014. No view of Earth

Six-months-on-six-months-off sounded great. $190,000 a year sounded even better. The recruitment brochures banged on about rare opportunities to see the Earth from space, and being on the forefront of the next generation of mining, and enviable investment opportunities, and unmitigated growth in unobtanium demand, and the excellent employee family medical benefit scheme.

What they didn’t tell you is that you’d spend two of your six months off travelling back to Earth, or that you’d need the medical benefits for your regular injuries. There was no view of Earth from the accommodation bunkers, just a company-issue television that tortured you with images of people sunbaking and running and eating vegetables, 150,000 light years away.

And they certainly didn’t tell you that after all that yearning, it was hard to come home. The kids would be scared at first and hide behind Julie’s legs, and she’d talk too loud to try to hide the fact that she didn’t know what to say to you. You’d forget how things were done. Where the plates went in the kitchen. What Lilly and Gracie wanted for breakfast. How Jules took her tea. And that they’d all have lives to get on with – jobs and friends and school – so you’d wander around like a ghost in your own home, looking and photos you were never there for.

People on Earth always asked him what it was like, out there. He never knew what to tell them.

He was 43 and careworn and his bones ached with the burden of precious minerals. He’d never been to college and he’d never known how to put words together in pretty ways. Phone calls home to Julie were always a series of long pauses and repeated questions. “You’re all ok then,” he would say, for the third time, and she’d answer him, like it was the first. The feelings were there, he just hadn’t worked out how to mine them.

So he told them the money was good. What else was there to say?