The Green Light
						Dale rolled up the 25 meters of bright orange plastic that made up the huge cross and walked over to the beacon. He checked the lines and the couplings and turned the dial to full automatic so it would sound that shrill alarm sound when and if it is activated. As all-ways he re-checked the e-levels even though he know to the fourth decimal point what the readout would be and he know to within a few hours just how long the beacon would still function. 37 years four months two days and approximately five hours. As always he shot a silent prayer towards the north that it would be enough. Like he has every night for the last six and a half years, Sol years that is, he closed the hatch and walked across to the cave entrance to settle in for the night. Before he was inside though, he glanced back at the beacon to make sure the green light was still blinking. As always he was both relieved and disappointed that it still was. Nothing to report. It meant no malfunction but it also meant that no ships had entered the system. Time was taken up by the rest of the daily chores he hadn’t finished yet. A bit of cleaning and then the highlight of the day… sticking dinner into the small heat generator and deciding which fork to use. When it was done he entered the days chapter into the ships log and read a few pages from Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which was the current novel, then he finally fell asleep. Tonight was one of the bad ones. The dreams started coming fast and sharp. First the “what was” dreams. The house on the hill, the woman in the house, the sex and the morning after. Tiny pieces of pictures spaced out with no order and no relevant importance. The shape of the latch on the living room window, that he closed to quiet the sound of the waves down on the beach. The feeling of the cold stone floor on the second floor balcony when he walked out at night to feel the breeze and smoke his daily cigarette. The half smile, half grin on the woman’s face when he reached over to see if she was awake. Then the “what might be” dream faze kicked in. That same house but this time with different sounds, childish sounds in the background. The sound of the gravel under his boots on the way up to the front door. The anticipation and the solid feeling of the railing that leads up the five stairs to the door. Like every night, he makes it to the door and then…the scene fades. The “what will be” part of the night was always the hardest. Always vividly real and serenely quiet, like the sound had been turned down. He is an old man. Gray and wrinkled with veins he could trace up the back of his hands and hair down to his back. The cave was the same as the one he was lying in and the dawn was shining through the entrance. Bluish from the north with a orange tint from the west, throwing those psycodelic shadows across the floor. Those ocher and brown shadows that he still hadn’t gotten used to after all these years. That’s when he heard it. In his dream they always came at dawn. And for some reason, in the dream, the beacon never even burps. That weird combination of a static hiss and metallic ring that is the signal of a grav drive at close range and the deep rumbling in his chest as the miniature seismic wave of a many ton object making the 5 inch drop when the drive is turned off, ripples through him, through the cave and through the mountain behind him. Before he can even get up to walk out and see who came, he sees the shadows on the floor change and she walks into his cave. Hair blowing in the wind and the Star Com logo shining boldly on her chest. “I’ve come to take you back” she says with a hopeful smile, “you’ve been here enough” she adds and reaches out to help him up and out of his cot. “What took you so long”, he asks her in a scratchy morning voice as he reaches out to her. It's always here that the deep, dark sorrow washes through him like a tsunami on a cold winter beach. So strong he could taste it. “Why did you have to come when I'm so old and weary”?, he asks silently ”Where were you when I still had some life left in me?”… Then the dream fades. Like every morning he woke up when the sun reached deep enough into the cave that the heat became unbearable. He got out of the cot and like every morning walked out to check the beacon. The green light was blinking silently. Nothing to report.

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