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Jill blushed again and grinned. "Am I that important to you that you would gladly stay for a century? What a wonderful thing to say!"
"It's true," I said and smiled. "Maybe a century is too short!"
Indeed, we traversed a century of traditional barriers over the cup of coffee that she had made and had served outside of the lab in this garden of pink light and sweet smelling air. A group of white garden furniture was set up near one of the ponds. They seemed arranged as a casual rest area, but also for studying. I noticed a stack of books on a table. But mostly I kept looking at her as if I had found a great treasure and might be in danger of loosing it if I kept my eyes of it for even one moment. Hadn't the metal object disappeared that way at the Jacuzzi?
"Why are you so fascinated by me?" she asked me at one point over the second cup of coffee.
The coffee was great. It was real coffee, ingeniously grown on board the ship in a planter at the back of the garden. It was roasted in the lab, as she had explained. Except, that had nothing to do with what fascinated me about her, if indeed I knew the answer.
"Why do you work at the sewer station?" I replied.
"Me? The ship couldn't function without it," she said proudly.
"May I kiss you?" I added instantly.
She nodded and smiled. "The sewer station signifies life," she said, as if it was for a diversion, reacting as if she hadn't heard. "Everything that is essential for life gets recycled here," she added.
"That makes this station the most precious domain in the entire ship," I answered, "and the people who work here the most precious in their humanity."
"Is that why you want to kiss me?" she asked.
"Yes, for a start, and also for a lot of wonderful other reasons that you cannot imagine and I can barely grasp. Enough to kiss all of your lips."
"All of my lips?" she repeated. "What do you mean?" she said slowly and blushed again.
"Because you are a human being," I answered quickly. "That makes you most precious. However, as I said, that's only the beginning, because even as a human being you are very special. Have you ever seen yourself smile? If you had, then you would know. Have you ever loved yourself as I do, for your looks and your wonderful gentle heart, your whit, your caring for life? Then you might begin to glimpse something precious. Who in the world wouldn't want to embrace you and kiss your lips? Who wouldn't dream such wonderful dreams?"
"Maybe there is one person that I know who would," she said, "someone who dares to build bearings for generators out of platinum and zirconium to save the life of everyone on this ship." She began to grin as she said this, almost laugh.
"Do you really mean that?" I asked. "How did you know? The captain never announced anything about that."
"A friend told me. So you see, what you did is not unappreciated. A few people know that you exist. That also makes you the most beautiful man on this flying planet of ours," she said and nodded. "I always wanted to meet this man, to find out what he would say. And here you are!"
"To find out what he would say?" I repeated. "Like, talking about lips and gravity?" I couldn't hold back a grin any longer. "That's not what you expected, right?"
She shook her head. "No James, but have you ever looked into a mirror yourself? Did you ever see you smile? You won't find the likes of it anywhere in universe but here. Did you ever see a star smile? There is no such thing, of course, as a smiling star. A smile in the light of a great Spirit that we are a part of. Its an expression of a different reality than the material. It's a spiritual expression. You a living being that is existing in a spiritual universe. Have you ever seen yourself that way in a mirror?"
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