Sea Legs

The narrative follows Flight Officer Robert Craig as he prepares to return to Earth after a long stretch in space, enduring bureaucratic processing, robotic decontamination, and a regimen of psychometric and gravitational conditioning. A clinician frames readjustment through the sailors' sea legs metaphor, connecting physiological disorientation to homesickness and altered sensory habits developed in free fall. Through procedural detail and the protagonist's impatience, the story examines how institutional routines, peer reactions, and bodily recalibration complicate the desire to go home and challenge personal identity after prolonged space service.