What does a birthday matter in space?
It doesn’t, is the answer. A birthday marks a completion of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Removed from that context, without an Earth to measure and a sun to revolve around, there is no meaning associated with a certain amount of days passing from the one on which you were reportedly born. It’s nothing special. Not on Earth, and especially not in space.
Keith doesn’t care. It doesn’t bother him. He’s never really had a birthday in the first place, even when the passage of 365 days wasn’t an arbitrary amount but in fact assigned meaning by the giant rock he lived on. As a child his birthday was recognized on the first of October sometimes, with all the other October-born children. One foster home bought him a small pastry. Another even wrapped a present for him: a small model airplane that he’d broken the next week when he’d thrown it at his foster brother.
Once, there had been a cake.
