"I wish I had this screen in my living room," Harry said. "I'd have had the most popular Super Bowl parties on the block."
"Just look at it," I said. "All our lives, it's the only place we've ever been. Everyone we ever knew or loved was there. And now we're leaving it. Doesn't that make you feel something?"
"Excited," Jesse said. "And sad. But not too sad."
"Definitely not too sad," Harry said. "There was nothing left to do there but get older and die."
"You can still die, you know," I said. "You are joining the military."
"Yeah, but I'm not going to die old," Harry said. "I'm going to have a second chance to die young and leave a beautiful corpse. It makes up for missing out on it the first time."
"You're just a romantic that way," Jesse said, deadpan.
"Damn right," Harry said.
"Listen," I said. "We've begun pulling out."
The speakers of the theater broadcast the chatter between the Henry Hudson and Colonial Station as they negotiated the terms of the Henry Hudson's departure. Then came a low thrum and the slightest of vibrations, which we could barely feel through our seats.
"Engines," Harry said. Jesse and I nodded.
And then the Earth slowly began to shrink in the video screen, still massive, and still brilliant blue and white, but clearly, inexorably, beginning to take up a smaller portion of the screen. We silently watched it shrink, all of the several hundred recruits who came to look. I looked over to Harry, who, despite his earlier blustering, was quiet and reflective. Jesse had a tear on her cheek.
"Hey," I said, and gripped her hand. "Not too sad, remember?"
She smiled at me and gripped my hand. "No," she said hoarsely. "Not too sad. But even still. Even still."
We sat there some more and watched everything we ever knew shrink in the viewscreen.
I had my PDA set to wake me up at 0600, which it did by gently piping music through its little speakers and gradually increasing the volume until I woke. I turned off the music, quietly lowered myself off the top bunk and then rooted for a towel in the wardrobe, flicking on the small light in the wardrobe to see. In the wardrobe hung my and Leon's recruit suits: two sets each of Colonial light blue sweat tops and bottoms, two light blue T-shirts, two pairs blue chino-style drawstring pants, two pairs white socks and briefs-style underwear, and blue sneakers. Apparently we'd have no need for formal dress between now and Beta Pyxis. I slipped on a pair of sweat bottoms and a T-shirt, grabbed one of the towels that was also hanging in the wardrobe, and padded down the hall for a shower.
When I returned, the lights were glowing on full but Leon was still in his bunk—the lights must have come on automatically. I put a sweat top over my T-shirt and added socks and sneakers to my ensemble; I was ready to jog or, well, whatever else I had to do that day. Now for some breakfast. On the way out, I gave Leon a little nudge. He was a schmuck, but even schmucks might not want to sleep through food. I asked him if he wanted to get some breakfast.
"What?" he said, groggily. "No. Leave me alone."
"You sure, Leon?" I asked. "You know what they say about breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day, and all that. Come on. You need your energy."
Leon actually growled. "My mother's been dead for thirty years and as far I know, she hasn't been brought back in your body. So get the hell out of here and let me sleep."
It was nice to see Leon hadn't gone soft on me. "Fine," I said. "I'll be back after breakfast."
Leon grunted and rolled back over. I went to breakfast.
Breakfast was amazing, and I say that having been married to a woman who could make a breakfast spread that would have made Gandhi stop a fast. I had two Belgian waffles that were golden, crisp and light, wallowing in powdered sugar and syrup that tasted like real Vermont maple (and if you think you can't tell when you have Vermont maple syrup, you've never had it) and with a scoop of creamery butter that was artfully melting to fill the deep wells of the waffle squares. Add over-easy eggs that were actually over easy, four slices of thick, brown sugar–cured bacon, orange juice from fruit that apparently hadn't realized it had been squeezed, and a mug of coffee that was fresh off the burro.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Since I was now officially legally dead on Earth and flying across the solar system in a spaceship, I guess I wasn't too far off.
"Oh my," the fellow I sat next to at breakfast said, as I put down my fully-loaded tray. "Look at all the fats on that tray. You're asking for a coronary. I'm a doctor, I know."
"Uh-huh," I said, and pointed to his tray. "That looks like a four-egg omelet you're working on there. With about a pound each of ham and cheddar."
"'Do as I say, not as I do.' That was my creed as a practicing physician," he said. "If more patients had listened to me instead of following my sorry example, they'd be alive now. A lesson for us all. Thomas Jane, by the way."