What We Promised the Empty Years

The moment the capsule sealed she understood there would be no undoing it. The sound was small a precise mechanical click yet it echoed through her body as if something essential had just agreed to be taken away. The technician’s reflection hovered in the curved glass for a second and then stepped back. The chamber lights dimmed. The air grew thinner. Time began to behave differently.

Lena Marisol Ibarra rested her palms on her knees and focused on the feeling of fabric against skin. The suit smelled faintly of antiseptic and old plastic. Her breath sounded too loud inside the helmet. She did not look toward the observation window because she already knew who would be standing there and she did not trust herself to hold his gaze once the separation became official.

Outside the capsule the facility continued its quiet routines. Screens flickered. Systems calibrated. A countdown began that no one in the room spoke aloud.

She closed her eyes and waited for the first ache to arrive.

The program had been described as reversible in theory. A short duration consciousness projection. A way to explore distant time horizons without moving a body through space. It sounded elegant when presented on a screen with diagrams and gentle voices. It sounded manageable until the contracts were signed and the doors closed and the years were stacked carefully ahead of her like something she would have to walk through alone.

Evan Thomas Kline stood behind the glass with his hands folded in front of him. His posture was professional. His face was not. He had tried to argue for a longer preparation period. He had tried to delay the launch window. In the end his objections had been logged and overridden with polite efficiency.

He watched Lena now with a feeling he could not afford to name.

They had met two years earlier in a corridor that smelled of coffee and ozone. She had been reading through a projection on her tablet while walking and collided with him without apology. He had laughed instead of scolding her. She had looked up surprised and then embarrassed and then amused. They had learned each other’s names formally then with credentials attached and job titles spoken clearly.

It took months for those names to soften.

Lena had been recruited for her neural resilience. Evan for his work in temporal signal architecture. Their collaboration began with data sets and simulations and late nights spent adjusting parameters. It drifted inevitably toward shared meals and unspoken concern. Toward a familiarity that grew quietly without permission.

The first time the idea of the projection had been raised Lena had felt a thrill of fear that tasted almost like excitement. To experience years in a matter of days. To witness futures that might never exist otherwise. She had agreed before she fully understood the cost.

Evan had known. He had read the studies and the footnotes. He had understood the psychological strain of temporal isolation. He had tried to tell her without sounding like he was asking her to stay for him.

I can handle it she had said. I always do.

He had nodded and pretended that was enough.

Now the countdown reached its final moments. Lena opened her eyes and met his gaze through the glass. For an instant the room felt suspended. Then the system engaged.

The sensation was not pain but expansion. A loosening. Her awareness stretched outward and forward and something essential detached from the familiar rhythm of her body. The capsule dissolved. The facility vanished. Time unfolded.

She found herself standing in a city she did not recognize beneath a sky that shimmered with unfamiliar patterns. Buildings curved upward like frozen waves. The air felt heavier. Sounds carried differently. She knew without being told that years had passed.

The projection was seamless. Her body moved. She breathed. She walked. Yet everything carried a faint unreality like a memory forming itself as she experienced it.

At first she focused on observation. She recorded details. She followed the protocols. She reminded herself that this was temporary.

But time has a way of insisting on itself. Days passed that felt like days. Weeks that gathered weight. She learned the rhythms of this future city. The way people greeted each other. The way silence lingered longer between words.

At night she dreamed of the lab. Of Evan’s hands hovering just short of touch. She woke with a hollow ache that grew sharper with each passing projected year.

She spoke to Evan through scheduled check ins. The signal arrived delayed and distorted by temporal drift. His face appeared older each time though she knew only days were passing for him. His voice carried warmth and strain in equal measure.

You are doing well he told her. The data is remarkable.

She smiled because he needed her to. I miss coffee she said. Real coffee.

He laughed softly. I will save you a cup.

The check ins grew shorter as the projection deepened. The signal degraded. Eventually they ceased altogether. Lena felt the loss keenly. It settled into her like a second spine.

Years unfolded. She aged within the projection. Lines appeared at the corners of her eyes. Her hair grew long and then streaked with gray. She formed connections with people whose lives intersected hers briefly and intensely. She loved in small careful ways. She lost them too.

Through it all Evan remained a constant absence. A fixed point she oriented herself around without realizing it.

One evening in the projected future she stood on a balcony overlooking a city transformed by decades of change. The sky glowed with artificial constellations. She felt an overwhelming urge to speak his name aloud.

Evan she whispered. The sound vanished into the air.

She understood then that the projection would end soon. The systems would pull her back. The years she had lived would compress into memory. The person she had become would have to reconcile herself with the body she would return to.

When the return came it was abrupt. A contraction. A sense of being folded inward. The city vanished. The sky collapsed. The weight of years pressed into an instant.

Lena gasped as the capsule opened. The lights were too bright. The air too thin. Her hands shook uncontrollably.

Evan was there immediately. He helped her sit up. His touch was steady and warm. He looked the same as the day she had left and impossibly distant.

Welcome back he said softly.

She stared at him and felt tears spill without warning. You have no idea how long it has been she said.

He swallowed. I know.

They debriefed her over the next hours and days. The data she provided reshaped entire fields. The project was declared a success. The costs were noted in careful language and set aside.

Lena struggled to adjust. The world felt shallow and rushed. Conversations moved too quickly. She found herself pausing mid sentence waiting for others to catch up to a depth they could not see.

Evan stayed close. He listened. He did not rush her.

One evening months later they sat on the roof of the facility watching the city lights flicker below. The air smelled of rain. Lena traced patterns on the concrete with her finger.

Do you ever think about what we lost she asked.

He did not pretend not to understand. Every day.

She nodded. I lived a lifetime out there she said. And you were the only thing that stayed the same.

He turned toward her then fully. Lena Marisol Ibarra he said using her full name as if grounding himself. I am sorry.

She looked at him with eyes that had seen decades. I do not regret it she said. But I do mourn it.

They sat in silence. The city breathed around them.

Years later when the program was discussed in textbooks and conferences Lena was often mentioned as a pioneer. Evan became a quiet advocate for ethical limits. They worked together still but something unspoken lived between them like a shared scar.

One night long after the facility had closed Lena dreamed of the future city again. She stood on the balcony beneath the artificial stars. She felt Evan beside her though she could not see him.

When she woke she knew she would carry those years with her always. Not as data. As longing.

And in that knowledge there was a strange gentle peace.