saving our asses here, Captain.” The voice of the port officer crackled out. “We had a hydroponics failure half an orbit back. Been living on rather thin rations for too long now.”
“Well, eat well tonight for me. It looks like you won’t need the hydroponics soon. Even ten years ago your little home didn’t look this verdant.”
There was a crackle from the speaker, as though it was transmitting the sound of a man having a realisation. “You’re that one who’s been coming here since the colony’s start, aren’t you?”
“Not the start. You lot had thirty years on me when I made my first trip, I think.”
“It must be weird. I can’t imagine how it was back then. I hear the radiation storms were unbearable. Now you can actually breathe outside, so long as there’s no more than a hundred people out there at once.” The laugh crackled through the speaker softly.
The port official sounded very young, Miroslav thought. Next time he came, would it be the same man? Would he meet him again, as a disembodied voice, when he was fading into middle age?
A few hours later, and his ship was loaded with huge containers of rare earth metals. The NAFAL engine was refuelled. He sent a last farewell to the port authority of New Pripyat, and reengaged NAFAL.
“So, your decision?” Valentyna asked as she leaned on the locker next to Miroslav.
He took out of wallet and keys and slammed the door shut. He hated how often they changed the layout of this place. Once in a hundred years was enough for him, not once in every ten.
He looked to the engineer. She was older than him now. Grey was appearing in her hair and she looked even more tired. She was juggling her time, between her responsibilities as a chief engineer and as a researcher in the nearby university.
“I’ll decline for now,” He said simply, booting up his personal assistant. It gave him his standard alert. There was still a café called Chayka’s registered.
Valentyna let out an exasperated sigh. “They wait ten years for that? Come on, they don’t want to do anything too intensive. Plus, wouldn’t it give you some reassurance that there’s nothing weird going on in your brain?”
“Don’t worry, I know my brain is very weird. You can tell the psychologists that, I’m sure that sentence alone will give them enough to work with for the next ten years.” With a smile, he breezed out of the starport. He was on leave now, she couldn’t compel him.
He took a seat at Chayka’s, ordered his coffee, and unfolded a paper. It sounded like he had missed a few major wars. And the local team had won the nationals for…well, he wasn’t sure what sport it was, they changed them all the time. A celebrity game show was being cancelled after one of them died in the jacuzzi.
He put it down as Vasyl came out with his coffee.
“Ah, it feels like ten years since I last had one of these,” He said with a laugh that the younger man shared. “How have you been?”
“We did adopt, in the end,” Vasyl said with a grin. He pulled up a photo of his daughter to show Miroslav. “We’ve called her Alisa, after her grandmother.”
He examined the photo, the little girl grinning between her fathers, her small hands held in theirs. She would be fifteen when he next came. Then twenty-five. Four trips, and she would be older than him. Would Vasyl still be alive then? He hoped so, he liked this young man. Vasyl was thirty-two. He would be older than Miroslav when he next came back.
It couldn’t be healthy to think of people in this way, think of how long they had left. How fast they would age and decay before him. It was easier to assume they were already dead than to have to mourn them.
“She looks like she’ll grow up very happy,” Was what he said, in the end.
He took his two weeks shore leave. If he could have, he thought he might have jumped straight back into the ship. But policy mandated that he take two weeks leave between trips. They were more concerned for his mental wellbeing than he was.
At long last, he set off again. A new stack of books prepared. The same feeling of jelly pouring itself into every orifice while also pouring out, as though you were falling through a waterfall of it. Yeah, that made sense, he thought.
New Pripyat was getting on nicely. Their terraforming continued well. Looking at the data they sent him up, radiation levels were well down. Partly because some of those radioactive elements were now flying back through space with him.
He was a few days into his return trip, though measuring days had no real meaning save for when he slept, when something flashed up on his console that he hadn’t seen before. He had to refer to a book they packed him with all the console indications explained.
Apparently, there was someone calling for aid out in the black of space.
He hit the button and lurched as he was pulled out of NAFAL travel and back to normal time. He raised the shields and instantly saw where the distress was coming from. The crashed ship, like a beached and gutted whale, lay beside his own.
The automated systems must have parked him an appropriate viewing distance from it. For once, he was glad the ship was so over-designed. He started to use all sorts of systems he hadn’t used once before.
He sent out a ping to detect for life signs, as his instructions said to. In the case of finding another ship in distress the rules were as follows:
- Give aid to keep the ship space worthy
- Give aid to any survivors of the distress
- Salvage the black box to be returned to port authorities.
The first step was already a write-off. The gaping hole made it clear the ship had lost all integrity. No amount of duct tape would be patching it up now. And the bodies floating in the drifting scrap metal gave him doubt about the second option. That left the black box to be collected.
He was about to figure out how he was actually supposed to do that when the console pinged back to tell him there was one life sign still on board. Deep in the bowels of the ship. Some kind of emergency room, by the looks of it. Fortunately for him, it was also where the black box would be.
It took him a while to get all the systems working, but finally he was ready to venture into space. Not a spacewalk, like the spacefarers of old, instead inside a capsule. Safe and sound. As he undocked and the metal of the pod groaned under the pressures of space, he began to question the safe part.
Still, it drifted along, guided by him and always attached to his own ship by a thick cable. Something could go wrong. It had with this ship. Why would they bother with maintenance checks on the pod? He wasn’t expected to take many trips into the vacuum. He didn’t like his chances of sitting here in the black of space, waiting for someone else to come by and pick him up.
The interior of the ship was spacious, fortunately. At least the decks he had to get through. If they were smaller, he may have had to resort to a spacesuit. It was haunting all the same though. They were so far from the light of stars here, all there was to illuminate his way through the scattered bodies was the light of his capsule.
How many had been on board, he wondered, how many perished? Did it really matter? Everyone died in the end. He could only wish for a more pleasant end than this one.
Finally, he reached the emergency room. The capsule suctioned itself around the door and a green light flashed when it was safe to open his hatch. There was a small, reinforced window in the door of the emergency room. He could see a dim light through it, but nothing else.
The door must have had a catch to keep it airtight in this kind of scenario. Once it detected the air of his capsule, it happily opened to his touch.
The room was small. Enough to fit a few dozen people and still have any sense of personal space. However, there was only the one life sign in here. Laid at the far end was a figure wrapped in tight in their clothes. It wasn’t cold in the room, but it wasn’t warm. If you didn’t have energy left in you, the cold would dig in.
He came over and nudged them. They didn’t stir. They looked like a woman, or a child. Couldn’t be all the way an adult. At least they had a long time left.
He retrieved the black box from a panel in the far wall and stowed it in his capsule. In the time it took for him to lug the box across the room, the girl still hadn’t woken. Sighing, he stooped and carried her into the capsule.
He disconnected the capsule and retreated from the crashed ship, trying not to let his eyes linger on the bodies too much. There was nothing else he could do here.
Miroslav laid blankets out in the main cabin and rested the girl upon it. He would want to keep an eye on her as the engines kicked them back into NAFAL. Once more he felt himself melting through the sieve of space-time and deposited into its fire. Or was it into the frying pan? A frying pan would be worse, he imagined, with all the oil in there.
The moment they slipped into dilated time, the girl sat straight up, gasping for breath as though she’d left her lungs millions of miles back.
“Easy there,” He said, reaching down and resting a hand on her back.
“I-“ She croaked out. Her throat sounded like a gravel path.
“Take it easy. Drink. Then eat a little. I don’t know how long you were in there.” He said, bringing a cup of water to her lips.
She drank and ate in silence. Miroslav sat at his console, pretending to be fiddling with controls. He wanted to keep an eye on her without her feeling as though she were being watched. It seemed rude.
When she seemed adequately restored, he came to kneel beside her.
“Shall we start with names? I am Miroslav. And you are?”
“Chinwe,” She said quietly.
“Good to meet you, Chinwe. Care to tell me what happened to the ship? I’ve got the black box but nothing to decode it so I’m in the dark still.”
“I don’t know what went wrong. We were just supposed…” She tried to continue, but tears began to streak her face and she choked up.
He gave her time and slowly teased out of her what he could. She was travelling with her family to earth from one of the colonies. A seventeen-year trip. She didn’t know what the emergency room was, it was just a secluded part of the ship where she would sneak to when she wanted to be alone. When the explosions sounded, she was sealed in there with no idea what was happening.
Miroslav sat back as she finished explaining her story. It was a horrific disaster. A rare one too. And there was little he could do for her as they continued to speed back to earth.
“You may have my bed for the rest of the trip,” He said, standing and returning to his console. “I should have enough food for the two of us. They always pack extra. I don’t know if we’ll be arriving at the port that was expecting you, but it’s better than not arriving at all.”
Chinwe thanked him and took up his offered bed. For the next day worth of dilated time, he didn’t see her. He didn’t understand how she could sleep for so long after she’d been passed out in the ship for so long.
Eventually, though, she padded back into the control room. Her eyes were red and sore. He didn’t comment. She came to lean on the console beside him. She looked over the stack of books that littered it. Bored of them, she looked instead to the thick metal shielding.
“Why can’t we see out?” She asked.
“We’re travelling at NAFAL speeds. It’s not safe to see what’s happening out there,” He explained simply.
“Why not?” She asked.
Now all his reading might actually come into use. He put down the book and leant forwards. “Two main reasons. Light can be a bit…fucky, simply put, when you are moving almost as fast as it. Your eyes don’t like dealing with it. At least when the light is moving in its own direction. Stuff within here is fine.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” She said dismissively. “What’s the second reason?”
“Time. We’re not moving in the same time as the universe outside of the ship. So, perspective gets a bit warped. Like looking through a glass of water, except you can see through physical matter when looking through it. And also, through non-physical matter. And possibly outside of the universe. Apparently, early NAFAL pilots who saw outside went mad.”
“You’ve never wanted to look out there?”
“Can’t say I have. I didn’t take this job out of some sense of curiosity.”
“This is a hauler ship, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
“My father flew one once. One trip. Left when I was six, came back when I was sixteen. Trip to another colony. I barely knew his face. I couldn’t pick him out of the crowd of people coming out of the port on the day he came back.” She looked off thoughtfully for a moment before looking back at him. “Who are you travelling for?”
He shrugged. “No one, really. Just doing a job I enjoy.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, not seeming to accept this answer. “You took this job just…because? No one takes NAFAL travel that lightly.”
He could only shrug. “Well, I was looking for a job that would get me away from things for a bit and this came up. I’ve never really looked back.”
“How long have you been doing this for?”
“This was trip…thirteen. I suppose you’ve been caught up in my poor luck.” He let out a laugh but quickly realised that might be insensitive.
“How long is this trip?”
“Ten years.”
“You’ve lost over a century of your life to this?”
“I wouldn’t say lost. I’ve lived a good year like this. It was the rest of the world that lost the century.”
“So, your family just…” She didn’t look confused now, just sad.
“My parents died a while back. Quite young, quite sad, I suppose, but we’ve all got to move on with our lives.”
“And partners, children?”
“I’ve had boyfriends and girlfriends and everything in between but…I don’t know, I never really got anything from it. And no to the kids.”
“You’ve drifted through time for a hundred years, not knowing anyone?”
“I’ve known plenty of people. They age, and they die, but so is the world.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“You age, don’t you?”
“Not as fast as them.” He looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Do you not feel like everything’s happening too fast? Like your life won’t stop changing?”
“You’re making it go faster.”
“My life is slow,” Miroslav said, leaning back in his seat. “The world going by doesn’t affect me, so I can just relax. There was a long time in my life when I didn’t feel like that. Growing up, the world wasn’t in such a good state. War, environmental damage and…well, at the time I left things weren’t looking so good. I thought it might improve by the time I got back. It had after a couple of trips but, by then I’d been gone a while. Drifted apart from the few friends I’d once had. So, I kept hauling.”
“My father gave up ten years of his life with us. He came back to us all changed. Between that and my mothers’ hard work, we had enough to buy tickets to earth. I don’t understand why you would willingly make that trip.” Chinwe avoided meeting his eyes as she spoke. Was she disgusted by him?
“Like I say, the world didn’t have all that much for me. I like this life. It’s quiet, calm. The chaos of the world speeds by and none of it is my business.”
“So, when we reach the port?”
“I will take my two weeks mandatory leave, then I will be back on for another trip.”
Their journey continued quietly. Miroslav leant Chinwe some of his books to read since there was little else for entertainment. She spoke to him only a little, teasing out stories of his life when she did and disappointed by how little there seemed to be to his life. He told her about Chayka’s, about the coffee, about being a child in uncertain times. His loves and losses. He looked back on the life he’d lived a century ago with a passiveness that even frightened him little. Not that he could admit that.
There was a lot to explain to the staff at the starport. He didn’t have the whole of it, but they were happy to take the black box off his hands to fill in his gaps.
He hung around the arrivals lounge for a long while as Chinwe was processed by the immigration officials. Obviously, her case was a confusing one. She’d come in late, on the wrong ship, and was now an orphan. She was legally allowed to be independent, but she was without any resources so needed to be supported by the state.
Miroslav considered their options as he waited. By the time she emerged from the office and was allowed to wait, he had decided on his plan.
“You ready to get out of here?” He asked with a grin.
“What are you still hanging around for?” Chinwe asked, looking at him with suspicion.
“Let me guess, they said they’re going to have to make you a ward of the state?”
“That was the gist of it, yes.”
“As long as you have the means to support yourself, they don’t need to look after you, since you’re over sixteen.”
“Your point?”
He reached out his hand. “I have a solution for all those problems. Trust me?”
She didn’t look like she fully trusted him, but she took his hand anyway.
They went first to the bank. It had been a long time since he’d gone in, but luckily his account was maintained by his employer in his absence. Once they checked his biometrics, he asked to have the account moved into joint ownership. Chinwe was reluctant but let herself be scanned into the system all the same.
They left the building half an hour later and she looked stunned still. “Why would you do this?”
“This job pays well enough to support a family back onshore. That is how they get a lot of the pilots in, like your father.” He realised too late that might sting to say, but he moved through it. “I’ve been doing it for a long time and the only expense in that time has been the upkeep on my place, which technically has also been held in the trust of my employer. Also, books and coffee but those are negligible costs.”
“And you’re giving me all of that?” She asked in disbelief.
“You’re in a bad enough position already. I do hope you’ll do something with your life and not just burn through all of my savings while I’m gone but…” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did. I don’t need it that badly.”
“But why?” She pressed on.
He shrugged. “Does there need to be a reason for everything? It feels like the right thing to do. Maybe it’s being young, I thought there had to be a reason to things as well when I was your age,” He said with a laugh.
He brought her back to his house so she could settle in. It was a small place, rebuilt twice since he’d first brought it. The furniture was cheap and functional. He made up the spare room for her. He didn’t have it because he’d ever planned on having guests, rather it was because he could have it. The idea of affording his own place, never mind one with extra space, had once seemed a myth.
After that first night, he didn’t see her much. He took his trips to Chayka’s most days, seeing her at breakfast and at dinner. She was getting used to the new city. And resting. She needed to rest.
As Miroslav approached Chayka’s that first day, he noticed a young person stood outside, wiping a table. He recognised the face from a month before. They looked at him briefly, before their eyes grew wide and they bolted inside yelling “Papa!”
He smiled and took his seat. In due course, Vasyl appeared. He was older than Miroslav now. The age showed in his eyes. But he smiled just the same. His child lingered behind him as he approached.
“I see she’s grown up,” He said with a laugh.
“They. Grown up on stories of you.” Vasyl leant close and smile. “I think they believed you were some family joke.” He laughed as he placed a coffee on the table beside Miroslav.
“How much things do change.” He sighed, taking a sip of the coffee. “I don’t think any of your ancestors thought I was a joke. I’m glad your coffee hasn’t changed.”
“Not a joke, no. More like a spirit haunting us.”
“I’m not dead yet,” He said with joking indignation. Wasn’t he? What was a spirit? A person, disembodied, floating through the world. He drifted through time, with little to tie him down.
“No, and I don’t expect I will ever see that day.” Vasyl’s face was so kind. And he was right.
It came time for Miroslav to leave once more. Chinwe walked him to the starport. They stood outside together for a while, considering what to say.
“Look, I don’t mind what you do with the money while I’m gone, but don’t sell the house. I want somewhere to come back to. I’ll have them send you a message when I’m a day or two out from returning, so you have time to get the place cleaned up if you need to.”
“If I’m still here in ten years,” She pointed out.
“Well, yes quite.” He paused and smiled. “Take care of yourself. Earth’s a big place.”
“I will. And you take care of yourself too, Miro.” She returned his smile.
“Don’t worry. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
“And I’ll see you in ten years.”
“I look forward to see who you’ll be then.”
Once again, the filthy master that was time and space flushed him down the plug, filtering him out with the detritus of the universe. No. That didn’t work either. It captured the experience more emotively, he felt, than all the jelly nonsense. Maybe he needed to get more abstract with it.
He was still musing it out as he got to New Pripyat. He could barely make small talk with the port officer, his mind was racing with possibilities instead.
Once again, he blasted into NAFAL. That was like it, being blasted into space, being blasted through the atmosphere but you were the one who lit the fuse. Something was missing. Maybe there wasn’t enough jelly in this description.
Earth looked as it always did. Always did now. When he had first left, the green patches had looked a lot browner. And the blue patches. Now it was lush and vibrant. Yet there was so little of it he had seen up close.
He thought about that as he sat across from Chinwe at Chayka’s. She was telling him about the places she’d visited in the last ten years. She had grown from that scrawny half-starved girl into a woman vibrant with life and energy. She wore colours in every shade of the rainbow and laughed with all her heart.
“I hope you didn’t have to rush back just to come see me,” Miro said with a sad smile.
“Don’t worry. I needed to come back here soon anyway. It is still my base of operations. I have to hand in my PhD dissertation soon as well and they still love you to hand over a physical copy. Waste of paper if you ask me,” Chinwe said with a roll of her eyes.
“You’ve been studying then. That’s good. May I ask what?”
“Of course you may,” She replied with a laugh. “It’s about perceptions of reality through literature. It’s kind of, high concept stuff. Basically, it’s mostly nonsense. But fascinating nonsense.”
“Tell me about it then.” He leant forwards, resting his chin on his hands. He listened with joy as she explained in rambling, overlapping, meandering sentences her studies. It fascinated him, though he was as in the dark about it as physics. Maybe it was just the enthusiasm of her voice.
A week into his stay, as he sat enjoying the sun outside Chayka’s, Vasyl sat down across from him, a weary smile on the older man’s face. It wasn’t strange to think about that, not after all the times it had happened before. But Vasyl was now his elder by a long way. Grey hair dominated his head. Still, he smiled just the same as he once had.
“I have some sad news for you, old friend,” He said slowly.
“Which is?” Miroslav asked. He tried to keep a calm expression, but the fear was in him.
“Alisa has decided they don’t want to take over the café after me. I hold nothing against them for it. And I am looking for people to train up who might want to take it on once I’m gone. But-“
“But Chayka’s would no longer be run by one of you,” He said sadly.
“Come now, one of us? There is more to family than blood or upbringing.” Vasyl sighed. “I promise I wouldn’t let anyone who couldn’t make coffee like me take care of this place.”
“You are too kind to me, for someone who will never make your café rich.”
Maybe that was the news that finally changed Miroslav. Things wouldn’t continue forever as they always had. He couldn’t simply wish the world to hold still. It would move on without him. It always had, he had simply ignored it until now.
They lay lazily on the sofas back at his house. Their house. It didn’t look like his now. Every free surface had been adorned with knick-knacks from Chinwe’s travels. And photos. People she’d met and places she’d been.
“You’ve had partners?” He asked. It was dark out, the hour for asking true questions with true answers.
“A few. None that have stuck. It can be hard to relate to people who grew up on earth. It is very different from the colonies.”
“It is very different now than it was when I was a child. A hundred and seventy years ago.”
Chinwe blew out her cheeks. “I still don’t understand you. Relationships can come and go. The world isn’t perfect now, even as it wasn’t when you were a child. So why do you resist it when the rest of us have learned to get on with it?”
“There were psychologists who wanted to look at me. I imagine they had the same question.”
“Did you have an answer for them?” She asked softly, into the dark.
“Wanted. I didn’t ever talk to them. My mind is my own business.”
Another launch. He was fired into space, then shot through time and space. He didn’t think about it so much this time, as he slipped out of the rest of the universe’s time and into his own. That is what it had always been. Time that was his, and no one else’s.
“Do you have birds?” He asked the port officer at New Pripyat that time.
“Yes of course. They were introduced to the ecosystem early in the terraforming. Lots of the plants wouldn’t last without birds to spread their seeds,” Crackled the voice.
“Do you ever watch them flying?”
“When I get time off to go visit the countryside. Why?”
“Just like to know a little more about the world,” Miro answered quietly.
The ball of red below him was now so green. Lush and alive. Just like Earth.
As he was fired back to Earth at NAFAL speeds, he finally understood what the shift was. He was a bird, being released from the hands that held him. He flew free. And he flew in a cage he built himself. He’d picked up the twigs from the forest floor and sat within them, ignoring the hands that tried to take him back out.
He didn’t recognise the chief engineer that debriefed him this time. He wondered what had happened to Valentyna. Had he ever given her a final goodbye?
The city streets looked cleaner than he’d ever seen them, even after the rebuilding. He marvelled at the trees planted along the sides of the boulevard. He watched birds flitting between them, singing their songs. Had he ever appreciated that before?
He passed a bookshop, a new one, on his way home. For a moment he thought to pop in, have a look what their new physics selection was. But something else in the window caught his eye. A new book, its author’s first name was Chinwe. It might be a coincidence. Still, he brought a copy.
He had started reading it while he sat at Chayka’s. While he waited for her to arrive.
“Nice to see you’re expanding your horizons to fiction.” Her voice was more powerful than before.
He lowered his book to see a woman reaching the prime of her life. Confident and energetic, with ideas pouring from her ears. She sat down with a sigh.
“’The Man Who Fought Time’. Catchy title,” He said, glancing to the cover of the book.
“The publisher’s idea. I could never pin down one that I loved.”
“How about ‘Miroslav’s Tale’?” He suggested with a wry smile.
“The book isn’t about you. It couldn’t be. I’ve known your for little more than a month in all.”
“Sounds like me,” He said, reading the blurb.
“Then I got a lot of lucky guesses. It couldn’t be based on you. Only the idea of you.” She sounded sad as she said that.
“Would you rather I was more than an idea?”
“I don’t think anyone should be simply an idea.”
He sighed and nodded. Putting the book down, he took up his cup of coffee as he always did.
“I agree with you, you know. Maybe it’s taken me too long to realise.” He smiled weakly. “Maybe for the next edition, they could rename it ‘The Man Who Ran From Time’?”
“I might save that for the sequel.” She chuckled to herself.
“I have been running though. A year of my time. Over a hundred of yours. So much just gone because I was too scared to face reality. A world where I didn’t feel I fit in, where I didn’t feel wanted or needed me.”
“And that’s changed?” She asked tentatively.
“Maybe not. So much changes, so much stays the same. But I don’t think we can just give in like that. Run away from time. We have to dig our heels in, stand strong, and take on the world. Make it something for us.”
“Some of us have been doing that our whole lives.” Maybe it should have sounded condescending, but from her, it was said with all the kindness and warmth of the bright sun.
“I am tired of running. It was always tiring. And I thought the fact I was tired meant I didn’t have the strength to face the world. I got it the wrong way around. It is facing the world and living in it that makes us stronger. Even if it’s not easy, it is what fills us with energy.”
“Well then,” Chinwe couldn’t keep the grin off her face. “Welcome back to time, Miro.”