Birthdays don't count for much when the rest of the universe runs on a different sort of time, so after awhile, he decided to just stop counting. What was the point, after all? Counting his birthdays didn't do much anymore except remind him of how many years it had been since he'd watched the Earth blow up into fragments of floating rock; how many years it had been since his father had gone off and away, leaving him orphaned and alone, after a fashion.
Not that he didn't appreciate Tek, the guy did what he could. But Tek wasn't his father, and it was his father who he needed.
Cale continued to look out the window, fourteen now and all limbs and too-stretched torso. Something that barely resembled a backpack was a slouched heap by his right foot, and the metal surrounding the glass was cool underneath his fingers.
Outside the universe yawned, black and freckled with stars, and his reflection looked blankly back at him. The baby fat had gone and his eyes were dull in an apathy that he had just acquired. There was nothing to see out there. Just colonies where people struggled to piece back their lives. Just stations where anything from the butt-ugly to the freakishly beautiful turned their noses to the slightest whiff of human being.
Out there were roads you could never leave marks or footprints on. Where even the exhaust from transport ships dissipated leaving no trace of passers-by. Out there was space, and that space was just as big as the hole he was digging in his heart.