Twenty Minutes of Silence

The mining freighter Kestrel had been working its way through the asteroid belt for nineteen months, and on the night of her daughter's tenth birthday, Ilse Vogel had planned everything down to the minute. At that point in its orbit, the ship was approximately 360 million kilometres from Earth, so every message, travelling at the speed of light, needed about twenty minutes to arrive. A live call was out of the question. The cake would be brought out at seven o'clock, Earth time, which meant that Ilse would record her birthday song at 6:40 and send it straight away. By the time it reached home, they would be lighting the candles.

At 6:31, a message from Wren arrived, recorded twenty minutes earlier. "Grandpa says you won't be home until March," it said. "You promised you'd be here for my birthday. Don't bother sending a video. I mean it."

Ilse played it twice, and then, without allowing herself time to think, she recorded her reply. "You're right, sweetheart. I've broken too many promises, and a video isn't the same as being there. I won't send one tonight. I've asked the company about a shorter contract, and I'll be thinking about you all evening." She sent it at 6:34.

Four minutes later, a second message from Wren appeared on the screen. "Mom, ignore my last message. Grandpa explained about the broken engine and the orbit, and I'm sorry. Please send the video, the one where you sing. Everyone's waiting for it."

Ilse stared at the timestamps until the numbers stopped making sense. Had she waited four more minutes, she would never have sent that reply, but it was already millions of kilometres away, and nothing in the universe could catch it. At 6:54, in the middle of the celebration, Wren would hear her mother refuse to send the one thing she had asked for.

She started recording again. "Wren, forget what I just said, I didn't..." She stopped and deleted it. Whatever she said now would land after Wren had heard the refusal, after she had cried or shrugged or forgiven her, and Ilse could not know which. Every word she chose would be answering a daughter who no longer existed by the time it arrived. It was 6:39.

From the drawer under her bunk, she took out the single birthday candle that she had smuggled aboard nineteen months earlier, knowing perfectly well that open flames were forbidden on the ship. She lit it. In the weightless cabin, the flame did not point upwards but gathered into a small, trembling sphere of blue light. Ilse switched on the camera, held the candle up so that it filled the screen, and said nothing at all. Then she closed her eyes, made a wish, and blew it out.

The message was nineteen seconds long. She sent it at 6:40, switched off the cabin lights, and sat in the dark to wait the twenty minutes it would take to reach home.