This was where I would manufacture a reason to stay aboard

The ship reached space dock without ceremony.

No countdown. No applause. Just the quiet deceleration as systems throttled down and external noise gave way to the soft hiss of pressure equalizing. The kind of arrival that doesn’t announce itself because it doesn’t need to.

I stood on the deck longer than necessary, not out of hesitation, but out of recognition.

This was the place where I used to linger—where I would check systems again, run one more diagnostic, review logs as if the data might change if I stared at it long enough. This was where I would manufacture a reason to stay aboard. Another mission. Another tweak. Another explanation.

I didn’t do that this time.

The ship had already given me what I came for.

Not answers. Not absolution. Not a perfected protocol.

It gave me quiet.

Quiet enough to hear myself walking without needing the sound to drown anything else out. Quiet enough to notice when I was hungry instead of activated. Quiet enough to feel sadness without turning it into movement. Quiet enough to recognize that what I had been calling freedom was often just velocity.

I powered down the galley systems. The replicator went dark—not disabled, just idle. It would work again if asked. It simply wasn’t in charge anymore.

That felt important.

I didn’t hate the ship. I didn’t blame it. It had carried me through a necessary era. It held me while I learned how to survive noise. It let me run when running was all I had.

But I no longer needed a vessel that required motion to make sense.

I gathered my gear without urgency. Each item had weight again. Not symbolic weight—actual weight. The kind you notice when you’re not rushing. The kind that reminds you that you have a body, and that the body knows when it’s time to move and when it’s time to stop.

At the airlock, I paused.

Not because I was afraid to leave, but because I wanted to mark the moment accurately. This wasn’t escape. It wasn’t retreat. It wasn’t even arrival.

It was graduation.

I didn’t owe the ship gratitude, and it didn’t owe me permission. We were simply done with each other.

I stepped off.

The dock was still. No engines. No vibration. Just the low, ordinary hum of a place designed to be inhabited rather than endured. I noticed how my breath settled without instruction. How my shoulders dropped without command.

There was no mission waiting for me on the other side of the hatch.

That, I realized, was the point.

The next chapter wouldn’t be written by movement or urgency or clever protocols. It wouldn’t require me to earn rest through exhaustion or justify stillness with stories. It would be built through repetition—through choosing the same quiet lever again and again until it stopped feeling like a choice at all.

Raw.

Pan.

Plate.

Now.

And then, simply, later.

I didn’t look back at the ship.

I didn’t need to.

The noise had already stayed behind.

What I carried forward was something else entirely: a life that no longer required running to feel real.

WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co