"[The heavens] is more the domain of science than poetry. But it's the stars as not known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveler knows."
--Henry David Thoreau
Gilbert
cried as he stole the rocketship. The world had all become too, too much, and
he’d been living in it too, too long, and now it was time to demand some
answers.
He wasn’t sure his head was meant to
bounce about inside his helmet this much. It had been easy to get into the
rocket. No one had expected it of an elderly man. But now that he was well off
the ground, someone must have taken notice. He looked up to check the rearview
mirror…except there was no rearview mirror.
It’s a rocketship, you old git. It’s
not like knicking somebody’s motor.
He just hoped it would be easier to
park.
Three months ago, Gilbert had made a
transmission into space. It was the kind of thing one took a lifetime to
achieve. Lucky for Gilbert, one lifetime was exactly what he had under his
belt. Not knowing what language to blast out to aliens or gods or whatever was
out there, he sent a starchart with a location and time marked out. Three
months should be enough time for their lot to receive the transmission, select
a committee to make the journey, pack supplies, and reach the marked location. Definitely
should be.
The rocket ruptured out of the
atmosphere and into the dead air surrounding the Earth. He tugged off his
helmet and tapped at some keys on the console, some the right ones and some the
wrong. His hands (and indeed his entire body) quaked even though the ship had
stopped jiggling about. He set the rocket to drift.
He wiped his eyes on his nylon space
sleeve and gazed into the black outside the window. It didn’t feel sprawling
and infinite the way the astronauts led them to believe. It felt like he’d been
locked in a dark closet and no one would let him out or tell him why he was in
the closet in the first place, but he knew there had got to be somebody out
there who had a reason to have stuck him in there like that, and it only seemed
right that they open the door and explain what this was all about, at least at
some point before he croaked.
Gilbert had questioned the meaning of
life since he was very young. “What does it all mean, what does it all mean,
what does it all mean?” must have been the bane of his ma’s motherhood, but even
though he never got a straight answer, he figured that grownups must know, and
someday when he was a father his own self, he would know, too.
The day Gilbert became a father was
the day he recognized the lie. Was he—who despite being a quarter century
living felt he knew less about the way life worked than when he was seven—supposed
to raise a child, know all the right and wrong things to do, all the right and
wrong things to say? Did all parents feel this under-qualified? The universe
felt very big that day, and the answers farther out of reach.
All right, then. Old people. They
probably figure out what life’s all about before they die. They’re satisfied
when the reaper comes for them, aren’t they? They always said things like they’d
had a good life and now it’s time to go and all that. Something just clicks
into place when you’ve lived that long and it all makes sense.
Gilbert was nearly 98 years old, and
the greatest kept secret was that old people were exactly the same as young
people except in looser skin. It was okay for an old person to die, they always said, but not for a young person. As
though an old person was any less scared, confused, or innocent. As if they
understood death and were really ready for it. As if the old man who could eat
nothing but applesauce and mashed peas didn’t actually hate applesauce and
mashed peas, as if because of those mashed peas he wasn’t the exact same
schoolboy he’d been then, asking his mother lots and lots of questions and not
getting any answers.
When he knew that, he knew that
whoever did have the answers sure as hell weren’t here on Earth. You see, there
are other stars, stars not known to science, stars only the loneliest of boys
can see. And around those stars orbit handsome worlds with space stations or
mountains of honey or cherubs on clouds, take your pick. More likely any world out
there would be nothing anyone on Earth had ever imagined.
Gilbert’s map pointed to one spot on
a moon. Specifically, the Earth’s moon.
All right, so the rendez-vous point
wasn’t exactly at the halfway mark, but the moon was as far as Gilbert could
make it on a tank of gas in a stolen rocket. Surely they would understand his
limitations and view his attempt as a kind gesture.
The way he figured it, anyone out
there intelligent enough to receive his message and follow the coordinates was
either omniscient or at least far superior to his own race. They would have
emotional intelligence to match. In fact, they had probably known about the
Earth for a long time. He imagined an alien child, a demigod perhaps, an angel,
whatever, looking out his bedroom window at the Earth’s yellow sun, like a boy
wondering what the ants would think if only they understood more of the world,
wishing he could say something, anything, to the people on the Earth to make
all the pain and loss seem like it was for a good reason. If only there was an
opportunity.
Gilbert fired some thrust out one
side of the rocket to pivot the moon into the window. It wouldn’t take much
longer to get there. He flipped a switch that played Brahms and he took a
packet of almonds from his space pocket.
He hummed all the way to the moon.
The
rocket didn’t so much as land as it did skip, banging away at ancient gray
formations and skidding with little friction to slow it down. Gilbert pulled on
his helmet and clung to the chair straps until the shaking stopped.
There wasn’t sound on the moon, not
even that desolate wind sound. This place was more desolate than that. No wind.
Only inertia, blowing clouds of colorless dust into space, kicked up from Gilbert’s
landing.
He looked up at those friendly stars
he’d been talking to since the day he’d become a father, and he thought of his
children, long dead now. They’d all lived long lives, did so many things. And
yet, here he was, once again in a world where they didn’t exist, and he couldn’t
see a single result of their work, a single sign that they had made any impact,
and if people as hardworking and life-loving as they couldn’t make the smallest
footprint, then no one could. So what was the point of trying to make a
difference?
There was no such thing as one small
step on the moon because every footlift was tethered to invisible marionette
strings, yanking his cracking knees toward his chest.
Finally, he reached the crater he’d
indicated on the map. He sat down to wait. He wished he could eat more almonds.
He noticed his footprints. Unless the
human race made some miraculous migration to this dead little rock, those
prints would never blow away or get trampled down. Ironically, it seemed that
the only way to leave a mark on the world was to do it alone where no one would
ever see.
He always caught himself leaving
artifacts of his life for future archaeologists. Taking photos, writing journal
entries. Why? His children were dead, left no grandchildren. The world was too congested
to let his artifacts cement. No one would give his things a second look after
his death, especially since there was no one left who knew him.
“It’s odd to be on a world with seven
billion people and not know a single one,” he told the stars. His voice bounced
back at him inside his helmet. He turned a dial on his wrist so that he could
broadcast outward on all wavelengths. “That’s what happens when you’re the last
to die. Unlucky. Every single person I meet is a stranger. I’ll never walk down
the street and recognize someone I know.
“Do you know what it’s like being that
alone? If it’s true your identity is made up of all the ways you think
different people see you, then every time someone dies, a piece of you dies.
Isn’t that sad?
“Aye, I’ve lost my train of thought now.
Listen to me, an old man. You know, you might say it’s a good opportunity to be whoever I want to be
and I thank you for your encouragement, but I don’t know if you realize as the
universe expands, our place in it shrinks, and there’s too much noise. No one’s
making any difference. My son—Mark, he was called—spent his whole adult life
fighting to get equal rights for the poor in the justice system, and when that
law passed, I thought hoo-ee, my son’s gone and done it, my son’s changed the
world. But you know what happened? The very next term, they threw out that law.
Now what does that tell you? Hmm? I’ll tell you what that tells you: Nothing’s
permanent. There’s always somebody scuffing up your footprints. Oh, I’ve lost
my point again.”
A shape blacked out the stars. Gilbert
gasped and stood up. Was it a spaceship in the distance? He moved left, trying
to make out its shape against the sky. The blackness covered the ground.
Shadow? Dust rushed up, only inches away.
It wasn’t a spaceship. Something was
already here. Close. Right in front of him!
“You came!” Gilbert cried, stepping
back, unsure if the creature—if it was
a creature—was moving toward him. He squinted, trying to focus on its shape. “Why
can’t I see you?”
The creature’s emptiness blocked out the
ground and sky behind it, but it displayed no features. Gilbert wasn’t even
sure it was facing him.
“Can you see me?” He waved a hand. “Oh,
I’ve heard about this in that, um, quantum mechanics thing. They said my brain
can’t see anything it doesn’t understand.” Gilbert fiddled with the knob on his
wrist. “Are you picking up this frequency?”
The shadow made no indication.
“Please. I’ve been crying out to you for
seventy years. I’ve come all this way. Please
tell me you can hear me.” He dropped to his knees, or rather, leaned into
the weak gravity. “You don’t understand how much your answers could mean to
me. I’m a dying man, a child still, really. I’ve got no one left. My wife died
three months ago. Have you lost anyone who was so close to you, you forgot they
aren’t a part of your own mind? I’ll tell you, your wife being dead feels
exactly the same way as your wife being out of the room right up until the
moment when it doesn’t. And then it becomes the most unbearable…Aye, I’ve lost
my—”
He wished he could wipe his tears. “If
there is anything you can say that will make me say ‘Yes, I understand—That makes all this pain worth it,’
please, I’ve never needed to hear it more than now.”
His ears tingled as though he’d been
listening to loud music too long.
“Was that you…speaking?” Gilbert asked. “Please,
speak again. I’ll concentrate harder.”
He waited, listening to his breathing
inside the helmet. This was it. All the answers mankind never knew.
More ringing in his head, and then, “All.”
“All?” Gilbert asked. “Please, one more
time. I almost heard you.”
Then, through tinnitus-rattled soundwaves vibrating in Gilbert’s speakers, he heard what the creature had come all
this way to say, the exact same thing it had been whispering at the Earth for
years from its bedroom window, just hoping an Earthman would hear. “Please,
what does it all mean?”
