Beans whose parent forests vanished three generations ago. Every pour carries a climate that no longer exists outside this hatch.
Under rotation we weigh coffee by moles, not grams. The ritual still works. Perhaps it is the ritual that does the work.
A kettle begins to hum before the lights have finished reaching full spectrum. The operator does not speak. The machine does not speak. The water, warming toward 94°C, is the only voice.
Outside, the dying star turns another half-revolution. Inside, eighteen grams of ground matter sit in a paper cone and wait for a hand.
Bada: in an older tongue, the sea. In this hatch, the same word — the dark liquid that gathers at the bottom of a cup, an ocean in miniature, complete with its own currents and tides of flavor.
We preserve it not because it is efficient. Efficiency has its own bulkhead elsewhere on this vessel. We preserve it because a species that has forgotten how to wait for water to bloom has forgotten something older than coffee.
Three minutes and forty-two seconds. The cup receives. The ritual completes. The hatch seals.
— log entry, rotation 4,221
Heat finds the palms first, then the sternum. The station continues its slow orbit. Nothing has changed and everything is different.
Optimal window. The first sip is permitted.