Time Served

by R. S. Breed

Thirty-one years. Nine junctions. Then two.

He has spent those years counting the stars above the prison yard, wedge by wedge, night by night. The official bulletins say the sky is stable within survey variance. Velk's own count says thirty-nine faint stars are gone.

His family is nine junctions away. From the Cairn, where rigging crews are hiring, they would be two. So on the morning his sentence expires, a Vekhol who has lived by bells, forms and other people's schedules collects the belongings taken from him three decades earlier and prepares to spend his first free money on a terrible cup of tea.

Time Served is a complete standalone science-fiction short read about distance, endurance and the arithmetic of going home. Set in the Fracture Cosmology. No previous reading required.

A standalone short story in The Working Sky. Complete in itself — start anywhere.

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