Say "Hello" for Me

For twenty years, Professor Pettibone has survived alone on Mars after his expedition failed. Every day, he polishes his ship and recites phrases into the void, maintaining an imaginary conversation with Earth. The rituals are all that anchor him to a humanity that may have forgotten him entirely. Then, finally, a rescue ship descends from the rust-colored sky. The spacemen find a wild-eyed man who speaks to his equipment, who has forgotten the texture of another human voice. They offer him passage home. But Pettibone hesitates. He has changed in ways the rescuers cannot fathom, his body weathered, his mind reordered by two decades of silence and stars. The home he knew no longer exists in the same way. What he discovered on the red planet is something the mission never prepared him for: that solitude can become sanctuary, and that some men, after losing everything, find they have gained exactly what they needed. A haunting meditation on what it means to be alone, and the terrifying, tender question of whether we can ever truly return to who we were before.