It was the darkest night of the month, yet it would come to be known to manifest bright gleams of promise. Under the new moon, the pinpoint brilliance of the firmament was clearest; filling the sky with an imposing immediacy to lose oneself in its seemingly distant beauty. Finn had located himself far from the pollution of city lights, to make the spectacle even more heavenly and wonderous.

The roof on which Finn was sitting was mossy, half-eaten by mold, and surely not far from collapsing into a big pile of shattered tiles and splintered planks. Beneath a layer of dead leaves and abandoned mice nests, the walls worked steadily to hold together the cabin's last parts of healthy wood, and with every move Finn made, they creaked, offering every sign that it had been a long time coming for this house to fall apart. 

Careless of countless warnings, Finn sat on that roof, every night, for hours, to get even just one glimpse of the night sky. 

The cabin was built at the edge of a massive, vertical cliff of rock, surrounded by miles of pine trees and shrubs, so it didn't come as a surprise that Finn considered this place to be one where he felt untroubled and calm. Here he could feel feelings he couldn't quite describe, but, if he were to try, he might have said he nearly felt at peace. 

It could have been the most idyllic night, and yet he would have only been nearly at peace—never absolute. It could have been a wintry night, soundless and full of depth. A sky, so vivid and familiar, you would start believing that black space can truly be full of color. With stars, appearing so crisp and lucid, one would try to grab them. It could have been a night hugged gently by silence, and yet the feeling he felt would only be near to being peaceful. 

Heavy pain locked its claws in Finn's chest and accompanied him wherever he would go. It was unclear whether or not he would ever be able to lose the pain he was carrying and if he could fill the emptiness within himself with something lovely. He was hurting. Every night when he wanted to feel the peace around him, a little part of him would never let it touch his heart. He had little faith that this night was any different from the previous ones. 

Above all, this night wasn't silent. It was a warm summer night and the forest was awake, full of life and energy. He could hear the crickets chirping in the grass growing wildly beside the cabin, and the breeze touched the leaves softly, causing them to rustle. There was not one quiet moment that night, yet, Finn was so focused on something much more important than his surrounding environment, that despite the noise, to him the world seemed muted.

In front of his body, he had placed a machine in the size of a carry on bag, although much less handy. It wasn't an easy task to place it on the roof, and even less so to take it down. Though the device had metal feet to stand on, it certainly wasn't meant to balance on an uneven roof.

The whole thing was unsteady and one wrong move away from joining the crickets in the grass below. Or, if it was unfortunate enough to slide down on the other side of the roof, it was going to fall for a period of seconds before breaking through the surface of the lake, only to then sink to its cold, gloomy bottom. 

If Finn was lucky, the KTD's fate was not to be decided on that night. KTD stood for Kepler Tracking Device, invented by a company that shared its name; Kepler Space Program. Their space stations were spread over many planets throughout the galaxy, crowning it the largest and most successful interstellar travel organization. 

Their main building was located no less than eleven miles from Westlake, the city Finn lived in. A majestic construction, like a glass cylinder that rose eighty-six stories high, with defined architectural designs, such as the color-changing roof that absorbed solar energy, or the palace-like gateway. It was without doubt the most unique building within the range of vision.

KSP was intentionally encircled by a desert-like environment. Right there, rockets left the atmosphere on a weekly routine, and the pollution and noise would have destroyed any wildlife and vegetation around it. It was a justified decision to build the head building with an acceptable distance from society and nature but not far enough to lead to employees refusing the daily travel range. 

The most experienced scientists worked at this building, day and night, granting it with universal fame. Their confidential research was foremost relevant when it comes to space exploration and the invention of tools and machines, such as the Kepler Tracking Device. It was the sole invention that allowed an authorized individual to manually receive a signal from a specific satellite or spacecraft that KSP operated. Necessary information had to be provided to display any results.

To Finn, it was of high importance to keep it functional, not only because he desperately needed to use its tools every night, but it was also quite expensive equipment he had decided upon himself to secretly remove from his father's possession. 

The device had a touchscreen facing towards Finn's direction. Its brightness highlighted Finn's face and threw the shadows behind his upper body, leaving him to be the only visible presence. Although he was born with a pigmentation deficiency and the shortage of vitamin B12, which originated his hair to grow white, his skin and eyes were healthy and average-colored.

That his eyes felt dried out and tired was unrelated to his genetic condition. He had been looking at randomly arranged numbers for a couple of hours now, and no matter how many numbers he continued to replace, an entirely different set of numbers was extremely likely to show the same discouraging results. 

He looked at the sky once more, but his eyes were far too adjusted to the shine of the screen, that the lack of pollution around him scarcely mattered. He couldn't see the stars. Not now at least, but it hardly mattered to him, as all he sought to see was the appearance of an affirmative message in front of him.

He had entered the code that he had created to program an automatic sorting of possible coordinates, and patiently waited for the machine to locate a signal in the depths of space. While looking into the same direction as the supposed signal, he spoke softly to himself.

"I'm begging you. Please, just this once, work."

The coordinates in the process were some of too many, and Finn kept track of them all. Every time the device hadn't found a signal at the instructed location, which to his misfortune had been every single time thus far, he noted the numbers to prevent repetition.

To create an even more unfavorable situation, the planet's constant rotation forced Finn to carefully recalculate the changes of the coordinates, which were already known to be incorrect, every time he entered new digits. Otherwise, he would have walked in circles of failure.

"Show yourself. Come on."

By now he had closed his eyes. His hands were forming fists, his heart pounding faster and nervously out of fear to be disappointed once more. The machine made a pop-up sound and revealed the answer to Finn's only question at the moment; did it find a signal? He opened his eyes bravely, knowing that all odds were against him. As he turned his head to the machine he almost felt optimistic, but yet another red response appeared, feeding the feeling of emptiness and allowing it to crawl a little deeper.

No signal found. Would you like to try again? mocked the message written in provocative red.

"Piece of junk!" Finn shouted and couldn't hold his anger back from slamming his left hand on the screen. The frustration had pushed him down on his knees. And just like he sat at the edge of a cliff, his hope and spirit were just as close to a metaphorical edge, doomed to slip and fall.

As Finn was holding his breath, trying to hold back his emotions, the world around him became a little less muted. Now he could hear the chirping and the rustling, and not long after that, he began to exhale the dead air, and with it his anger. He was calm now, as calm as the surface of the lake, which was reflecting the night sky as clear as a mirror.

He dared to look up, only to find himself in an endless sea of stars. The moon was hidden in the dark, positioned in between sun and globe, allowing the stars around it to shine brighter and sharper. Even suns too far to see at any other night, or luminous bodies too weak to carry their light that far, now it was clear that they were up there gleaming like never before.

Despite the boundless beauty of a place they were still trying so eagerly to understand, Finn felt nothing but sorrow. He had lost something important, and not enough time had passed since, to offer his wounds to become scars. His innocent mind, however, believed that what is lost can be found. And only what's gone, will never return.

"I promised you I'd see you again. But how can I keep my promise? How could I keep it if you are nowhere to be found? Have I lost you? Lost to the room of infinity, or are you truly gone? Nitha—" his voice died in a sob.

He had avoided saying her name for many moons, and just as he had feared for far too long, it hurt like an unsatisfied fire burning all the oxygen in his body, leaving him lifeless with his soul drowning in half-formed regrets.

"Maybe it's time to let go—to give up."

What Finn hadn't realized was that his slap on the machine had replaced his last two digits, causing the machine to search for another signal in space. And just as his hope was leaning over the edge of that metaphorical cliff, the sound of a result popped up one last time. Finn's eyes had been strapped to the sky, and in his confusion, he turned his head towards his left shoulder to investigate the cause for the noise. 

The screen was white, and two life-changing words were highlighted in green: Signal found. Finn's heart skipped a beat, and just like that, the entire world lay still for what felt like a fraction of eternity. It must have been an illusion of time because not even a half a breath later he ripped his entire body away from the view just to confront the metal box sitting next to him on that very lonely roof.

"No. Am I dreaming?' It was to his own surprise that he was capable of forming a proper sentence. "Could it be?"

His clammy hands pulled out of his pocket a smaller device, which, when it was turned off, looked like nothing more than a thin plate of glass in the shape of a rectangle with rounded corners. It scanned his fingerprint and flashed up.

"If this is you,' he said under his breath in fear of challenging his own luck, "then I will find you," with his phone he captured a photo of the accidental coordinates, "and I will bring you home."

If his hands had not already shown it, then his voice was certainly giving it away; he was shaking. Finn was clueless about the possible immensity of distance that lay between him and wherever the signal was coming from, although he did feel microscopic and incapable.

His hands grabbed on to the ridge of the roof, searching for support. Unsuccessful of feeling any safer, he scooched a little closer to the stone chimney to his right. Placing both arms around its corners, he felt a little more secure and peeked back up to the stars.

"I can't believe I found a signal! Over the odds. Now how can I get to you? What possibilities can bring you back into my arms?"

The sky seemed close enough to touch, yet, if gravity reversed, he knew he'd fall forever.

"You are so inconceivably far away. Somewhere lost in space."

Not far from the old cabin began an even older road, leading out of the forest and eventually merging with a much younger and unbroken street. It led to the city, where most citizens of the area lived, including Blake Bell, Finn's closest friend.

He was knocked out and experienced wild dreams until a shrilling sound jerked him back into reality. 

The alarm was coming from his nightstand, but he was far too dazed to take smart action. Instead, Blake rolled over, feeling weightless for a moment until a solid wall smashed his face. Following; harmless pain. He had fallen off his bed along with his blanket.

This drop had given him the final smack to help him realize that he was in his bedroom, that it was night, and that the wall that had just bruised his cheekbone, was actually his floor. Lastly, the alarm that had belligerently brought an end to his dreams, was in fact nothing more than the ringing of his own phone.

With the palm of his hand, he rubbed his eyes with such force, that the birthmarks in his face would have come off if they weren't part of his skin. At the time, it was a little after two o'clock, which led Blake to answer his phone like a grumpy old man.

"Have you seen the time?" he groaned at his friend and hooked his fingers to his heavy dark curls.

"I found a signal!" Finn shouted through the speaker.

Blake's eyes cracked open and he rose up from the floor. "You did wha—"

"Get over here!" Finn interrupted impatiently.

"I'm on my way" was Blake's constrained response, and just as fast as the call had begun, it took its end.