A Spaceman

Chapter 4---On Kepler We Write Letters

I pull out my tablet carefully, cradling the smooth plastic in my seemingly clumsy big hands. It's new and I'm not used to it. I have no idea how my mum afforded it I've never owned one before. But she wanted me to be able to call home and the signal to work properly and she knew they would provide us with crap ones if that. but I feel like I'm going to drop the thing, and it's expensive and I know for a fact we couldn't afford it. but that doesn't matter. Soon I'll be making enough money for all three of us.

Ginny answers immediately of course.

QUENTIN she types my name into the message board excitedly. Our home tablet is slow compared to this and she glares at it as she taps on the screen.

I LOVE YOU, WHERE'S MUM I ask, pressing my forehead against the screen so she sees only my face in the picture and not these awful barracks.

WORKING LATE SHE WAS SAD DIDN'T WANT TO MISS YOUR CALL she types, her dark hair filling the screen as she too presses close, like the thin screens we face are all that are keeping us apart and not a thousand miles and walls and fences with wire.

I CAN CALL ALMOST EVERY NIGHT PROMISE I say, smiling. I can; they said we'd have communication privileges from here on out and I am not going to lose them. I'M MY FLIGHT'S LEADER LOOK I GET TO WEAR THIS PIN I hold up the pin from my lapel to show her, we are the Denab flight.

THAT IS SO COOL she grins.

LESS COOL TO GET YELLED AT BUT ITS OKAY, I tell her.

MISS YOU her blue eyes sparkle. I know what she's thinking, I know her mind like know my own.

STOP IT I type, just as she levitates the pin in my hands, making it spin. I catch it out of the air, unable to keep a smile off my face. she is psychic. Some people are I've no idea why, but she is. And of course that's not exactly the sort of thing one wants to be public information. Our mother had heard tales of people like Ginny being locked up to be studied by scientists and kept in cages and all that. but then she had tales about lots of things. Mums tend to.

BUT I MISS YOU AND THEN I DON'T FEEL SO FAR APART she says.

I KNOW I type. I feel her in my head. she can get in there if she wants to. if she really focuses. Needless to say she practices all the time with me. and now that we're apart I feel her do it throughout the day. I can even hear her voice sometimes. But I don't encourage it. It hurts her if she does it too much, and I don't want her to get caught---somehow. I'm in a government facility it feels like they could catch her. if people try to catch people like her. which I don't know that they do but they might and it's not the sort of thing one risks.

I'M GONNA BE DONE WITH TRAINING BEFORE WE KNOW IT I type AND I GET TO WRITE HOME IT WOULD BE WORSE IF WE COULDN'T TALK

(we can always talk)

I smile I KNOW SO IT'S OK RIGHT?

RIGHT YOU WERE SAD EARLIER she writes.

I KNOW IT'S KIND OF LONELY HERE SOMETIMES BUT I'M OKAY, I type. I am, really. Even if the MTIs shout at us. so what? It's not like we're going to die or anything. ITS NOT LIKE ANYTHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN

**

I pace my room, drinking from the flask I don't remember packing but am infinitely glad I have. I need to take the edge off. to relax. To stop thinking about this.

I pick up my tablet and on impulse pull up messages to Hawking. She's offline but I can still leave her a message. She and I were bunk mates together a million years ago in OCS training. Her last message to me was at nine this morning.