From "Genesis Earth" by Joe Vasicek

Earth was a ghost that haunted me. She was the single greatest thing that set us space-born apart from the older generation, the five hundred members of the original mission team. Though Heinlein Station was the only home I had ever known, I soon learned that Earth, a world I had never seen except in pictures and videos, was where I was truly from.

My parents used to set the decorative screens in their bedroom to cycle through pictures of Earth. While they were busy working in the lab, I would often sneak inside and stare at those images for hours. The landscapes and skyscapes they depicted were always so strange and alien. The unbroken blue expanse called ‘sky’ overhead, instead of the grayish space rock of our asteroid. That line between floor and sky known as the ‘horizon.’ Solid ground underfoot, instead of the milky starfield shining up through transparent floors. Trees, plants, and shrubbery growing freely without the aid of hydroponics. Hundreds of human beings walking down wide open-air corridors called ‘roads’--more people than I’d ever known in my young life.