Caveat: I simply existed

I wandered through the space station for hours. Then for days. I was isolated, but hardly alone. I didn’t feel compelled to interact with the detritus of 10,000 species around me. I simply existed.

A small cranny beside a crowded corridor, with plants growing out of the wall in the dim simulated sunlight, was my sleeping place. There was a food dispenser nearby. A child not much younger than myself would sometimes stop by the food dispenser and stand and watch me sleeping. I would wake up feeling her eyes on me, and she would run off down a curved stairway, always pausing just as her head disappeared below the stairs’ horizon to look back at me, only to return another time. She had a mark on her forearm – it was a symbol of some kind.

I never spoke to anyone. It never occurred to me that I could. Most people ignored me completely. Those who didn’t, I quickly learned to avoid or escape.

Assemblage 23, “Alone Again.”