Horizons

The digital sun rays crept across Bryce's face. He liked waking like this, with the choir of birds caroling in the background and the sound of the wind stirring up the trees. This was his day off and he was going to enjoy it, sleeping in and dreaming of places he'd never been.

 The computer had detected the shift in Bryce's brainwaves and started the Sunday breakfast program. A minted Mocha Latte was brewing in the pot, and Insta-bagels with eggs and bacon was on the menu by the window table.

 Finally, Bryce couldn't stand the luring aroma anymore and dragged himself over to the waiting buffet. He leaned back sipping his favorite mug while enjoying the scenery. He could smell the grass in the lush wind that graced his hair. The flowers painted the meadow a grand Monet, and behind that a systematically arranged forest of apple trees stood in silhouette in front of the blue and turquoise Lake Brienz. And across the crystal waters towered the high alpines of Switzerland - wherever that was. Bryce had never been to Earth. But these sceneries had made him start saving for a trip.

 Stations like this were wall to wall and people lived like beer cans stacked in a storage room. It was a noticeable price difference to get a shack with a digital window; realistic scenery projection in three dimensions, with temperature simulation, sound and wind, and even smell now in the latest additions. “A room with a view", as they said. But it was worth it to Bryce. It had almost become a hobby of his browsing through the newest scenery files and reading about the locations. And it did leaps for the sanity of living in a rotating tin can in a dark corner of space.

 Bryce reminisced his very first planet side experience as he sipped on his Latte. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, walking on dirt and stone and gravel, the ground displacing underneath his boots making footprints behind him. It was a grim looking terraformed colony, muddy and damp, but the vast space that opened around him as he disembarked the ship had made the deepest impact on him. The wind flooding over him; clouds sailing past overhead; and just being able to see the horizon where the planet curved downwards. He had to find a scenery with a distant horizon for his next view.

 But the colonies were never as beautiful as the images and videos of earth. Not even his father had been there. Stories passed down from his grandfather and the generations before him warmed his bedside as a kid and created a sense of longing for the blue world so far away. It was a long-distance relationship.
A faint tingling in Bryce's ear implant took his thoughts elsewhere and hinted that his breakfast was about to be cut short.

 "Bryce! You awake?"

 The voice in Bryce's head had the familiar firmness to it, but he could detect a hint of cautiousness underneath the bravado. His boss knew very well how valuable he was, seeing Bryce was the only one left on station with Type 3 welding license. So he trod carefully.

 "Good morning to you too, Nick. Calling to tell me to enjoy my day off? How sweet of you!" he answered with a grin. The Swiss Alps had put him in a good mood. He pulled up the station maintenance log in the window to see the damage.

 "Sorry to ruin your teatime, your majesty. But some drunken jockey clipped the rotator assembly on the way out, and we've sprung a leak in sector D."

Bryce pulled up the exterior camera for D-sector in the window, replacing the Garden of Eden with a scarred metal construct floating on top of the blinding darkness of space.

"Yeah, I see it. I'm on my way."