The psychologist watched him, listened, nudged him occasionally with a careful question. She . . . let him cry, and the music teacher edged away from the doorway. The mother with the baby moved closer, a full step into the room. She leaned against the wall, where she swayed back and forth, first in gentle counterpoint to the sobs that shook Seb. Then, when the swish of her shirt against the wall was the only sound in the room, Dr. Freeman cleared her throat.
“Sebastian . . . I’m not going to make you do anything you’re not comfortable with. But how do you feel about coming in to spend a few weeks doing an inpatient program? We can—work on some of these things you’ve mentioned.” We can keep a closer eye on you, she meant. She hastened to add, “There’s no pension contingency involved, no strings attached. But do you think it would help you to make a clean break?”
Seb swallowed hard. “I don’t want a clean break.” He didn’t want a break of any sort. “I’ll do better. I can—” The word “unplug” receded from him, slid from his tongue and down the back off his throat to choke him. “I can—”
The doctor’s stylus scratched against her table. “You can, and will, reduce the number of neurodes you’re plugged into. No more than four in use at any given time. You will be fully unplugged for ten hours a day. Ten uninterrupted hours, during which you will sleep. And we’ll be meeting every day again. For the foreseeable future.”
“I can check in on him.” The woman still rocked side to side, lulling the baby into happy gurgles. “I don’t have to come in or anything, Mr.—Sebastian? Sebastian. Just come by and make sure you’re doing all right for yourself.”
“Me too.” The man had reappeared just outside the doorway. “And I’m sure others will too. Now that we know.”
“I don’t need—” The word struggled off Seb’s sluggish tongue. “I don’t need help.” He was the one who helped, the one who oversaw, the one who checked in on. The doctor shifted in her seat, but didn’t say anything.
The woman stopped her pacing, and the baby on her belly squawked its dismay. “Don’t be ridiculous. You must have had technicians, or—or maintenance staff, or something, back when you were”—she waved a hand at the ceiling—“up there. Everyone needs something; I don’t care if they’re a man or a freighter. Or a coffeepot.”
“Sebastian?” said the doctor. Her face had moved closer to the camera, and it loomed large and pale in the screen. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Seb’s throat jerked, spasmed. The emptiness around him felt like severed limbs, like the endless night between the worlds. “I wish,” he said. The mother stroked her child’s wispy hair; the music teacher sucked on his front teeth. “I wish you’d call me Seb.”
Seb’s mind flew.
He spread his probability cloud of consciousness out over the building around him: today an awareness of gritty kitchen floors and fingerprint-streaked windows, tomorrow an empty fridge or raised voice bouncing off low ceilings or a baby’s wet cries. So much to do before he unplugged at 1700, when Charlotte came—she had served five years on a ship like the one Seb had been, till a loading-bay injury had grounded her. Sometimes they exchanged a brief conversation face-to-face, when she came up to check on him; sometimes they beamed words silently back and forth across the building. Memories of space, of darkness and collision alarms and long, long waits. A few others had begun to ping him with messages other than queries for help too. An image of a child’s drawing. A news headline link, marked up with comments: “Thought you might like to see this.” Greetings, wishes for well-being. Thank-you notes.
Time to peruse all that later. The apartment building was coming out of its afternoon quiescence as children arrived home from school, as people came in from work. Seb let himself spread out, through brick and carpet and drywall and plastic. Into the places that would have him, around the people that wanted him there. He had a family of sparrows to shoo out of a bathroom vent, a meal to make for the norovirus-riddled Kwoks on the third floor, a less-than-amicable breakup and move-out to oversee.
He stretched into the ache. The pain would come calling later, when the neurodes were unplugged and ten hours stretched out in front of him. The pain would come, maybe it always would, but he could abide it. So long as there was important work reaching out to him from the other side.
Seb had no starship wings to unfurl, not anymore and never again. But his roots grew deep, deep into the ground.
Aimee Ogden
Aimee Ogden lives in Wisconsin with her husband, three-year-old twins, and very old dog. A former software tester and science teacher, she now writes stories about sad astronauts and angry princesses.
Website: aimeeogdenwrites.wordpress.com
Twitter: @Aimee_Ogden
Emaiclass="underline" fakegeekmom@gmail.com
THE SPACE BETWEEN
by Larry Hinkle
2,000 Words
“WHAT KIND OF car is this?” Erik asked as he buckled his seat belt. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“It’s an import,” Vaughn, his driver, answered. “Not many of ’em over here yet.” He waited for a gap in traffic, then pulled out from the curb.
“So, you a big Corey Hart fan?” Erik asked as they merged onto the freeway a few minutes later.
“Who?”
“You know, because you’re wearing your sunglasses at night?”
Vaughn looked at him. He didn’t take his sunglasses off, though. “I don’t get it.”
“Never mind.”
The trip since had been pretty quiet. Erik had spent most of it with his head against the passenger window, looking up at the stars. It was a clear, moonless night, and the farther they got from the city, the more stars appeared. Erik was still able to pick out most of the constellations he’d learned in Cub Scouts. He’d wanted to be an astronomer growing up—even had his own telescope—but that changed once he got to college and realized the math was way over his head. The stars still brought him comfort; no matter where life took him—and it had taken him to some awful places over the years—he knew they’d always be up there waiting for him. It was sad to think about, but they were one of the few things left in life he could count on.
“Mind if I play the radio?” Vaughn asked.
Erik lifted his head from the passenger window. “Sure, go ahead. Maybe you’ll find an ’80s station playing Corey Hart, and I won’t feel like a total dork.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vaughn said. He fiddled with the knob for a few minutes, but couldn’t find anything he liked. He finally gave up and left it on static, tapping his fingers to a beat Erik couldn’t quite pick up.
That’s an odd choice, he thought, but decided to let it go. They still had at least six more hours together, depending on gas and pee breaks, and it wasn’t worth upsetting his driver. Especially in the middle of the night out here in the middle of nowhere.
“Thanks again for picking me up on such short notice,” Erik said instead. “Uber and Lyft both declined my trip. Said it was too long for their drivers. I was about to try the bus station when, out of nowhere, your app just popped up on my screen. I don’t even remember downloading it, to be honest, but I don’t know what I’d have done without it. My girlfriend just dumped me, my cat ran away, even my cactus died. Sometimes I think this world has it out for me.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry to unload like that. I just really needed to get the heck out of Dodge, and your app was a real lifesaver.”