The Traveller

The life of a stellar traveller in the year 3500 was a lonely one.

Ever since he was a little boy, William had always wanted to travel the stars. He had gotten his wish, but like all wishes, it came with a price.

Faster-than-light travel, predictably, had turned out be impossible. That didn't stop humanity, of course. Planetary colonies and space stations had developed all over the galaxy over the last millennium, and countless more missions were already underway.

It was possible to travel between these systems in seemingly very little time. The secret to this lay in general relativity. When accelerated close to the speed of light, time slows down for a spaceship and it's passengers. Using this principle, many light years of distance could be crossed in a subjective time of only a few months.

Of course, the subjectivity of the whole thing was the problem. Time only slows down for the passengers, not everyone else. In just a handful of stellar hops, William had outlived his childhood friends by nearly 20 years. Perhaps one day he would return home and meet the great-great-great-grandchildren of the friends who had once been his own age.

A robotic voice resounded from the loudspeaker of the ship, jolting William from his thoughts. "Attention passengers: we are approaching station beta-17. We will be docking within five minutes"

William turned toward the window. The beauty of the sleek, stainless steel structures against the dark background of space never failed to amaze him.

He had left everything he knew behind for this. And for him, it was worth it.

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This is a (slightly late) response to yesterday's freewrite prompt: long distance