Chapter Eleven: Space Is Very Cold

The dense void of space sparkled back as Hydrogen looked out the window of their tiny floating capsule. The view was nice during maybe the first month or so, but after thirteen years Hydrogen started to wonder why they even put windows on the capsule to begin with. Surely it would've saved some time on safety checks to just add a black sheet of plastic with fake little stars pasted on instead. The stars haddn't changed all the time that Hydrogen had been out here and, barring a distant supernova, they never would.

Aspartame looked at his watch then at the other one. He had plenty of time he was sure. In a few minutes the hypertrain zoomed up to meet him, ready to get to know him, ready to serve him, ready to be a train for him. The doors popped open with the pop of every door all across the world, the standardized door pop noise. It was alway refreshing to hear a fully ISO complient door go about its business.

There were other things to do in the capsule of course. Mission control had loaded the thing up with enough music and audio books to last Hydrogen twenty lifetimes, and every once in a while they'd send them new ones just to be double-sure they'd never have an excuse to be bored. But of course, someone can still get very bored with a million audio books, and that's the dilemma Hydrogen found themselves in.

Aspartame boarded the empty hypertrain (hypertrain travel was tragically out of fashion at this point, but Aspartame was kind of going for a retro aesthetic, mostly just to impress people, but maybe there was a little bit of hypertrain nostalgia also going on that Aspartame wasn't really willing to admit). Getting on the train is a lot of fun when you do it right, a lot less fun when you do it wrong. But Aspartame had his ticket and that was a good first step.

Hydrogen's job was Absolutely Essential of course, or they would have come home a long time ago. Buttons needed to be pushed and those buttons couldn't be pressed on Earth. They had all the college degrees and training to understand exactly why that was, but most days it didn't do a lot to keep them from desperately missing home.

Hypertrains are fast, I'll tell you that. Multiple meters per hour faster than the normal supertrains most people are used to (and with the big supertrain craze going on, I'm sure I don't have to tell you how fast that is). Aspartame was always surprised by the extreme whoosh of such a form of locomotion and that's part of what kept him coming back. What a rush it was.

Memories came trickling back of a tiny town with angelic mountains watching over Hydrogen's childhood home. Another memory of sitting on the porch and talking to friends, wishing those long summer evenings would never end. Remembering lying in bed, because they got sick a lot back then and it took a long time for the doctors to figure out why. And one final memory of the old oak tree in the back, that had always had an old tire tied to it as long as Hydrogen could remember, and swinging back and forth, staring at the night sky, dreaming of a chance to be up there one day.

Ring ring, went Aspartame's WorldRobotics-Brand Rotating Dial 7G Microtelephone. The little segmented display spelled out Stacily's name in perfect detail, diacritics and everything. This was an emergency, Aspartame knew. She would never try to call him without first reaching out over their psychic connection. Something terrible must be going on and Aspartame knew it, deep down to his hollow little heart.

Hydrogen thought back to the pride they'd felt when they were first sent out. Finally, an astronaut! And for such an important mission too. All the years of work, first in college then in the hot crucible of astronaut training, were all finally worth it. And so what if they had to leave for a few years, it was their dream right?

"Hey Aspartame," Stacily said over the microtelphone. "Just wanted to check up on you and see how you're doing, it's been a little while since we've met up."

That feeling of pride was slowly replaced with the feeling of being very, very alone. They got text messages every once in a while, three month old messages from family members, mostly saying the same things they did years ago, because honestly what is there to say when you haven't seen someone in a decade? Every once in a while there would be a wedding or a birth, or sometimes a death and those were the loneliest days of all.

Aspartame laughed. "Nothing much, just riding the hypertrain. It's quite a fast little thing."

Before the journey out to nowhere, friends had promised up and down that they'd stay in touch, taking a moment here and there to mention how proud they were, but even then Hydrogen knew it couldn't be true. The threads had slowly gone quiet, one at a time, some taking years, some only months. And who could blame them, with so much going on back at home, so many other things to worry about than a frail little human floating out in vast nothing, so far removed from the reality of weddings and births.

"Well, how about Thursday. I've got a lot new thoughts I want to share with you. Okay bye."

But as lonely and bored as they were, Hydrogen knew they'd been a lot more bored and lonely before. And with only two years left there was a bit of hope lying in the distance. Hope but also worries. Hydrogen didn't even know if they could hold a real conversation anymore, didn't know if they could hold any job other than deep space button pusher, didn't know if there would even be anyone waiting when they got back. Maybe that was okay, maybe after all these years being just alone it would be good to meet some new people. Some new friends to show there was still more to life after being an interstellar shut-in for fifteen years.

"Bye." Aspartame hung up the little microtelephone, making sure to fold back up the little micro-yagi antenna. What a delightful phone call. It was always nice to chat with friends, especially while riding something as glamorous as a hypertrain. Aspartame was very accustomed and satisfied to be so connected with other people even while riding something as glamorous as a hypertrain.

Hydrogen put on another audio book, one of their favorites. Lots of characters, long meaningless conversations, and even mountains and a mention of a tire swing somewhere in chapter five. Hydrogen had never heard of the book before it showed up in their audio system one day after a new transmission. Sometimes they wondered if the book had been written just for them, some empathetic author realized how lonely it must be out here and penned a lovely little book just for them. At any rate, the way they talked about mountains and tire swings made Hydrogen feel a lot less alone.

Buildings zoomed past as the city zoomed past. What a rush? Yep. That's just how it is. The life of speed. Hypertrain.

Maybe when they got back they could find an address for the author and send them a letter. Hydrogen wasn't quite sure what that letter would say yet. But that was okay, they had plenty of time to figure it out.