About Face - By 180 Proof
Oh, a call from Dee.
Transmission Sent
Medusae Fossae_Hab-11(NW), 2322-15-12T08:12:56Z, Received 2322-15-12T08:17:41Z
Poor girl looks so old! The months have marched on like decades trampling her pretty face. Save for those hazel eyes.
"Bernadette, please be online. Well, my girl. Saved the sweetest and bitterest for last. This is goodbye!
Had a series of strokes last week, good drugs and low gravity, they say, delayed the inevitable. But any Sol now."
A 00:09:29 wait for Delores' rasp.
"No regrets leaving Earth. Yes, I was wrong about that ol' Curse, you were right... It's surprised me though how damn fast the centuries ate me up out here! Was it worth giving up 'not dying'? Oh yes."
Earth-Mars lag.
"I haven't slept since the 1970s and got my first and last period. Remember? Anyway, after I relocated from Arcadia Planitia to here, sleep returned, then aging too, 8 months ago I guess. Scared me at first.
(sorry breathing so hard)
Sleep is when the stranger's face comes to me, not like a dream, more like sunlight. She always smiles, hums old lullabies. Really all I want now, lover, is to sleep with her "
G-Goodbye, Dee.
End Transmission
Medusae Fossae_Hab-11(NW), 2322-15-12T08:42:03Z
Transmission Sent
Medusae Fossae_Hab-11(NW), 2322-15-12T08:12:56Z, Received 2322-15-12T08:17:41Z
Poor girl looks so old! The months have marched on like decades trampling her pretty face. Save for those hazel eyes.
"Bernadette, please be online. Well, my girl. Saved the sweetest and bitterest for last. This is goodbye!
Had a series of strokes last week, good drugs and low gravity, they say, delayed the inevitable. But any Sol now."
A 00:09:29 wait for Delores' rasp.
"No regrets leaving Earth. Yes, I was wrong about that ol' Curse, you were right... It's surprised me though how damn fast the centuries ate me up out here! Was it worth giving up 'not dying'? Oh yes."
Earth-Mars lag.
"I haven't slept since the 1970s and got my first and last period. Remember? Anyway, after I relocated from Arcadia Planitia to here, sleep returned, then aging too, 8 months ago I guess. Scared me at first.
(sorry breathing so hard)
Sleep is when the stranger's face comes to me, not like a dream, more like sunlight. She always smiles, hums old lullabies. Really all I want now, lover, is to sleep with her "
G-Goodbye, Dee.
End Transmission
Medusae Fossae_Hab-11(NW), 2322-15-12T08:42:03Z
Comments (15)
This reminds me of another story. Oscar and the Coconut.
The same perplexing start. A transmission.
Quoting Caldwell
So detailed. 15th December 2322. Only 300 years to go.
From D (Delores) to Bernadette.
B sees D's face ageing fast. Eyes, however, stay the same.
Quoting Caldwell
Any Sol now...
Any day now...
The inevitable will happen. No matter the amount of time and space travel.
Quoting Caldwell
So poetic and soothing.
Quoting Caldwell
A tearful farewell to a friend or lover.
***
I like this story. Not sure I understand it...love in space.
Nevertheless, good to think of it surviving in 300 yrs time. Perhaps.
Well done :up:
I don't understand it, except maybe that Dee moved out of Earth in search for immortality, but now had returned to Earth.
Quoting Amity
Thanks. :hearts:
I read it as Delores left Earth in order to, as she says, "give up 'not dying'". Anyway, I'd rather die in deep space than on Earth as I have no doubt I (we all) will. Not in 2023 though!
Have a healthy-wealthy New Year! :sparkle:
The baby has grown up! I think the eyes still look the same though.
I may not have explained that I was not speaking of the story directly but your avatar picture change and was linking it to the story title, 'About Face'.
In @180 Proof's case time has taken something, but not its usual ... toll!
Awesome! El Rachum!
Getting back to the story itself, I am not sure if I completely understand it but Caldwell's comment about the eyes in the face not changing is interesting. That was why I looked at the eyes in the two avatars and see the resemblance. Of course, eyes in a baby look so much bigger in proportion to the face. Generally, it is interesting to think how eyes change according to experience. When I look in the mirror I think how my eyes often look dim and distant. In a way, eyes may be like the animating spark of consciousness and the face itself is the main focus of presentation of self to others.
Deus misericors est.
Time to get new prescriptions.
:up: "Eyes are the window of the soul," it's said, right? (Proverbs?)
Two women, well over three centuries old, one suddenly rapidly aging and all that remains recognizable to the other who is still impossibly young are "those hazel eyes"...
Btw, the 180 Proof "baby" isn't / wasn't me. By chance I'd found that pic online back in 2005 and have used it ever since. It's twenty years this coming March since I joined the previous incarnation of this site my only online "presence" (i have no social media whatsoever) and I turn sixty in September so I felt like it's finally time to face cyberspace with my actual face (a selfie taken days after Xmas 2019 on a midtown Manhattan street).
I did think that the picture of the baby was you, so considering the avatar piictue of you shows how imagination comes into play. I made a comparison with a false image of eye. It says so much about faces, especially in the anonymity of the internet age, selfies, and the fabrication of identity. I prefer your new avatar, and it will be interesting to see how the image affects the interpretations of your posts and stories, as in the age of media technology so much is driven by the power of images, including in the sensory aspects of story.