My mind drew back from the happy memories of our beginnings, the memories I knew he would, could, never share. When next we met he would not remember me, would not remember his children and grandchildren…. He would be the innocent young man, just having made the decision to join the world, so many decades before I was even born.

He had told me he had the dream even before his Rumspringa… Was it possible the universe would bring him back to me and if so what on earth would I do? This time I would be the older and he would be the younger… I could not imagine how that would play out.

I didn’t really have time to think about it right now anyway. While I’d been musing I had automatically dressed and made myself presentable. It didn’t take much really… a few moments with a pick to unflatten my hair(not that it needed it, it would resume its shape without any help given time) and don a short jumpsuit accompanied by toe shoes. They were like gecko gloves for the feet with gripping tread on the soles over the top of the foot and individual toes.

Suitably attired, I grabbed the bag I’d packed the previous night and stepped off the edge of the upper balcony into a waiting car. The car waited for me to secure my gear before crabbing sidewise and tilting steeply upward, accelerating at a rate just short of discomfort. In a few moments the sky deepened past purple to black and I was able to see the multitude of habitations, industrial plants and shipyards that cluttered Low Earth Orbit. Acceleration eased to 1 g once escape velocity was reached and the cabin gimballed so that down was down. The trip to the L5 shipyards would take about 2 hours so I leaned back and immersed myself in the specs for the Orion’s propulsion systems.

The hour before turnover went quickly and after a brief moment of maneuvering in microgravity boost resumed. I missed the approach to L5 and its agglomeration of shipyard facilities but didn’t mind, I’d seen it before.

Tessa’s pleasant Aussie twang pulled me out of my reverie and I spent the last few moments in the familiar back and forth of approach control. Soon enough the car had tethered itself into a docking bay and the pressure signal showed green. By the time the car agreed with it and allowed the door to open my welcoming committee was piling through the hatch in an unruly flying mob of crew, both Delphin and human. I launched myself into the middle of the melee and spent a few moments hugging and being hugged. Spacers tend to be a little unrestrained when welcoming friends and this batch was about as informal as they come with an easy familiarity gained through years of work together.

I’d missed this, missed the contact and the camaraderie holed up in my Kentucky retreat with only the mountains and trees for company. We all flowed through passageways in an untidy chattering mass which lasted until we’d made our way onto the Orion and to her bridge when the group went to their duty stations and immediately began running checklists in preparation for the upcoming tests. I floated around looking over shoulders and heads until all was reported in readiness then strapped into a seat beside Lars as the calm orderliness of the bridge routine flowed around me.

Gangways retreated back to the station as the massive ship slipped her moorings and began to slowly pull away from the dockyard that was Asimov station. Once fully clear of the docks Lars called for 1% throttle from the main engines and a very faint acceleration began, just .01 g. In another few minutes we were well on our way and Asimov station was dwindling rapidly behind. Acceleration gradually increased to .25 g, then to full cruising power at .5 g. Delphin crew made their way over to watery workstations which were now available to them and happily left their spindly walkers behind, chittering to each other.

The normal noises of bridge activity made a soothing sort of susurration and I was wrapped in my thoughts until Lars turned to me.

“Sooo… I’ve altered the flight plan just a bit.” This one had to be pretty big, he looked quite proud of himself.

I quirked an eyebrow and him and coolly replied “A little bit? Taking a swing out to Ringside are we?”

I’d apparently guessed correctly as a grin spread over his face. “I can’t put anything over on you Deej. I won’t take credit for the idea though, that was Flash. You’ve been away too long little sister… Your family misses you.”

“Apparently enough to hijack me clear across the solar system… I wonder if that counts as Sol’s first interplanetary kidnapping?”

“If so it’d be an odd one for sure… we brought the ransom with us!” Stark poked his snout in my direction and gave a chittering laugh.

“Only you and Flash would consider sardines to be currency worthy of using as ransom…” I shook my head at him in mock dismay.

“Not my fault you humans have no taste, is it?” He rolled around and winked an eye at me.

“So you don’t want my lemon garlic poached trout?” I was having to fight to keep from laughing at him as he dramatically flapped a fin in the air and made low mournful sounds.

“You see this, right? She’s trying to starve me into submission! Meanie!” he rolled back over and clicked to himself, doing his best to appear disconsolate. That was just too much and I couldn’t contain the giggles but I wasn’t alone, the entire bridge crew was chuckling and clicking with laughter.

The joking around continued for a while as the tension of finally launching Orion began to dissipate and it wasn’t long before my decision to skip eating before I left had me thinking about food in a serious way. There would be some things available but it would be a little while before a decent meal could be prepared. Attempting to cook in microgravity could best be described as a sport and was something most avoided so it had been a week or so since most of the crew had eaten freshly cooked food. Not that they would have been able to taste it properly, that environment does bad things to smell and taste in humans.

I took my leave of the bridge and made my way to the closest wardroom, smells from the galley permeating the air and causing my mouth to water suddenly as the hatch snapped open in response to my approach. I grabbed a high sided tray and began to load it with fried items as that was one of the first things spacers usually did when there was sufficient gravity. Trying to fry items in microgravity was unspeakably dangerous and had resulted in more than a few rather nasty injuries over the years.

Other foods that were only practical in gravity would be available later but they took longer to prepare. In another 3 hours or so there would be a ship wide feast with spacers practically gorging themselves in shifts. For now I settled into a corner with a large mug of pale beer and wonderful greasy things, an array of dipping sauces crowding a second tray. I was only a bite or 2 in when I found myself bracketed by a grinning Lars and his hench – erm… brother. Both snatched morsels and popped them into their mouths before realizing quite how hot they were and making comical faces while breathing in and out rapidly, fanning at their mouths.

I almost launched a scallop across the room trying not to laugh at them but I managed to get it down. A sip of beer helped a bit with that and I offered the mug to a clearly suffering Gunter who accepted it with a look of gratitude and drained half before passing it over me to his brother. Lars promptly drained the remainder and handed the mug back to Gunter. A moment later Gunter returned with 3 mugs and we all settled down to some serious eating.

Delphin and human crew were filling the space rapidly and the press of bodies and conversation was a little overwhelming. It was good though… I hadn’t felt this way for a very long time and having 2 of my oldest friends on either side began to relieve an almost ignored pressure of sheer loneliness that had become my world. Sometimes its hard to see these things when you’re in the middle of them… realization only comes once you’re on the pathway out. Our eating slowed as we filled and as we all leaned back with a fresh mug I let out a long sigh of relief.

“Feeling better Deej?” Gunter’s expression was back to its usual inscrutable stoniness but we’d known each other since we were children and I saw the concern and hesitant joy in his eyes. I put my mug on the table and snaked an arm behind both of them to give them a hug.

“I’ve missed my brothers… I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”

Gunter shrugged uncomfortably. “We’ve missed you too but I understand. I wish you would have let us help…” he trailed off.

“Right… and you expected her to miraculously change? Since when have you known Deej to accept help from anyone?” Lars’ teasing tone belied his words and he grinned before ruffling my hair. It didn’t bother me, he was right after all. I had been unable to accept offers of assistance and to a large degree that had not changed since childhood. They had both tried so hard to be a friend to me but I had not been able to truly reciprocate until many years later when we were all adults.

They had been a little older than I, having been rescued as toddlers by a Swedish couple after the previous Ebola epidemic killed both parents. Magda and Sven had been able to help the traumatized boys and they were much better adjusted than I. It likely helped that they were boys from a region that did not follow the extreme fundamentalist religion practiced in my father’s culture.

“Hey I was getting better... “

“Says the woman who told us to stay away when we offered to help bury your family. Its ok Deej, we understand… It just hurts to watch our little sister in so much agony and not be able to help.”

“It is the custom, that I be the one to prepare the bodies of my family for burial…” I couldn’t keep the stiffness out of my tone, it was an automatic defense mechanism from childhood.

“It was the custom… and we are your family, their family… We wanted to help you, to be there for you, you knew that…” I could tell my tone had hurt him and it was the last thing I wanted to do.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to hurt you…” I couldn’t manage much more than a small voice through the tightness in my throat. I found myself enveloped from both sides by the two men and we all took a few moments to simply enjoy holding and being held. Sometimes words were insufficient and this was one of those times.

Once we disentangled ourselves more beer was gotten and the serious drinking began. Sure we could have had liquor but for spacers that was the microgravity drink. Carbonated beverages were a really bad idea in that environment… burping didn’t work well at all with no gravity to hold the stomach contents down.

Over the next several hours the compartment we were in was the scene of much drinking and merriment and it did a great deal to allay the weight on my soul. I had been stupid to stay away from the people and things I loved and only now was I beginning to realize just how much damage I had done to myself and to others by doing so. I tried to tell Lars but for some reason he had gone to sleep and Gunter was right there on the other side snoring. I finally gave up and tried to make my way to the nearest head but for some reason the deck was tossing under my feet and it was seriously rough going. I did finally make it and got myself sat down, did my business and crawled back over to Lars and Gunter, climbing under the table and curling up between them on the bench. My last thought was how fine a pillow Gunter’s arm made and I smiled a little as I drifted off.

People from before the Phage might have found the whole scene bizarre and I suppose it was in many ways but the experience left its mark on the psyches of humans in particular. We survivors huddled in more closely together and felt aloneness more keenly than before and especially among spacers this sort of fairly wild party with its resulting dogpile of sleeping revelers was not unusual. The result was more cohesive crews who were far more efficient and ships in better condition, although some balked a little at the informality it fostered aboard ship.

I was not one of them. My early distaste for rigid hierarchies had only grown over the decades and I had been one of the ones who militated against them surviving. Perhaps in war they were useful but we were not at war, had not been for many decades now and we could not allow the destructive social patterns created by conflict to persist. That is not to say the inhabitants of Sol system were defenseless by any means, one of the legacies of so much highly automated industrial capacity being available was an extremely robust space defense network we all hoped would never need to be called upon.

It might have seemed a wasteful expense but our expansion into our own solar system had given us a clue just how ubiquitous life, even sentient life, seemed to be. To assume that our own recently peaceful nature was shared by other possible starfaring species would have been to ignore what happened in our own history when aboriginal cultures encountered more technologically advanced ones. That was not the only long shot prospect we had taken steps to prepare for by any means but it was one of the more controversial ones. It was also the reason Orion was heavily armed and armored with triply redundant systems for literally everything including propulsion.

None of this occupied my mind as I drooled on a nice soft arm that for some reason was abruptly replaced by a hard tabletop. The shock of the cold metal on my face was enough to wake me quickly and send me scuttling for the nearest head with a sense of desperation. Nanos might take care of the hangover but the extra fluid still had to go!

By the time I returned to the table most of the wardroom was awake and the aroma of breakfast filled the air. There was as usual a wide selection but I stuck with strong coffee, black and triple sweet along with a stack of flapjacks topped with 2 sunny eggs. The ponderous stack sat in the middle of a sea of syrup in which bacon and sausage were drowning and as I sat Gunter looked down at his newly emptied plate with a mournful sigh.

“Go get your own! Mine!” I snapped my teeth at him and he stuck his tongue out at me before stealing a piece of bacon and making his escape back to the buffet. Lars slid in on the other side with his own overburdened plate and began shoveling hashbrowns into his mouth, alternating with gulps of hot coffee and forkloads of rice with a raw egg broken into it. He made some sort of incoherent noise at me and turned his attention back to his rapidly dwindling pile of carbs while I addressed my own somewhat more modest repast.

Half an hour or so later I pushed back my second plate and leaned back into the bench with a happy sigh, sipping at my coffee while the boys dropped off our pile of dishes. Over the years my inability to eat until I was full had receded until I was able to gorge with the best of them, glad of the nanos and their ability to use any excess intake rather than packing it on as fat. For myself I had chosen a combination of fast response, strength and endurance which the nanos happily augmented whenever they had the excess.

They returned and we exited the wardroom together. “I haven’t been out to Ringside for a long time. Thanks!” It had been almost 35 years since I’d last set foot on(Or more accurately in) Europa and I found myself looking forward to it. The research station had grown into a small city in the intervening time although only a few scientists and their families occupied it now, carrying on the research into the bizarre panoply of aquatic life that flourished beneath the ice. It had long been suspected that a few of the life forms were at least protosentient but no one had been able to confirm that yet.

The Delphin and Hunter contingents were deeply involved in their own projects but assisted the human researchers as a matter of course since it was far easier for them to venture out and about, needing only a rebreather and basic containment suit to keep from contaminating the biota. The cetaceans considered it a fair trade since the suits also provided more comfortable anchor points for the manipulation harnesses they used.

We had finally established communication with the cetacean clans a bare 15 years before the Phage and they had gone technology crazy. It was rare anymore to see even the deeply aboriginal clans in Earth’s oceans without at least a manipulator harness and usually a full complement of other gadgets as well.

I made a mental note to message ahead, my old Delphin friend Flash had given birth to her third child just a month ago and it would be great to see her clan again. We had actually met a few years before the big breakthrough and frolicked in the surf together along with my great grandchildren. She had been very young at the time and brash enough to ignore her mother’s warnings to go play with the strange human children. The oldest of the children had become special friends with her and the duo was partly responsible for the communications breakthrough.

Cetaceans had adopted the nanos as soon as they could be modified for their physiology so barring catastrophe Flash would be there to greet Hannah when she finally awoke. The loss of her friend had been very hard for her and she was a much more serious dolphin now, driven in many ways. I understood that sense of urgency well as did most of Earth derived life.

The Phage had fundamentally changed the survivors in many ways and in some ways was the event that marked the end of humanity’s infancy. Each of us humans had survived Ebola to start with and that experience had marked us for life but at least when it was done there was someplace else to go, other people who were eager to help. With the Phage the disaster had been near total and we had simply been stuck with the bodies of everyone we knew, entire cities full of bodies with perhaps a single soul alive in a million.

Some retreated within, unable to cope. There was still an entire hospital full of them, alive and nominally conscious but existing on a barely animal level, unable to take care of their most basic physiological needs. Others chose to join their loved ones in death, certain they were the last human alive. I could understand the allure of seeking peace in that way, we all considered it, some of us more frequently or intensely than others.

We had each been preselected in a way by our history and were likely best suited amongst humanity to cope with the emotional devastation but resilience had its limits. It had taken several months to find the last of the survivors and it was possible there were still some left in more remote areas. If so they were actively hiding as every effort had been made to ensure that no one would think they were alone on the planet.

As devastating as the Phage had been for humanity the rest of earth’s species had found it to be a boon. The cities had largely been left intact but altered in ways that made them more a part of nature. Much of that had been underway for nearly a century but the ability to cherry pick what to leave and what to demolish or move without really worrying about the people living in or using the structures was a real estate developer’s dream… only this time around we were developing something more permanently sustainable for both human and nonhuman habitation.

Most of the cities remained empty of human or cetacean inhabitants who weren’t working on a project there, cared for by automatic systems to preserve them for the influx of inhabitants in future. For many of us the empty cities were almost too much to bear even after all the bodies had been removed and it was a very rare person indeed who chose to live apart from others. So many things about our situation were fairly unique in human history but it was no surprise the culture that had grown from the devastation was almost universally suffering from extreme Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

For a time the torch of civilization had been carried almost exclusively by our cetacean cousins and that too had altered the tone and character of what we now had to call Solarian culture. Soon we would push even further outward and that too would be inaccurate as we became a multistellar group of species. We had an almost unique period of time to work with when the majority of our automated industrial output was unneeded to support billions and could be diverted wholesale to building craft like the Orion and pushing for development of even faster craft with new methods of propulsion.

The terraforming of Mars was well underway but the surface would not be open sky habitable for many years yet. With some alterations to make the living area available to cetaceans the process of roofing over the Valles Marinares for pressurization had been allowed to proceed on its automated path, overseen largely by Delphin crew. It had become a popular resort spot for cetacean spacers, especially the larger Hunter clans as it provided freedom of movement unequaled anywhere but Earth itself.

When the process had run its course Mars would be beautifully green and wet as Earth with very mild temperatures due to a greater relative proportion of greenhouse gasses than our home planet. Until then the valley could shelter nearly a billion inhabitants in the area already sealed off for pressure. It was an amazing wonderland, as lush as the surface would one day be and as dramatic as any environment on earth. The cetacean idea of vertical building was an impressive and beautiful thing which took full advantage of the reduced gravity and provided gentle gradients between levels so that water could be recirculated up and down. It effectively created water escalators which could be quite entertaining to ride for human and cetacean while efficiently providing vertical transport, essential in a city which towered almost 4 kilometers up the cliffs and into airy pylons that looked like gigantic hanging gardens.

When the first rush of humanity came back into the world they would discover a fairyland, a civilization that had advanced so far in such a short time that adaptation would be difficult and along with the efforts to ensure their physical needs were met both education and psychological care would be paramount.

For now though, it was a time to reconnect with old friends who had survived, each in their own way, and had found a reason to carry on, to build something new from the ashes of the past which weighed so heavily upon us all.