A bonus scene from the world of First Light Rising, set four months after Tom Wright's departure aboard the Icarus.
Dear Tom,
4 December 2047. It has been a little more than four months since you left Earth aboard the Icarus. I cannot say what is wrong, only that something feels wrong. The rains have come early to Los Angeles, and at midnight the city has fallen to a miserable nine degrees Celsius. Still, I cannot blame the weather for the heaviness in me, or for the fact that I cannot sleep. Call me foolish, but I am scratching these words onto paper with an old-fashioned pen, writing a letter I know I will never send. I hope you are safe, Tom, somewhere out there on humankind's first interstellar mission. I am a trained psychologist. I know I am writing this for my own soul. And yet a small, unreasonable hope keeps tugging at my heart: that our AIs might preserve these pages in their patient digital hearts and place them in your hands when you return, a hundred and fifty years from now, when I am long gone.
Lately I have been spending too much time in Los Angeles on some tame assignment for the Diplomatic Service. My life has grown quiet since you left Earth. Vandenberg is only a two-hour drive from here, north along the coast, and sometimes the nearness of it catches me by surprise. I feel a pang of guilt when I remember those days with the old gang: keeping you safe, outwitting those who wanted to possess you, and congratulating ourselves when we sent you into the dark, beyond the reach of a greedy humankind. We thought we had saved you. Perhaps that certainty is what troubles me now.
I feel guilty, Tom. The world has already begun to speak of you in the past tense. For weeks I checked Icarus's progress every day, watching it move towards Jupiter and then beyond. Lately, I have stopped looking. Have I begun to move on as well, simply because everyone around me has? The thought shames me.
The crowds and ceremonies are over. Governments congratulate themselves on a successful mission. Documentaries have polished you into a heroic symbol, simpler and brighter than the man I knew. Even the memory of the political crisis surrounding your immortality is quietly thinning at the edges. What I find unbearable is how relieved the world seems now that you are safely beyond its reach. Perhaps that is how humanity prefers its miracles: distant enough to make no demands.
The broadcasters call the mission your heroic choice, but I remember the fight for survival, and I remember the part I played in it. Did you truly volunteer, or did you accept the only door humanity left open? We called it a mission because exile would have sounded too much like the truth. Again and again, I tell myself that I gave you the future. In the hour before dawn, I sometimes wonder whether I merely helped the world rid itself of you.
I miss your dry humour, your guarded silences, your reluctance to be treated as special, and the moments when you were frightened but refused to admit it. More than any of that, I miss the ordinary fact of your presence: the person the world could never see clearly because it was too dazzled by what you were.
At Vandenberg, you turned and waved before disappearing into the haze, while the darkness was already thinning towards morning. I never imagined I was watching our final goodbye. Your last words still wake me: "You will need to tell them when the time is right." Then you placed your Diary in my hands, which, you said, proved everything. Its pages are crowded with scientific truths I cannot follow. At times, each one feels like a locked door for which you forgot to leave me a key. I have not dared to show it to anyone. When will the time be right for humankind? At this moment, humankind appears to be moving on.
You trusted me to reveal the Diary, yet I do not know when to do it or how. If I choose wrongly, what you entrusted to me might be lost to humankind forever. I have begun carrying it with me, keeping it close, as though the right moment might reveal itself without warning. Perhaps it never will. Worse, perhaps it will come, and I will fail to recognise it.
My mind offers me every sensible explanation for this gloom: the rain, the sleeplessness, the silence that followed your departure. But beneath them all, I cannot escape the feeling that something else is gathering just beyond the reach of reason. Wherever you are tonight, Tom, I hope you are still travelling towards the future we promised you. I hope it is still there, waiting.
There is no point in sending this letter. A radio signal could reach the Icarus in about two hours, but you may already be deep in the Dive, sealed inside a moment whose ending I will not live to see. Perhaps paper is more honest. It does not pretend that we still inhabit the same time.
Remember me, should you ever read these lines. Remember that, after the rest of the world learned how to forget, I tried to keep faith with you.
Faithfully,
Saskia
Behind The Letter
This letter is a bonus scene from First Light Rising, Book One of the Kindred of Old trilogy by Kurt A. Langfeld. It takes place four months after Tom Wright leaves Earth aboard the Icarus. You can find the novel and more stories from this universe on the books page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Saskia Sorensen in First Light Rising?
Saskia is one of the people closest to Tom Wright, the man at the center of the novel. Tom stopped ageing at twenty-four, and the world's attention has followed him ever since. In this bonus letter, Saskia is the one left behind on Earth after he departs aboard the Icarus. She writes to him knowing the words may never reach him.
When does The Letter Saskia Never Sent take place?
The letter is dated 4 December 2047. That is a little more than four months after Tom leaves Earth on his one-way journey. The crowds have gone home, and the ceremonies are over. Saskia is left with her guilt, her doubts, and a question she cannot answer.
Do I need to read the book before reading the letter?
No. The letter works as a standalone short story, and a new reader can follow it without any background. Readers who know the novel will catch more, because the letter deepens the characters and the world around them. The letter does not give away the ending, so it is safe to read first.
Where can I read more from the Kindred of Old universe?
First Light Rising is Book One of the Kindred of Old trilogy by Kurt A. Langfeld, published by Eon Horizon Press. You can find the novel on the books page at kalangfeld.com. More bonus scenes and short stories from this universe are posted on the blog under the "Kindred of Old Universe" category. Kurt's science essays sit under "Science for Sci-Fi" on the same blog.