Ablation ✔️

5 - In the Dust

Talia sat before the terminal, her fingers hovering before the 'enter' key. One click and twenty-four years of messages would begin to unspool. She glanced at the black & white photo of her family before Launch Pad 73C, their fake smiles beaming out in false reassurances. Though she looked barely a day older than when that photo had been snapped, her husband and son would now bare little resemblance to their images, the smiling faces of the photo no more than ghosts of their past.

She stopped and waved her hand before the screen. The play window slid away and Talia tapped open another app. Her image popped up, consuming the full screen, and a record button blinked transparent in the middle of the monitor. She air-tapped the button and a red light lit up the corner as she began her message.

"Well, we're here boys. We've landed and... it's... let's say Anima is not everything that we expected. I assume newscasts went out years ago, but we landed in the dark maybe ten kilometers from the twilight zone. Who knew Anima was tidally-locked, right? Our projections predict another six years of dark before Alpha Centauri B casts its light on our side of Anima, and that the light of a dim evening at best."

Talia froze up.

"Recording stop." The red light blinked out of existence. She gestured with her hand and a delete window popped up. Yes or No? She tapped yes.

Her family deserved better than a rote 'we landed and 'they' fucked up message.' She had so much more to say than the flight went smooth, but the accommodations are subpar. She needed to tell them something of significance – something that mattered – anything that would make the lost years tolerable. Nothing came to mind.

Instead she swiped over to the backlog of messages, and tapped the first one.

***

"Hi, Talia." Milton smiled into camera, the green of a park stretching out behind him and trees swaying in the distance. Milton reached off camera then hoisted Bernard into view. He beamed at her, no older than the day Talia had left, and dripping wet.

"Say hi to mommy, buddy."

"Hi" he squeaked, then began to squirm until at last he pulled free from his dad's grasp and ran offscreen.

"As you can tell, he's enjoying the fountain. We went to Riverside, after all. The weather's good and he's having fun. We miss you already." Milton cast his eyes away in his usual I'm not saying everything diversion, then looked back to camera. "Thanks for the message this morning. It was a... lovely way to start the day."

His eyes began to water. "We love you, Talia. And we're so proud of you. I just can't tell you how much –"

"– Daddy!" Bernard shouted from off camera.

Milton rubbed at his eyes. "What buddy?" he screamed back.

"Water! Water!"

"Sorry, honey. Gotta go. We'll talk soon!"

***

The verdant greens cut to black, with bold white text at the center of the screen declaring: '237 Messages Remaining.'

Why so few, Talia thought. Even at an even distribution that would be no more than ten messages a year. Of course, why should she have expected more? She left them behind to carry on without her. How painful were those messages to record? Were they all as hard for Milton as the first? What would it be for Bernard sending messages to a mother he couldn't remember? In the end, Talia decided she had been lucky to receive as many messages as she had.