Evening

The sun is well down below the hills now, a misty lavender lighting up the western ridge as the cool Spring breezes drift through the open window of my 10th floor room. The light strikes upwards, clearly illuminating the last contrail that will cross the sky from Magellan Uplift. Someone told me once the scientific reason that the uplift ships flew the atmospheric stretch over Europe but that was many years, and many bottles, ago and I can't remember it anymore.

Outside, the birds and dogs are having their standard battle at this time of the day. The days are getting longer but none of us left here like the dark as it falls, the birds fight it and the dogs yell at it. If I was a dog, I'd be pissed off, too. No room on the ships for them. Humans only. At least I chose to stay behind. I even got to choose the city.

The contrail is a long silver line in the sky. In a minute or so it will be over the horizon and gone. A thousand or more kilometres on of slow climb and, BANG!, the main drives kick in and up it goes. And then it will just be me.

I won't stay here, of course. A giant block of apartments would get hard to maintain after a while, even if it was in better repair. The hills are right on the edge of town and I've already spent a fair bit of time getting my farm ready to move into. I'm just here for old-time's sake. This was the first place I stayed in for any length of time, and I thought it would be fun to watch the last ship from here. Lots of cobwebs and plants growing in here now, but this is my room, much as it was, except that leaving the window open now, I don't get smoke drifting in from other students illicitly smoking and dangling their cigarettes out of their rooms.

The tracking software on my laptop is feeding me altitude and speed figures from the ship. But I already know that they aren't listening to transmissions. I've seen the specs for the luggers up in orbit and their antennas point into the main body and to each other, not back this way. There's no coming back, and there's no looking back either, for those who are going. We've made our decisions. I hear that there are one or two others staying behind, but only as a rumour. It's a big planet. I'm not expecting company.

Outside, the contrail is just hitting the ridge, as the light fades even further and heads towards the early indigo of the evening through one last burst of ochre. I look out of my window and down towards the city that is full of noise, but none of it human. This town is long empty now but, so typically, all the cars are still in their parking spaces, as if I have glanced out and seen a brief moment of stillness in a vibrant and active city. But it's not the case, and it hasn't been for almost 5 years.

Ah, it's gone. Damn. Missed it, while I was looking down. Damn. I was going to say something. I thought about preparing it and saying it as the trail dipped down and away, a message that no-one else would ever hear, and then spend the summer finding the right piece of stone, and then spend the cold winter, holed up in my farm, inside with the animals, and carve it into the stone. Something left behind in case anyone, or anything, ever came back this way. I decided to let the moment take me and what? Now I have to find a stone and carve "Damn. Missed it." on it.

Maybe that's more fitting?