Quoted By:
>23 on salvage roll.
>ACCEPT
“Have you ever lost anything?” the captain asks, “Have you ever lost anything you couldn’t remake or regrow?”
“…No.”
“I expected as much. You and your crew are a closed system designed to avoid such failings.”
He shakes his head and smiles.
“But remember that the same does not apply to us. Baseline humans are…fragile.”
He activates a display window.
A much younger image of the captain appears on the viewscreen, flanked by a group of unfamiliar humans bearing familiar features. The background is star-shot streaked with auburn – an image taken at the leading edge of dawn.
“My first assignment was twenty light years away, traveling a half a percentile below light speed. Dilation factor of ten, give or take. We were thawed practically as soon as we were frozen.”
His eyes widen. A monitoring subroutine warns you that his heart rate is increasing.
“Time dilation. You…think you understand it, until it happens. But then twenty years outpace you in an instant, and you realize you had understood nothing at all.”
“You lose all of it. Not your time, but theirs – all in that single waking instant when your eyes track to that tiny screen and see your parents wither and your siblings age, and your two children grow and learn and then forget…”
He pauses.
“And then you travel home, and you lose it all again. Insult to injury. You may set foot on solid earth and see those same mountains - the same sky - and perhaps you can delude yourself into believing everything is still there.”
“But those years – and the people they held – are already long gone.”
The display deactivates as he walks to the forward viewscreen to watch the processional rotation of the planet below. A solar terminator line sweeps across the face of the world – streaking warm auburn into a star-shot dawn. Warm condensation forms on cold glass.
“So, I must decline, my friend, as grateful as I am for your suggestion. Humans are fragile creatures, and by staying here, I can preserve an illusion that I have enjoyed for many years.”
“Perhaps I will understand one day,” you venture.
“I know that you will.”
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