In the spiral arms of the Milky Way, among stellar dust and cosmic clouds, there is a planetary system which orbits the star Sol. The system contains nine known planets, countless dwarfs, two asteroid belts, and a single yellow sun. Of those nine major planets, five are colonized, and the other four are being terraformed for our use. The furthest colonized planet is Jupiter, whose central low-orbiting station is used as a sort of a truck stop for those of us who ship supplies further on the trip past the belt. Fāfēng, they name us, on account of the ring of solar sails we hoist on our junk. Back when they relied on us, it was sir, madam; now they call us madmen.

The galaxy felt bigger in those days.

Used to be that shipping galactic freight meant something. That was back when space was unconquered, before the inky blackness was as familiar as blue skies. That black was so thick you could pirouette through it in a cheap D-class barque, reach out and grab it with an open hand. If it didn’t claim your hand in the reaching, you’d be a lucky man. Used to be that folk would sigh in relief when the red planet eked its way into your viewfinder. Now, Mars means a toll fee, and the Federation takes eighteen percent of your yield. The only two constants of life are death and taxes. The only thing that could possibly fill up the cosmic emptiness of the Solar System is the red tape of the Federation. It got so that you needed three different forms just to unload a shipment of hydrocarbons. But there is a remnant of wilderness to this galaxy. They’re filling it, but it ain’t full yet.

We mourn that which was and which is no more and which never shall be again.

This stretch of space between Jupiter and Saturn used to be part of the frontier. Between those gaseous giants, you could pass the trip with nary a soul in sight. Used to see space dust shimmering, backlit by the radiant sun. Used to see asteroids whizzing past, glowing orange with pure radiation. We never knew when a gravity well might warp our hull around us, or if a stray electric storm might fry our navigation. We didn’t much care, we were in it for the adventure as much as the paycheck. More. In the distance we espied new galaxies eclipsed by the barred spiral shadow of our own. Each trip our eyes strain to see further glories as the frontier shrinks. Can’t see space dust when you’re blinded by the highway beacons, each throbbing red pulse robbing your navigator of his duties. Her duties. The highway drives Evelyn to fury. We still use the old paths for fun, when we’re not on contract. When I married her I promised that I would name a star after her: I still haven’t found the perfect star, though. If I can never find a star to outshine her, I’ll know I chose my wife well. Our kids unloaded freight with us for a time, before the cancer took the youngest and her brother signed on with the Eclipse. A good ship, but he was too young. A growing boy needs his mother.

So now it’s just the two of us. And Cocoa, the dog.

Tedium will kill us both. The cancer that took my daughter ravaged her frail body, but she stayed cheerful until the end. Even when her mother’s tears were gone from months of weeping, and even when her father was swearing to the doctors, the gods, anybody that would listen, anybody that could help, even still she was bright on the inside. Even into her twilight days. Tedium is a cancer of the soul, a malignant and tumescent growth which scrapes out the heart and leaves an empty shell of a man to keep living, if you can call that living. Hauling freight across the black. And fāfēng is how they thank us.

We immolate our souls to appease the god of commerce.

But we saw something. It didn’t show up on the viewfinder, it doesn’t show on the Federation maps. But it’s a something, not a nothing, and in space that’s a difficult mistake to make. It’s a remnant of the bygone days. A wormhole, maybe; dying comet, probably. Though our tank’s pushing empty, we aim to take a closer look. Nothing living’s ever been here before. We’re the first to make our mark. Maybe it’s selfish to spoil this part of space for the next frigate what passes by, but it’s their loss.

And it will be a great loss indeed.

As we approached, the mystery unfolded, and it was magnificent. Had it only been like the glow of the horizon, I think it would have been sufficient; but it seemed to us as the afternoon sun in its fullness. It soon became clear what it was, just as when dawn beats back the layered shroud of nightfall to reveal creation. It was a funnel of exotic matter, a conical section of space through which we could see… elsewhere. Those stars were not our stars, those colors richer than any native to the Milky Way. But it eluded us, skipping back across the waves of space and time like a deer flees the hunter. But we were not hunters, chasing this entity down to rape the cosmos and murder her home; we were lovers, pursuing this thing that, having seen it, we could not bear to be parted from. And oh, the chase tastes sweet. Evie gently increased our thrust, first matching the singularity and then gaining on it. Soon we were ensconced in the tail of it, enveloped in an eddy of colors we could not comprehend and would never see with living eyes.

The fuel gauge shuddered ominously.

I rested my hand over my wife’s, pushed the thrusters higher. The fuel wouldn’t last, but I wanted – needed – to reach the other side. We inched forward, going hundreds of kilometers per hour in a race where just a few could spell victory. The portal defied our expectations, it seemed to be a thing more of biology than of physics; it felt alive, it felt emotional, and we connected to that feeling as we pursued it. This moment was the test in which the rest of our lives were at stake: my hand closed over hers, and together we pushed the throttle to their maximum. As we dove through the portal in a shower of dust and colorful rays, we rejected tedium and accepted adventure.

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The vellum had been breached; we would never say farewell to the land of our birth.

“Tank’s empty,” Evie announced grimly. Cocoa whined. I grinned. We had emerged in a space that was not our own. The black was not oppressive, but inviting. There was no haze of civilization to dim the horizon, nor were there beacons to indicate a highway or a path. An asteroid lazily drifted by, and we followed it at the pace the singularity had deposited us. We drifted towards a lavender-blue planet. The planet was embraced by a thin ring of satellites – asteroids, probably remnants of a shattered moon. Our viewfinder showed spacious lands and abundant oceans, capped by polar ice. It was beautiful, unlike anything we had ever imagined, unlike any of the nine planets orbiting Sol. It could be home, I think. I hope. But I hoped it would not be a barrow.

We were crashing.

It was a long crash, somewhat slow and somewhat controlled, but the laws of gravitation are universal, and so we fell. But my wife handles a flight stick well, and sits light in the cockpit under pressure. We skipped across the atmosphere, losing speed as we stroked the surface of our inviting tomb. Six skips, then three, then one skip. And then we broke atmo, and skimmed the surface of the clouds. Our solar flaps were partially extended, though they weren’t designed for reentry, and we had no way of knowing the atmospheric density or temperature of the planet. The flaps could be fried, crushed, or torn from the ship. We could melt in the heat of reentry, or (as seemed more likely) crumple across the plains like a tumbleweed or hurtle into a mountain. By a stroke of luck, we emerged over an ocean, and ran through several enormous waves to lose speed. By the time the coast was in sight, we were traveling at safe speeds to land. We could breathe a sigh of relief and run some diagnostic scans.

Five hundred millions light years from Sol: The Cartwheel Galaxy.

We ran the scans three times to be sure of it. The rough distance from the Galactic Center is five hundred million light-years away. Cartwheel, a lenticular ring shaped galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. Containing near-Earth levels of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Molten core, roughly sixty percent of the surface is a saline ocean. Thirty four hour days. Brilliant view at night. Home, for now. Our junk was carrying the necessities for terraforming, and with careful cultivation we could jumpstart the process on this planet. With our herbarium and store of hydrocarbons, we can mold a habitable sector in a year. Our supplies will hold out well past then. With three hundred frozen embryos in genetic storage, we could even begin a human colony. In a hundred thousand years, when the Milky Way makes first contact with the Cartwheel Galaxy, the ten thousandth generation would be there to meet the humans. Perhaps that ten thousandth wouldn’t even be human, perhaps they would be something different entirely.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps Evelyn and I will simply live out our lives in peace. No burden lies on us to action nor to inaction. This is our office space and our vacation home: it is a planet where our decision is the only one which carries weight. On the planet Bygone, the alien sun is strong on our solar sails, and wind blows wild across the plains, brushing aside the tall lavender grass like a mother parts her child’s hair. The ocean tosses its green spray defiantly, and the craggy fjords resist the tyranny of the waves. There seems to be life all around us, life such as we could never have imagined. The planet is tender, untamed. We spend our days gliding around our world on the skipper, just so we can say that we saw it. Five hundred million light years distant means it’s five hundred million times different from Earth. Every day we witness novelties that exceed those of the previous day, though every day we foolishly believe that we have reached the peak of fascination. Even the stars are different. I prefer these to the dull orbs of the Milky Way. What physicists have only dreamed of in simulations and seen dimly on screens, we see in rawness and fullness every evening. The same artist who so carefully left the firm dots visible on Earth’s evening canvas seems to have been a grenadier over the sky of Bygone: splashes of color leave deep pockmarks in the mantle of space, and curtains of nebula shine so brightly that the colors reflect even on the stormy seas. We’ve begun to name each star, giving some familiar names, family names, while others were words fabricated from the depths of our souls. The constellation Cocoa was one of the first names that stuck. Our late daughter will live forever through the ruby nebula that seems to wave like a beating heart. I’m the sentimental one, insisting on stars for the dog, the kids, my brother, and so on; Evelyn is the creative one, the passionate one, the one whose unlimited imagination dreams up alien names that fit each star like a glass slipper. She chooses the made up names: Obher, Aév, Utrek, Kaed.

And one night, I finally found her.

I finally found the star I was looking for. A three star cluster nestled in a nebula cloud. It burns white at the core and diffuses violet tendrils against the inky black, and can be seen during the long dusks and dawns of this place. The constellation Evelyn. Perfect in every way. Evelyn guides my course, and even when we’re apart I feel that she’s with me. This was our last adventure. We both wanted it to be this way. Marriage is adventure enough to last until death should part us. We do miss the memories of home, but only the memories. We did not mourn the dying husk of our daughter as the cancer took her, crying from the pain of assisted breathing and feeding through a tube: we mourned the loss of the vivacious adolescent who chased frogs in the rain and sketched castles and dragons. We do not weep for the husk of our old home where the black of space is raped by commercialism and expansion and the deep black is dimmed by the haze of civilization: we weep for what was once wild and dangerous, what once had a distinct voice and is now silent forever. We mourn at the funeral of the Solar System.

For our lamentations are reserved for the bygone.