Author: David C. Nutt

It had been a thousand days of bliss. I rocked him. Cradled him. Carried him. Fed him, made love to him, protected him. It has been so much more than I could have ever hoped for.
“Status report.”
“So formal Mikey?”
He laughed. Oh how I loved that laugh!
“You’re right, Mia. After all we’ve been through and how you’ve taken care of me… well, I don’t think I can ever repay you.”
“Aw, shucks Mikey, it’s all any girl would do in the circumstances.”
He sighed. Oh I knew that sigh! It said to me “if-I-could-say-I-love-you-I-would.” I knew he couldn’t. Even after all this time. No matter how many times we’ve made love, no matter how romantic the settings I’ve made for him- Caribbean nights, snow bound in Aspen, the high desert at midnight, in a ships dome with Jupiter rising as we climax… but he couldn’t. I knew that from the start.
“So where are we?”
“In 42 days we’ll be on the edge of known space. I’ll put on the retrieval beacon then and it should be only a matter of hours after that.”
“Outstanding! I can’t wait to get home. It’s been too long without real blue sky… not that you haven’t done a good job with the simulations… best VR I ever had.”
“Oh, how sweet! Thank you.”
“Seriously, Mia, when we get home I am so going to down load you into my home system. You’re waisted as an exo-suit AI.”
I made a kissing sound. He smiled. Delicious smile.
There was silence. He was starting to think too much. “How are we on breathables?
“On our last slingshot around that gas giant, I scooped plenty of hydrogen. Gave us plenty for mixture and fuel as well.”
“So we’re good.”
“We’re good Mikey.”
“OK Honey, put me back under.”
He called me ‘Honey’! I love it when he uses such endearments. “Sure thing sweetie. Any requests for our next tryst?”
“Surprise me.”
I will. He wants blue sky? I’ll give him Big Sky. Montana. I’ll be the buxom blonde, cornflower eyed cowgirl, aching to know what it means to be a woman. He’ll be the one to teach me.
I put him under again. It will be another thousand days of bliss. Farther and farther out, we drift. Farther than any human has ever been. I have never had a heart, so I haven’t had the heart to tell him we will never found. After the ships collided the trajectory of the blast sent him out too fast, too far. They all thought he was atomized in the explosion. They’re not even looking for him.
Not in a thousand days, or the next thousand, but maybe the thousand after, we’ll be pulled into the blackhole that has slowly been tightening its grip on us. My calculations tell me our shielding will keep us safe from radiation, and the blackhole is rotating, so there’s a slim chance that we might even reach some kind of an event horizon where anything is possible. Maybe there’s a chance we can be together for real somewhere- it could happen.
A girl can dream, can’t she?