14  Cocktails at the Pioneer Café

Tom was desperate to be an astronaut when he was young. Desperate. He sits close to the exit with his bag packed, just as he did in school, as if he might get the call from the space agency at any moment. He told his friends his father was an astronaut, even though he’d never met him.

The lecturer’s talking about space travel now. He always uses relatable examples: coffee cups, twins, the Moon. So many nights Tom stared up and asked if his father really was out there and if he would ever come back.

“A moving clock will appear to tick slower than a clock at rest in your frame of reference. The faster the velocity, the greater the time difference.” He pauses to allow the note-takers to catch up. “At the speed of light, the tick of the moving clock slows to zero.”

The speed of light is something Tom knows off the top of his head. After his boasts of spacewalks and a visit to Cape Canaveral, some of the boys in his class joked that his father fled at 299,792,458 metres per second and was never seen again. Tom stopped wanting to be an astronaut. When people have asked about his old man since then, he’s shrugged.

“Every year, I get asked the same questions about time travel. It’s actually quite annoying.”

Tom burrows down in his chair. His surroundings collapse into a black hole, same as when the joke about his father did the rounds at school. He was that student, the time travel guy. His eyes shift towards the exit, as if it has the ability to teleport him somewhere better.

“But it is possible in a way. After six months on the International Space Station orbiting the planet at a speed of about 7,700 metres per second, an astronaut will age about 0.005 seconds less than those on Earth.”

Relief – all those childhood films weren’t complete lies. If his father ever returns, Tom will be the one who has travelled forward in time, and his dad will still be the same guy that left twenty years ago.

Tom knew his father would be late, but he’s sat there watching the door like some southern belle, waiting for Daddy to return from battle. This is not Tennessee; he’s in the Pioneer Café, section 15B of Capital Station, Mars. His father has already been away ten Earth years, so why not wait a little longer?

The airlock opens for what feels like the hundredth time and his father is standing there with the same yellow teeth and the same Stellar Transit uniform – a traveller from the past. Tom wonders whose hair is greyer now. It takes the man a couple of laps around the café before he notices Tom. As he approaches, his bootsteps barely sound in the pressurised café hub.

“Son,” he says.

At least it wasn’t a question. Tom waits for more small talk but he comes up empty.

“I’ll get us a cuppla Doghouse Brews, eh, Tommy Boy?”

That ratty unfiltered stuff was banned under the last health mandate. Of course, he wouldn’t know that. Tom tells his father he could do with something to fill him out, and orders two protein cocktails on the console. One minute of awkward silence later, they arrive. His father takes a sip and stares with eyes so hollow Tom’s not sure if he’s lost all sense of taste or if he’s gotten better at masking his disgust.

“Got any news for me?” he asks, as though his son has been saving up pictures of the grandkids and writing him a card each holiday.

Tom asks him how long he’s back for.

“Ten days,” he says, then sips his pink drink, this time pulling a face. He can’t decide what’s worse, the drink or time off the ship. He’s lost muscle. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe it’s bad this time.

The airlock opens and the last remaining customers walk into the tunnel, back to their lives furthering the reaches of the human race. Now, it’s just the two of them, the hiss of the ventilation system and two protein cocktails sitting on the cold steel table.

Tom considers asking him about his job, about the things he’s seen, about how it feels to see pioneers age like they’re stuck in fast forward. Really, he wants to ask why his dad brought him to this ugly rock as a kid and accepted a job that took him as far away as possible. Maybe Tom should ask him why he missed Doghouse Brew more than he missed his family. But, he doesn’t. Those questions will still be there in another ten years.

After a few more minutes ignoring his drink, something fires up his father’s blue-flame eyes. He undoes the top button on his uniform and asks, “You wanna know what it’s like to travel at the speed of light?”

Time elapsed: 1/7th of a life. 1/70th of a life