Acceptable Distances

Mike leaned back and let the warmth of the whiskey keep the chill of the night away. He loved the desert. Especially when it allowed an uninterrupted view of the stars. Back home in western Maryland, the sky always seemed too crowded. Trees clawed at the horizon, and mountains swallowed the sunsets too early. Light from the towns and the thousands of porches crammed together, polluting the visibility. Here, miles outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the world flattened, allowing the sky to stretch forever.

He came out here most nights after work. Armed with a folding chair, a Nalgene full of whiskey, and a blanket, Mike sat and looked at the stars. The night sky had always been fascinating to him. Especially Orion. His mother taught him the constellation when he was six years old, and he never forgot where it was. The memory kept him warmer than the whiskey ever could.

As the winter froze their breath into clouds, they looked up and his mother spoke, “See it? The belt right there?”

Mike remembered nodding with the excitement that only a six-year-old can have when one of their parents is including them in something important.

“Good! No matter where you go, always know that we will both be able to see Orion and you’ll always be able to find your way home.” She spoke, still looking straight up at Orion.

Mike pulled his coat tight and followed her gaze upward to the stars.

Above him now, the stars looked close enough to reach out and touch. He laughed at that thought. The light from these celestial objects took years to cross the distance between them. Some of these stars were dead before he was even born. Mike shivered for a moment at the thought of the traveling light taking that time to realize the star that made it had died a long time ago.

His phone buzzing in his pocket rocketed his attention back to where he was in his chair. The screen read, “Mom.” The phone vibrated until it went black, and he just watched it. He took another sip of his whiskey as he silently promised himself he would call her back tomorrow. Tomorrow. Mike thought for a few moments about how dangerous this word can be when it comes to staying in contact with the people that you care about. Pushing off the call to any infinite of the tomorrows he could choose from instead of answering the phone right now made him feel sad for the light constantly moving away from their dying stars, never turning back to see if everything is ok.

A cold wind rolled across the barren desert as coyotes barked in the dark. Something shifted in the sky in the corner of Mike’s vision. At first, he thought it was a meteor violently skipping off the atmosphere. A white streak in the vast blackness burned silently until it angled sharply downward and disappeared behind a nearby ridge. The light vanished as the earth trembled softly under his boots. Mike stood so quickly that he spilled some of his whiskey on his jeans. His first thought was of a plane crash, but there was no significant impact. No explosion and plume of black smoke. It was close enough that there should have been a deafening blast from the plane hitting the sand. Replaying it back in his mind, he swore it changed direction and even slowed somewhat as it got closer to the ground. Like it was… landing? He laughed off the absurdity of it as he hopped into his truck and sped towards the crash site.

#

Mike was shocked when his headlights hit an intact object in a dry basin between two small red stone hills. He parked, got out of the truck with a flashlight, and began to carefully approach the craft. It didn’t look like a plane to him. It also didn’t look like a spaceship. But, it did definitely look damaged. The object was the size of a large RV. Dark metal curved outward, looking like cooled volcanic glass or the surface of incredibly calm water at night. There was a large split in one side that exposed a dim blue interior of cables, jagged edges, and pulsing light like a dying heartbeat of some giant metal bird. Steam started to blast out of the craft from multiple places, and Mike stopped approaching it. Every instinct told him to run, but he waited and watched.

A human-like figure walked around from the other side of the ship. It was too tall and too thin, wrapped in a gray suit with threading that looked like faint lines of indigo and purple light. It moved slowly and awkwardly. Mike noticed one of its arms hung limply at its side, and he realized that it was injured. It didn’t notice Mike yet.

The gray helmet covering the figure's head retracted with a soft mechanical hiss. Mike expected claws and chomping mandibles and monstrous teeth. Instead, he saw the unique and unmistakable look of exhaustion. Its enormous dark eyes reflected the stars overhead and were set into tightly pulled pale silver skin. Its features were oddly human except for their skewed ratios and weird stillness. It looked like every expression it made had to be remembered and queued before it was used.

While Mike was lost in observing the being, it turned and looked right at him. After a moment, in a clear, careful voice that reminded Mike of a singer using autotune, the figure said, “Hello.”

Mike almost dropped the flashlight. The alien glanced upward for a moment, looked back at Mike, and then continued. “My ship needs to repair itself. May I sit and speak with you?”

#

An hour later, Mike and the being were sitting next to each other on the open tailgate of the truck beneath an endless blanket of stars. The ship occasionally made small hissing and metal-bending noises, but it was quiet enough that it blended into the other natural noises of the desert. Mike had completely stopped trying to process the reality of what was happening about a half an hour ago. The alien had long silver fingers wrapped around a red solo cup, a quarter filled with whiskey. It held the cup carefully and studied the liquid inside.

“You consume this for… stimulation?” It asked.

“Some do. I do it mostly for survival.”

The alien considered this for a moment and then took a sip. Its expression was unchanged, but it seemed to allow time for the warmth to spread and the taste to be fully realized before it spoke again. “That translates accurately.”

Mike laughed nervously as he noticed the first hint of expression on the alien's face. It looked pleased with itself as it took another small sip.

“My name is difficult in human dialects. The closest word I can find in my translator archive is Vale.” Vale glanced up again as he said this.

“Hi, Vale. My name is Mike.” The ridiculous normalness of this conversation so far was maddening to him. Mike would have said the same thing if he met someone at a dinner party for the first time or if someone from customer service was helping him return clothes that were the wrong size. Mike turned from his Nalgene, looked at Vale, and then followed his gaze upward. The Milky Way stretched across the desert sky like spilled mercury out of a broken thermometer. Mike finally worked up the nerve to ask the question that had been gnawing at him.

“So… why Earth?”

“It was nearby,” Vale answered in a way that made Mike think he was expecting the question.

Mike laughed, “That’s it?”

“My vessel is failing. It needed shut-down time to repair itself.”

“Your crash here was totally by accident?” Mike had always been terrible at math, but he knew the odds of this had to be impossible.

“Not entirely. I observe many worlds during my travels. I have seen you here often.” Mike all of a sudden felt very small as Vale continued, “Most individuals I have seen do not sit in darkness looking at the stars for extended periods.”

“That’s a fair assessment. Other humans have always found me weird for enjoying this.”

Vale finally turned from the sky and looked at Mike. “You looked very lonely.”

The honesty and accuracy in that statement hit Mike hard. He was all of a sudden aware of the vastness of the desert around them. Mike stared down into his whiskey. “I guess… I guess I am.”

Vale nodded and seemed to do so to confirm something to himself. “As am I, Mike.”

Light cool winds blew across the sand as they sat in silence. Finally, Mike asked, “How far away are you from home?”

Enough time had passed that Mike thought the translator had failed. Mike opened his mouth to ask again, but the Vale spoke, “Very. I am very far from home.”

“You can travel between stars, right? You have this ship and the technology. Isn’t nowhere very far for you?”

Another strange expression crossed Vale’s face. “We once believed that. My people looked at distance as a problem to be solved, and we conquered it completely. We now have pathways between stars, we eliminated travel times, and we spread from world to world faster than thought.”

“That sounds incredible.” Mike couldn’t imagine being able to travel from place to place so easily.

“It was… at first.” Vale lifted one long arm up and pointed at the sky, “When movement became effortless, staying became difficult. My ancestors lived in family groups,” Vale wrapped his hand back around his cup, “Communities, shared homes and rituals, shared meals. Then the great expansion took place.” The translator around his neck flickered with small pulsing lights, as if Vale were speaking faster than it could process.”There were opportunities everywhere. Better worlds with better climates. Better occupations and better versions of life.”

That sounded painfully familiar to Mike. “So your people left,” he said sadly.

“Yes. When it started happening, everyone went in different directions and promised to visit often.” Vale’s head hung lower than it had been as he said this.

“I told my brother and mom the same thing,” Mike admitted, staring at nothing in particular out in the desert. I moved out here six years ago for a better job and a better future. At least, that’s what I told myself and everybody else.”

“Were you correct?” Vale was not looking at Mike intently.

The question lingered as Mike considered it. He thought about his expensive apartment overlooking the city, paid for by his seventy-hour work weeks. His nightly microwave dinners he ate alone at midnight. He thought about the family holiday gatherings that went on as planned without him. Unanswered wedding invitations. He finally thought about missing his father’s surgery. “Vale, I… I don’t know anymore.”

Vale nodded slowly. “That uncertainty also translates accurately.” Vale leaned back and looked up. “I have offspring on three worlds.”

Mike looked over in surprise. “Wow. You have kids? Do you see them often?”

“No.” Vale’s answer seemed to hollow the air around them. “My eldest lives near the Perseus Arm. My youngest conducts ocean studies on the ice of an incredibly distant moon. My other does what I do, only his route is on the other side of the galaxy. Their mother conducts research on a floating stellar archive near a collapsed star. We do communicate regularly via messages, recordings, and shared memory constructs.” Vale's expression barely changed, but his words sounded pulled out of an endless ocean of grief.

“But, never in person? You never see them face to face?” Mike's eyes burned a little as he asked.

“No. We are all too busy.”

The simple words devastated Mike. It wasn’t because of some great war or celestial catastrophe or mass death. It's not the seemingly insurmountable complexities of interstellar travel. It's just life. The sheer inexorable forward momentum of existence pulling everyone away from each other one inch at a time. The miles increase and the modes of connectivity evolve, but our excuses transcend it all and let us justify the light years between us.

Mike swallowed hard before he quietly spoke. “You know, my mom still lives in the same house I grew up in. Every Sunday, she has a big family meal and makes too much food. Everyone tells me she makes so much because she's expecting me to walk through the door at any minute. I keep meaning to visit, but there is always something. Some meaningless project deadline, some trivial meeting. I tell myself I'll go next month when things calm down.”

“And do you?” Vale was looking at Mike and listening very carefully.

Mike looked down into the bottom of his Nalgene. “No.”

Vale looked up again. The wind started picking up as a line of satellites moved soundlessly across the sky. He watched them go past. “We used to believe connectivity would bring us closer.” A flicker of pain crossed his face. “Instead, it made the distance more acceptable. We can speak across the galaxy instantaneously and witness each other's lives at all times. Yet, my civilization has never been so lonely. We expanded faster than our hearts could follow.”

The words settled deep inside of Mike. He found himself studying Vale differently. Before now, the shock of this alien figure before him was jarring and too fantastical to process. Mike now sees him for what he really is. Vale is just another exhausted person that's traveled too far from home. Vale noticed Mike staring at him and he quickly turned to look at his ship. Mike couldn't tell if he had really turned to survey the repairs or just turned his face away so Mike couldn't see his expression.

“When I was a kid,” Mike started, “I used to look at the stars and think space meant freedom. Now I think it just means more distance.”

Vale seemed to consider this carefully. “Yes. That is one meaning.” The alien reached into a small compartment on the sleeve of his suit and removed a pale device no bigger than a dime. When he held it out, an image flickered to life above it and floated there. There was Vale and three other beings that looked like him, but smaller. The smallest one was holding Vale's hand as they all stood on a beach looking out at a vast ocean.

“My family.” Vale said.

The image felt weirdly ordinary to Mike. A family on vacation at a beautiful beach. There's smiles and wind in their hair. This was normal. This was human.

Vale continued. “I have viewed this image over 13,000 times.”

Mike smiled sadly. “I have voicemails from my dad that I listen to sometimes.”

“Why?” Vale leaned forward a little to see Mike's face.

“Because his voice sounds younger and healthy. He sounds like when I was a kid.”

Mike noticed that Vale's eyes shifted and he had a distinct look of recognition about him. Not necessarily an understanding, but the deep recognition that passes between two lonely people once they realize they share the same wounds.

Above them, Orion stood watch over the desert. Mike knew it was the same constellation his mom could see in Maryland and he wondered if Vale’s children could recognize the same groups of stars. “Do your people still look at the sky the way I do?” Mike asked.

“No. There is very little mystery left in it for us.”

“Doesn’t that make you sad?”

“Yes.” Vale’s response was almost a whisper. “We learned to cross the universe before we learned how to stay together.”

Vale’s words made Mike suddenly overwhelmingly homesick. Not just for the house in Maryland, but for those family meals, late night drives with friends he grew up with through towns that barely changed, he missed sitting next to someone without feeling the need to check the time every few minutes. He missed a version of himself that used to have a completely different definition of success. Mike was struck with the realization that he stared off into space so much because he wanted the universe to tell him that sacrificing all of the things he loved most in his life meant something.

The horizon paled softly as dawn approached. Vale stood quickly off of the tailgate and turned to face Mike. “My vessel has completed repairs. It is time for me to go.”

“Oh.” Mike felt a great tightening in his chest. “Hey. If you could do it all over again, would you still choose to leave your world and expand out into the stars?”

Vale looked toward the morning light. “Yes. But, I think I would have waited until we figured out how to take our homes with us.”

The ship hummed softly to life as dust swirled underneath it. Vale extended a hand towards Mike and he reached out and shook it without hesitation. Vale’s skin was warm compared to the chill still in the air.

“I am glad you were lonely tonight.” Vale said stoically.

Mike laughed despite the sting in his eyes. “Yea, me too.”

Vale released Mike’s hand and his long frame turned and walked towards his ship. When he reached the entrance of the craft, he turned towards Mike. “Mike… communicate with them today.”

Before Mike could respond, the hatch sealed shut. More quietly and with more speed than Mike could believe, the ship lifted off the ground and then disappeared into the clouds that had started to form. He stood there and watched a fading Orion linger overhead. The same sky for everyone no matter where we go. Mike didn’t remember pulling his phone out of his pocket, but he looked at the missed call from his mom. He pressed the screen to call her back. Mike looked up and smiled as he waited for home to answer.