Gravitation

Based on yesterday's meme announcement, I give you the piece I made for _kit's word suggestion gravitation.


Inverse Square

"Everything in the universe attracts every other thing in the universe," Devon said, floating gently through the center hub of his spacecraft, floating 'down' to the engine room in the microgravity. "Just inversely to the square of the distance."

"But only things, Devon. Not energy, for example," Astra said, walking down the wall beside him.

"No, though they can be interchanged. I was speaking of matter... and perhaps something other than that." He took a deep breath and kicked off the wall. "Earth is so far away." They, or rather, he had been slowly accelerating via ion rockets for several years now. The ship was going at a tremendous speed now, but still wouldn’t arrive where it was going for years.

A one-man team, sent to go study. He was a man with no family or attachments possessed of a brilliant mind. When Sadie left him, he had nothing else to live for; he only wanted to get away, as far away as possible. So he volunteered for the survey mission. He hadn’t counted on meeting Astra.

"She is so far away," he said, unnecessarily.

"She is still there though, thinking of you, sending in updates. Keeping me up to date, so she can be with you." The hologram blinked at him, and he just turned away. Sometimes it helped, to have her here. But it wasn’t the same, the shipboard Astra was just a ghost, a reminder of something he left behind years ago.

Three years and forty-two days to be exact. They were now exactly one-half light-year from earth. They were constantly going faster, just a negligible .1 G of constant thrust -- but always, always speeding faster and further away from Earth.

"I’m sorry Devon," Astra said. He kicked off the wall, aiming right for where she stood. She shattered and fizzed out, sparkling back into shape as soon as he passed through her. Why had he fallen in love with her?

They were both loners, drawn to an ambitious project to scout the stars. The nearest one, Alpha Centauri, was almost four light-years away. It was time, they thought, that Man would look on it with its own eyes. And they had both volunteered.

She came up to him after the first team meeting, a petite redhead with full breasts, and a wonderfully melodic voice. "I could never do what you will do," she said. "Its too far to go, too far away. I couldn’t leave my family."

"I don’t have any family," Devon told her. "Nothing tying me to Earth but some gravity. You guys," he said, waving his hand at the rest of the team, " will be taking care of that problem."

She chuckled with a laugh that was as beautiful as her voice. Nothing like Sadie at all, not raspy or sarcastic, just joyful. He shifted uncomfortably. "Not me," she said. "I’m just the voice – and image – of the computer."

"So you’ll be keeping me company the whole way there?"

"Of sorts," she said. "Would you like company now?" And he realized that he did.

It was as simple as that, the two of them walking back to his small single-room dormitory. Her lips tasted like cherries, sweet as her voice. His hands were in her hair, pulling her into a deeper kiss; her hands were on his back, lifting his shirt, and pulling it off of him. Unbuttoning her shirt, he nestled his head between her breasts, unlocking the bra behind her and pushing the whole thing down and off.

Her nipples hardened between his teeth, and she moaned and sighed, pressing herself against him. Fumbling like teenagers, they shed the remainder of their clothes, and tumbled into the sparse single bed. He was hard and ready and she rolled on top of him, sliding around him. It was his turn to gasp: it had been too long since he had touched a woman, much less this. His hands found her breasts, his thumbs rubbed her nipples; she arched her back and came with a hand in her mouth to stifle the noise that could be heard too easily through the thin dorm walls.

He pulled her down to him, and kissed her. He thrusted up into her, lost in the sensation. His yell filled her mouth as he came, muffled by their kiss. They collapsed together, side by side.

The next morning, he awoke holding her spoon-style in his arms. It just felt right to be there, with her. He was hard again and he whispered in her name in her ear as he pushed against her.

She stretched awake, and they had sex again. That afternoon, she moved her duffle into his room. There wasn’t room for her bed frame, but they did get the two mattresses side by side on the floor.

The project couldn’t deal with anyone who did only one thing. Astra wasn’t just the model for the computer -- she was also the programmer. His own expertise allowed him to work side by side with her, but never with her brilliance. It just made him love her more. Half of his time was spent training, learning the ship, and survival methods, planning experiments, and reviewing the experiments of others. It all went into Astra’s expert system.

He would be gone for decades, and the further he got the longer it would take Earth to advise him. Once at the star, it would take four years each way. Even now, a half light-year away it took a full year before any communication would make the transit from him to Earth and back again.

He flew over to the porthole, the one view back to Earth. He couldn’t see anything there, just the Sun as a larger than average star. He whispered, "Goodbye," and turned away.

Astra floated towards him in the disembodied way she had – just a structure of light, gravitation had no effect on her. She reached out to him, and "touched" him, and brushed her lips of light against him. "She wanted me to be there for you, Devon. To be her for you."

"But you aren’t her," he said to the AI.

"No," she said. "But she told you I would be here, to keep you company, the whole way there."

"It’s not the same," he said. He reached an arm out to her, and it passed through the hologram. "I can’t touch you, you can’t touch me and I know she is there, half a light-year away."

He sighed, and looked back out the porthole. He wasn’t supposed to care about anything back there. Certainly he was supposed to care about the Earth -- as a whole -- but not about anything specific. And he hadn’t when he signed on, but from the moment he met her, he had something to miss -- something that could break his heart. "Love," he said, "doesn’t follow the inverse square law. Everything in the universe attracts every other thing. Some, though, more than others."


I think there's a good story here, which might need some work.  But I didn't want to spend more time on this than on my regular writing.  It did grip me a bit, and I did some math to figure out the time/acceleration stuff -- Geek to the core, eh? I had an alternate, more happy ending, but it didn't feel like it flowed from the beginning. I had a sadder ending, but same thing there.  I'll prob let this piece gel in my backbrain for a while For now, enjoy:)