"The Speed of Love"

by: Paul Layman

Failed attempt at su-SPEC-t's Flash Fiction contest. Story ended up being too long to enter into the contest, but a friend who had read it expressed that it was a good story so I'm deciding to post it here.
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He sped away from her, pressing his face longingly against the cold glass of the ship in attempt to be as close as possible to his love.

She laid supine upon her slab, longing the love whom didn't belong on this desolate rock anymore and who's trajectory would proliferate the distance between them to be measured in light years.

The Star ship shot through the stellar void, the planet completed it's revolutions. A calculation device flipped over to him and tapped the bulbous mass of his face, prompting him to take it with his feelers.

'299,792,458 meters per second.' He tapped into the device, the speed of light. Multiplied by 3, the current level of warp they were influenced by came to a number of '899,377,374'. This was then devided by a parsec, which was the revolution speed of the planet where his heart remained. It seemed an eternity, wrapped in the magically enlightening realm of numbers, physics explaining the mysteries of every day living until he reached the most concise answer he could come to in regards to the speed for which he departed the presence of his love.

"Three Parsecs, to the power of seventh hundreths." He whispered to himself, speaking into the calculation device like it was a kiss. So much faster then his sensible love could understand. He sighed, sending the device next to him in a spin quickened by longing and pain.

3^.07LO.VE3^.07LO.VE3^.07LO.VE

He reached out with his antennae and allowed the mass of watery blue eyes to fall upon the device.

3^.07 It read, as it had read upon his initial conclusion. But slowly, he turned it over.

LO.VE The figured blinked in a bright blue on the small screen to the device. The speed they were moving away from each other equaled The Speed of Love, and him and his Mrs. were perfectly entwined in this perfectly enacted equation. So many variables which had to fall into place in order to make this possible. It was fate. Their distance was anaologous of Love, emotional attachment in carnate. The small crease of a mouth curled upwards as the device was sent flying away. A feeler was raised and waved from the view port as he watched the orange marble fade into the distance and blink from existence at the speed of love.