I stared straight ahead at a wall of stars, so many stars. Of course, a goodly share of those stars were actually galaxies, which would have been more obvious if I had zoomed my eyes in. I didn’t, of course. I was having what the humans might have called a Zen moment. I’d loved that phrase the first time I’d heard it. It was just so… Zen.
The Luxan language didn’t have an equivalent phrase, and the humans had so many. Having a Zen moment. Staring into space. Technically, that’s what I was doing now, but it’s not what they meant when they said it. Daydreaming. Woolgathering. I didn’t even know where that one came from. Trance. Musing. So many different ways to express the same concept. Briefly, I wondered if they all had subtle different meanings.
And then there was a beep, and my moment of Zen came to an end. One of our mining bots had gotten stuck during an asteroid-quake, and the rescue drone had arrived on station. I knew I’d spend the next few hours extricating the original bot and bringing it back here for repair, but that was a more efficient if less exciting use of my time than going myself.
But I allowed myself one more look at the stars; they were so bright and beautiful, through the lonely, dark cold of space.