Long-Distance Homesickness

It is the only piece of Earth he has left. His job is to monitor the deep-space comms array, a silent vigil for signals that never come, while the outpost of "New Haven" thrums with the sterile efficiency of a machine. Everyone else seems adapted, embracing the synthetic food, the recycled air, the artificial day cycle. But Eli is haunted by a sensory ghost: the smell of petrichor, the weight of a real sun on his skin, the unreliable warmth of human memory.