There is a whole life ringing in the phone, a brighter life, maybe, certainly a more dangerous one, and on the other end a scared, desperate, pale face and a voice gone half an octave higher with fear saying “Oh, please, oh please, oh, please answer, please be home, pick up, pick up, pick up…” over and over again while the receiver buzzes gnomically in her ear, but that’s all at the other end, miles away along the curve of the earth or thousands of miles away if you count the leap from phone to tower to satellite to tower to the cell phone that Petra has left at home again. The phone rings and rings into an empty room and finally gives up and plays the voicemail message for the pale face waiting at the other end. “Hi,” Petra’s voice says, “I’m not answering my phone. Maybe I’m out of minutes, or maybe I’m at the library, or maybe I’ve forgotten the phone again. Leave a message.” Then the sexless female voice says to push 1 to leave a message or just wait for the tone, 2 to leave a numeric page.

It’s a nice day and Petra is wandering around, just enjoying the weather. She sees people she knows, old friends and new, ex-lovers and current ones, and smiles and waves at them all. She slides away from them when they try to talk to her, friendly, cheerful, laughing, gone. It’s too nice a day.

When she comes home, there’s a red light winking on the front of her phone. She checks her messages without turning on the lights, enjoying the day to much to want to extend it artificially.

There’s only one message, and halfway through it Petra turns on all the lights in her apartment and sits in the bathroom with her knees drawn up under her chin. Miles and hours away there was a life ringing in her phone; even in the bathroom the air is thick with the ghosts of what might have been.

Three days up from Lune.

Al comes swinging down into the lounge, legs long and graceful like a dancer’s.

“I’m tired of this,” Petra tells him. “I wish we were done already.”

Al gives her a funny look. “We’ve barely started and already you’re wanting to throw in the towel? What’s eating you?”

She waves her hands, vaguely meaning the lounge, the ship, the others… the whole mess. “It’s all so unreal. I can’t take any of it seriously. Nothing has any consequences out here.” Al tosses her a bulb by way of rebuttal and it takes her a minute or two to stop spinning. She sucks on the juice while she waits. “It’s all so mental.”

“You’d rather be back on Lune? Stuck in one spot? Tethered?”

“No,” she sighs, and looks out at the strange world beyond the window. Strange blobs with almost eyes go past, clinging to the surface of the ground. They open their faces at the window and make noises at the two of them. “I just can’t take any of this seriously.”

In the darkness, Petra forgets the name of the person lying next to her. Her lips shape names toward the ceiling: Alan? Maxwell? Brian? Trevor? She remembers Brian, his short hair, the anger that burned low down in his belly and gave him ulcers, his pretentiousness. Brian was a biter; she runs her fingers tentatively down her sides, finds herself blank, pain-free. Maxwell snored, in every position, rattling snare, memento of a nose broken in seventh grade; whoever this is, he’s silent, not Maxwell. Hrm.

She doesn’t remember much about Trevor. His face, his voice, even the arguments they’d had that had gone on for days have all faded into obscurity; all she has of him is the smell he pressed into her pillows, left clinging to her sheets, not a bad smell, just powerful. With everything else gone missing she remembers that smell, sharp and distinct as the must of her grandmother’s attic.

In the darkness, Petra forgets everything about the person lying next to her. She’s gone to bed with a mystery, a cipher, an enigmatic scribble that could mean anything. She lives, just for an instant, in two places at once, lies next to herself; when she rolls over, there’s another body where hers used to be, a small piece of herself left drying on the beach.