I looked across the Manhattan skyline and watched streams of aircars travel at the various levels of the city. “It is good to be back on Earth, Doc,” I said, “but I still miss that girl I met back on Triton.”
“Lie down on the couch and tell me about her,” said Dr. Emily Gleeson, the shrink that the Navy forced on me.
“Why should I?” I asked. “No one takes me seriously when I talk about her.” I stared at the ceiling and paused. “No one takes me serious at all. Why should I bother if you are not going to take me seriously?”
“Just humor me,” she said. She flicked her Tablet with a finger, obviously going through her notes. “Tell me about Alison Randall.”
Why not? I thought. I would just tell her everything about the girl I left behind on. Maybe she would believe me. “Well it started back when the Orion stopped by for my regularly scheduled relief…”
The alarm blared in my quarters. The relief ship was arriving. I had been stationed on Triton for two years and my relief would finally take over so I could return to Earth and go to the next place the Navy wanted to send me. I had requested Mars, the second most populated planet in the solar system.
Triton Station had a crew of one: just me. Before the advent of Faster Than Light travel, Triton acted as a way station at the edge of the solar system. The newer FTL ships would blink into and out of existence at the orbit of Saturn, thus they never needed to come way out here. Only the slow boats came to Triton, and as soon as they arrived in the solar system, they upgraded their engines to FTL and never returned to Triton. The only slower than light ships around were those that left before FTL’s invention. Still there were quite a few out there and Earth command wanted someone out here to greet them.
Since I was stationed out here, the only ship I had seen was the one that brought me out here to the butt end of the solar system. The Orion was the second ship I saw, but it had come from Earth to relieve me.
“USS Orion,” I spoke into the Mike, “this is Triton Station. I look forward to your arrival.” I then waited the two minutes for my message to travel the eighteen million kilometers back and forth to the ship.
After the wait the speakers sounded, “Sorry about this, Triton Station, but the ship is in plague status. No personnel may be transferred from our ship to the planet. We are at quarantine. A container of supplies will be dropped to you.”
My heart sunk. I was stuck here and I would be alone for who knows how long until the Navy saw fit to send another ship out here. “How much longer am I stuck here?” I asked.
“We sent a message to Earth and they sent another ship immediately. Your estimated time of arrival is six months.”
I clicked off the radio and swore. There would be another six months of not feeling the breeze on my cheeks. There would be no pizza from Manhattan Pie Company and worst of all, no people to talk to. The loneliness that I had put behind me for the past two years suddenly came to the forefront of my mind.
“So Alison Randall never arrived on the Orion,” asked my shrink.
“Of course not,” I said. “She arrived on the bulk carrier, the SS Fortune.”
“Go on with your story then,” she said.
In the weeks that followed, I became more and more despondent. I was still imprisoned on Neptune’s largest moon for five more months and I was bored. I had watched every holovid, read every text drama on my Tablet, and even went so far as to write my own stories.
