ISSUE #7 | Full Story, "The Nearest Far-Away Place"

WRITTEN BY FRANK SMITH, AS SEEN IN PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #7

On the space stations, the mining colonies, the inns for wayward travelers built into asteroids, the generation ships where many live in-between lives, and on the habitable moons that are our new homes, we carry our boxes of photographs of the people we have met so we can remember who we are.

We are careful not to touch the paper’s grain and bleed an image away. Like the gravitons stored below the decks of our starships, my wooden box of photographs keeps me from floating away. The hinges of the box creak, the corners are dented and chipped, and the cherry finish is rubbed away from the lid. Instead of storing holos on my reckoner, my photos are printed on a variety of materials: heavy stock, cheap paper (green and fading), and dull metal plates.

In the photographs, I see Rowan, my red-haired love; Azariah, the commander of my first star ship; Landry, the homeless child I should have helped; and the bartender on Helios Creed.

Whenever I pass a mirror, I am reminded that I spent my most vital years in the depths of space. Hard travel and strange environments have taken their toll. I am gray. My eyes are bad. My bones are brittle. Walking is difficult. From pelvis to head, my body feels like a thing not meant to stand upright, but instead to be dragged behind me as I limp forward.

In my photos, I remain that young person—wavy black hair, full hips, and bright green eyes. I am still me.

Today, I live on a mossy rock surrounded by an artificial atmosphere. The rain hammers down on this moon. The oxygen is clean. The breeze carries the scent of flowers in the fields, food being cooked in the other cottages on my isle. Life. Nature. Existence.

I am fortunate, yet most days I can’t stand it.

The air on the mining ship where I ended my career was spicy, like halitosis, like compost. On the shuttle that took me down to this moon, the oxygen was so strong with lavender that it tasted like the purple stuff parents give their babies when they have fevers.

Perhaps only recycled star-ship oxygen smells good to me.

I miss it all. I miss the sensation of being in transit. The vibration of distant engines under my feet, the rumble of the oxygen recyclers, the purposefully dull glow of the LED lights.

My Rowan would laugh at sentimental old me. I can still remember the soft and heavy sensation of my love's heart beating so close to my cheek. Strong hands on my back. A husky voice breathing my name.

In the photograph, Rowan is frowning, uncertain. Our love was terminal. I did not qualify for the same generation ship as Rowan’s family. I’d waited too long to apply. I'd have to wait for the next one. Our great-great grandchildren might meet up again on a habitable world picked out for us in Tau Ceti—but we would not go there together.

Things could have been different had we been married. We were young and marriage was such a commitment. We weren’t sure if we wanted to live and die together onboard a ship that would carry our babies and their babies through interstellar space.

In the photo, printed on the best stock available on my homeworld, my love’s forlorn brown eyes are filled with care, full lips pulled into a tight smile. We’d just argued and it was time to part. No wrinkles beside my love’s eyes. No gray hair. How can I be so old that an eighteen-year-old looks like a newborn baby to me? I stand beside Rowan, and I look… Is it relief washing over me? Yes. I was young enough to think I’d still find someone better out there.

Instead of taking a place on the next generation ship, I signed onto a merchant starship. My plan was to travel before making any kind of commitment. That was the easier solution to the real problem, I thought. On the trader’s ship, we zipped from one colony to the next, bartering for what each planet had to offer.

On my home world, Ornth, one day equals twenty-four hours. The closest world to trade with us is Ara Martis, where each day is twenty-five hours long. On the outer rim’s planets and moons, a day can be as few as ten hours long. On starships, it is nighttime all the time. We pretend to keep track of the days, with the computer scheduling our calendars. And yet, when we come across other travelers, the calendars are always off by a few days, weeks, and months.

No matter how short the day, the lonely night will always come sooner than you expect, and it's hard to call a planet your home when you're always a year or two away from seeing it again. The starship becomes home.

Azariah, the commander of my ship was an ill-tempered, raggedy, sour person prone to dark, drunken moods. Azariah always wore the same blue jumpsuit with stains all over its front, worn-out boots, long hair too stringy to pull back in a ponytail. In the photograph, printed on a thin metal plate, I can tell my commander knows my plans to leave. That weathered face with its penetrating gray eyes was staring through me, angry for the work that would be lost—that I’d cost him.

We traveled to colonist moons where we traded vegetable oils and grains from Ornth that could be converted into biofuels and plastics. We carried livestock, weather satellites, antibiotics, and anything else that might have value.

In between moons, we often stopped at a space station orbiting the planet Sath, seventh from our local star.

I knew and trusted a garment maker who owned a boutique on the Sath station. The garment maker, Kel, sold simple fashions and provided tailoring and repairs. I’ve always spent my every available credit on new fashions, and I take care of my things. We were good friends.

Kel let me hide in the storeroom until my starship had left. Kel told me later that Azariah had been in a rage, tearing up and down the marketplace searching for me.

“I can’t imagine what it was like to work on that ship,” Kel said.

“Yes, you can.”

During my years with the trader, I saved up enough money to return to Ornth and yet I never could find the time to book the trip. My parents were long gone by then, but I could have started over—joined another generation ship, figured it out along the way. Instead, I remained on the station, mending garments, running the cleaning machines, doing whatever task was available.

Working with the textiles I had shipped in from the colonies, I created my own designs. Nothing extravagant. I made functional clothing—rain-resistant coats, slender-cut trousers, cotton sweaters, inner layers that could keep you warm when you caught a chill or wick away the sweat when you felt stuffy. Each item was created with meaning. I wanted the wearer to feel that they were dressed in their favorite thing. I designed the patterns for each piece of fabric, made each detail intentional.

To those in the know, my styles were in high demand. And though I never turned much of a profit, I kept the business running after Kel passed away.

Kel never allowed me to take a picture, saying: “Keep me in your memory.”

I can still see Kel, stooped over a clattering sewing machine, programming the printer to create a new pattern, or standing in front of the store watching the travelers pass through the space station’s bazaar. Kel put back a bottle of Galilean whiskey a day, and could hold it like no one I’d ever met. Kel was sallow and puffy toward the end, nearly bald with only wisps of silver hair, hands turned into claws by arthritis The booze is probably what did it. But, then again, all of us that choose to live in space live shorter lives.

Kel taught me to be kind. That’s how I met the child living in the unused corridors of the space station. The child coexisted with the other runaways and those left-behinds. Because I bought or traded clothing and apparel from the traders that made their way through the station, I always had more than I needed. So I donated second-hand bundles of clothing to the station’s homeless whenever I could.

Kel kept an eye on the lost and left-behind—making sure they had clothes, credits, food. I was just going through the motions, giving away clothes that didn’t sell to make space in the shop. I felt an obligation, and little more.

The child wore shoes that had no soles, torn pants that stopped mid-calf, a ragged T-shirt, and a cloak made from an old blanket. The child’s name was Landry. While on a vessel heading to the outer rim colonies, Landry’s parents had died from malnutrition. The ship’s captain abandoned Landry on the station.

I offered the child clothes, taking care in my choices so Landry would have clothes that fit and spare things for the days ahead. Good clothes. Useful things.

Landry insisted on paying me back, offering to work in the shop. Instead of doing what Kel had done for me, I asked for a photograph. I don’t know why. Kel would never have asked for anything in return. In the faded photograph printed on cheap paper, I can see a small dirty face staring back at me with resentment, a bundle of clothes clutched against the child’s chest. As soon as I had the photo, Landry was gone, hurrying away to the darkest part of the corridor. I saw Landry a few time after that, and the child never seemed well—undernourished, filthy, a ghost. I imagine Landry died alone in some darkened corner of the station.

How privileged of me. How selfish. If not for the garment maker’s pity, I would have been trapped on Azariah’s ship forever.

It took me a long time before I understood that a few spare clothes wouldn’t have saved Landry, nor would a job. I’ve never been lost, never been without work or the ability to get work. And it is always that way for many of us. A job would have done the child good, helped Landry find a way. But a job is just a job. Landry needed someone’s attention. Their care and affection. Their time.

And then, one day, Azariah returned. Having fallen on hard times, the captain wanted to square up on old debts. There I was, running my little shop with its modest profits. No threat to anyone, except Azariah claimed I’d cost the ship money, work, and time—and this required compensation.

Azariah had arrived with an order from a local magistrate. The magistrate ruled that I was in the wrong. As such, I was required by law to turn over all of my assets—including the shop—for the outstanding time owed on my contract.

The quiet times ended. I fought the order and appealed to the higher courts. I offered to pay out Azariah for my contract, set up a stipend until the debt was paid. I tried everything I could to keep the shop. Meanwhile, the magistrate hit me with violation after violation, until I could no longer afford to stay in business.

I shuttered the store. Liquidated my assets. Paid off Azariah in full. I walked away broke.

Too old to start over with a new business, I signed on with the only starship that would take me—a mining hauler, exploring the asteroid belt for new claims.

And yet. I could have returned to Ornth. I could have found a way forward.

The mining ship was a hard-used bucket of bolts that the crew spent more time patching up than flying. Entire sections of the ship operated without gravity, including the engineering rooms where I ran our configurators and repaired the mining equipment. We harvested platinum, cobalt, and water from local asteroids.

I committed to the work and kept at it, losing track of the time. Those were the years when I stopped taking photographs. Try as I might, I can’t remember anyone’s name from this time. All I can see is Landry. There’s a good chance I helped send more than a few Landrys into the asteroid mines.

During a stopover on Helios Creed, I decided I’d had enough. Helios Creed is a small space station—an inn for miners and traders—built into an asteroid at the edge of the belt. I’d learned not to sign work contracts, and yet, my boss was surprised when I quit, like the company had been doing me a favor asking me to destroy my body for them.

“You’ll never work for a mining company again,” said my boss.

“That’s fine,” I said. I was all used up anyway.

Free from all commitments, I plunked down on Helios Creed for a few weeks, while waiting on the next passenger ship to Galilea to come along. I had saved up enough credits that I hoped to buy a little place on Galilea, a terraformed moon surrounded by an atmospheric dome, and live out the rest of my life.

Because I ate at the same tavern, sat on the same barstool every meal, I became friends with the bartender at the local pub. The bartender was also from Ornth. Brown eyes like my red-haired love, a hint melancholic from the years spent tending bar in a nowhere place, same grayish skin as me from years in space. My last night we got to talking about our regrets, which is what seems to happen when you’re in a strange bar in a strange place. I laid it all out, from leaving Ornth, to Azariah’s ship, to my little shop, to the mining company, all of it but the most important part of my story—the reason why.

And the bartender, patting a head shaved clean said, “I have my regrets, too. I should have stayed on that generation ship. They don’t like you to leave. But the ships make stops, picking up more passengers on the way out of the system. Without knowing I was leaving the ship, I left. Stayed behind when we stopped at a space station circling Sath. Told no one—not even my family. Once you leave, you can’t go back. Life goes in all its different directions, but the ships keep moving along the same orbital path—with or without you.”

“Why’d you do it?” I said.

“I had someone once,” the bartender said. “I thought I could find them again. When we were young, we dreamed of the new worlds our babies and their babies would explore. But, it’s a big galaxy and life moves fast. I’ve been here since I stopped looking.”

And in that moment, all the years living in transit became clear to me. “May I have your picture?” I said.

“No one has asked me for a picture in years. Why would you want a picture?” The bartender leaned back, arms crossed. Closed off to me. Wary. Uncertain.

Placing the photograph of Rowan, my love, down on the scratched and pitted surface of the bar, I saw us as we were and how we’d been in all the years between, and I said, “Because I remember your red hair.”