"The real stars are messy, Elias. They flicker. They are billions of miles away and provide no data for your mission."
One night, the station’s primary light failed. Instead of the sterile white glow, the room was bathed in the raw, unfiltered light of the distant sun. In that moment, Elias looked at his own hands. In the high-definition isolation of the station, they looked alien. Every pore, every fine hair, every tiny ridge of his fingerprints stood out with terrifying clarity. He realized he hadn't touched another living thing in three hundred days.
For the first six months, Elias loved the clarity. He didn't have to deal with the messy smells of a city, the unpredictable humidity of weather, or the draining complexity of human conversation. He spoke only to "Aria," the station’s AI, whose voice was tuned to a frequency that promoted serotonin production. "Aria, zoom in on Crater Sector 7," Elias would say.