"You keep waiting for something that will never arrive, but you're so relentlessly stuck on that dream, you won't stop. You're running out of oxygen, the æir around you brings you down."
Mind-machine slowly powering up and running; the flow is interrupted yet vivid; it's shifting cogs and short-circuiting uplinks. No matter what - it's good to finally be back amongst this devious crowd.
A man who has a terminal illness and cannot leave the planet or he will die within a year, in a time when people are no longer born with such things, they cure it before you're born, but can't after. He wants to travel to space to find his lover who is a ship captain. If he goes, he's doomed to die within a year. This is the story of that year: [link] It's one of my favorite books.