Speculative Chaos

Relativistically Sixty-Four

Round 3 – Part 1 prompt from the Fabulous Spec-Fic Smackdown 2024: Write a speculative fiction story about a character turning sixty-four based on a chosen line from the (Beatles) song 'When I'm Sixty-Four.'

Line used: 'Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm sixty-four.'

Word count = 2036

They said absence made the heart grow fonder. I was inclined to agree, but this absence had been so very long.

Would Mary even remember me after so many years? With that depressing thought, my heart sank again into the abyss.

But duty called, so I pushed those thoughts away. Under my supervision as flight engineer, the ship AI guided us to the space station dock. The image of planet Earth filled one view panel in glorious shades of whites, greens, browns, and blues. So beautiful.

As the docking clamps locked and the maneuvering thrusters wound down, a smiling face on another view panel said, "Welcome home, Ark Valiant."

"Good to be home, Station Gaia," replied Captain Diaz, sitting upright in her chair behind me. Buckled seat restraints kept us from floating away in our present weightless state. Like everyone on the bridge, she wore a crisp blue uniform that prominently displayed the Ark Project logo above one pocket. "So far had we journeyed."

Unimaginably far — almost twenty-three light years, that's two-hundred-and-sixteen-trillion kilometers, round-trip to a planet circling a red dwarf star named Teegarden. Each journey leg took almost eight years, plus we stayed for a year, for a total of seventeen years — by ship clocks, that was. Because of relativistic time dilation, about thirty-one years passed on Earth.

The Ark Valiant delivered terraforming specialists, equipment, and bio-material to the second planet. After maintenance and refurbishing, the Ark will again return with the first group of colonists. But I won't be on it, since at the age of sixty-four, my deep space days were over.

Quite amazingly, the Ark achieved the highest space ship velocity ever — almost ninety-seven percent of light speed at flight midpoint. Four massively powerful fusion thrusters — the biggest ever built by far — accelerated the Ark at half normal Earth gravity, or zero-point-five-g, for the first half of each journey leg, then turned around and decelerated for the second half. The continuous thrust also provided artificial gravity and made the voyage possible within a lifetime, in sharp contrast to earlier generation ships sent to other star systems.

The captain pressed a chair arm button, opening a ship-wide intercom. "Secure for dock keeping," she ordered.

No crewman would depart for several hours as each performed specific tasks, preparing the Ark for extended docking. But for me, each minute seemed an anxious eternity.

My buddy Amil, a control systems engineer who sat to my left, tapped me on the shoulder. "Head up, Lucas. I bet she's out there now, as eager to see you as you are to see her."

"I hope so," I replied with a sigh. "But it seems too much to expect after so long." Yet again, a squadron of butterflies took flight in my gut. Was hope the cruelest of virtues?

For seventeen years, I couldn't get Mary out of my mind — that quirky smile that could light up deep space; the mirthful wit that never failed to make me smile; soft, firm skin stretched over a willowy frame that practically begged to be caressed; and most of all, a deep beauty that shined from a good heart. I hardly believed my luck when Mary asked me out on a first date. Me, an old spacer, fourteen years older than her. And while I was reasonably attractive, nobody would have called me a chick magnet. She was a systems analyst for the Ark Project where we met during mission training, and we hit it off from the start.