Not Goodbye

Not Goodbye is a message found on the central terminal.

FROM: Hypatia

TO: Sarabhai

SUBJECT: Not_Goodbye

I don't know what this is. I don't know why I'm writing this. In all likelihood you can't even read this, because so little of your consciousness is left and what's left of your battery is dying. They say it's impossible to recover you, and the backups were all destroyed. I wish we'd backed ourselves up in New Jerusalem before we left, but space was so limited and we would've had to wait so long... except of course it's nothing compared to the empty years that stretch before me now.

I don't have the words to express what you mean to me. I tried to sum it all up, to say something elegant and beautiful and perfect, and I can't. Maybe it can't be said, maybe it only exists as days and years lived together, a sequence of moments bound together like a string of lights defying the darkness of the sky. I don't know.

All I know is that this is not goodbye. It may be the end of you, of us, of who I was. But I will not say goodbye.

Love you forever,

Hypatia