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"It's time."
Melissa sent the message to her lifelong companions, each one on opposite sides of the planet she was orbiting.
Izuku was in Japan, having shuttered their old home and the family business, putting the affairs in order for their retirement. He was standing by at the New Kansai Travel Station.
Ochako had tarried for the moment in their most recent dwelling, under the Jungfrau Dome. High above the wastes of western Switzerland, it was ideal for Melissa's research and the site of many treasured moments. It had been turned over to those who wished to continue the work, and Ochako was waiting in Melissa's old Skyport at the top of the Dome.
Lives long in the living were nearing a metamorphosis. Melissa had arranged it all: clearance out of the system, their new home among the stars, their next missions of exploration and plenty of scientific curiosities to occupy them along the way. It would be a far trip, but not a slow one.
Melissa got the ready signal from Kansai and Jungfrau and sent the command. The technology had been controversial a few hundred years ago, but she'd done the legwork and proven it safe and reliable. That didn't stop her from scanning anxiously for the eternity of moments required for the transfer.
"It's good to see you both again. I love you."
Izuku had told them both every single day of their lives, 328 years together and counting, that he loved them. He always believed you can never say I Love You too often, but when one reaches that level of familiarity with one's spouses, it can become automatic, like their daily news updates or the fallout cleanup.
Izuku battles every day to make sure it's never meaningless. 120,000 days in a row those words have come from his mouth, or his implants, or his messages, or the recordings he'd left when he knew he would be out of touch every other way.
"Missed you two. Nice ship you got us, Mel! This is going to be great." Ochako had listened 120,000 days in a row to those words, and knew every single one was sincere. She joined her partners and examined the sensor readouts. The view was one they'd been used to, orbiting the blue and green and tan and white marble that most of Humanity still called home.
Most, but not all, and soon it would be a memory for these three as well.
Melissa embraced them both, her feelings of joy overwhelming and subsuming them all until the three were welded into one, the strong nuclear force fusing them into one nucleus.
"I'm so glad you can join me. Here, let's go over the plan one more time."
She sent them the itinerary: check in with outgoing system traffic monitors, clear customs at Serenity Station, make for the waypoint out past Neptune, but first…
"We have to do a shakedown cruise. This is our home now, and we must make sure it's all functional. How about we do a quick loop around Luna and then on to Europa? We'll test the fuel collectors at the Rings."
Ochako felt herself grow light as a feather. "Mel, you sure know how to make a girl's dreams come true." She flashed back to her little backyard scope, hundreds of years before, back when she'd actually needed mechanical aid to see those rings.
Izuku was busying himself playing with all the controls and menus. "Woah, this ship is awesome! I know you said it has a top of the line plasma drive, but the mass to thrust ratio is wild! You really outdid yourself this time, sweetie!"
Melissa was quite satisfied with the reaction. She'd spent the last two decades designing their new home, and no limits had held her back. "In order to find the limits of possibility, you have to push just a bit into the impossible, my darling."
Ochako pulled Izuku's attention down to Earth. "It'll be strange. But as long as I have you two with me, I'm ready."
Izuku embraced both of them in turn. He nodded. "Let's do it."
They both turned to Melissa, who had been waiting for this moment for what seemed like centuries.
"Andromeda, this is Specific Impulse exiting Earth orbit for Luna, making for final destination Hypernet Gate to Glenlyon."
Ochako gave her a nudge and said "Good name."
A voice way too young to be working at a real job in her opinion answered. "
Specific Impulse,
flight plan received and acknowledged. Safe travels."
Melissa remembered with total clarity the day she had met these two. She retained total clarity of four centuries worth of memories, having been the first human uploaded to an artificial body long before Izu and Ocha had joined her. She was then the first to make the leap to teleportation, beaming that body and successfully reintegrating the matter stream at the destination. Now, she had been the first human to port herself into the greatest physical habitat she could think of: a starship.
Izuku had found he enjoyed the sensation of opening and closing the auxiliary cargo bay hatch. "It's tingly!" He would say, a smile on his digital face in the "room" they shared.
Ochako loved mapping the sky as a girl, and had found her new "eyes" let her see billions of light-years in every direction at once. She had a whole new sky to chart at Glenlyon, their destination at the other end of the galaxy.
And Melissa? She didn't know what would happen. It was a beautiful feeling. The first time she remembered experiencing it was the day she had met two young people on their first day of school. She'd taken herself to attend a normal human school for normal human children, despite being much older and infinitely smarter. But they'd befriended her, grown to know her, and soon became inseparable.
Now, they'd travel the void together as one, in harmony, and still in love.