Zan looked to me, her form wavering even worse than before, which I figured meant she was crying harder now.
I was crying myself.
“If you can’t talk to me,” I asked, “can you at least still keep an eye on me? Visit earth now and then?”
“No. To protect myself, I will have to cut all ties with earth.”
I heard the pounding of footsteps outside the bathroom. Then Roddy, Cesar, and Kamoze burst through the door. I could tell it was them from their voices and laughter. Obviously, they’d been sent to take a last toilet break before heading back to earth. Cesar and Kamoze beat Roddy out and ducked into the stalls on either side of me. “Ha-ha!” Cesar taunted. “You lose!”
Roddy banged on the door to my stall. “Dash, is that you in there?”
“Yes.”
“Stop hogging the toilet! I’ve got to go.”
“I’m almost done.”
“C’mon! The rocket’s almost here, and it’s two hundred fifty thousand miles back to earth.”
I looked to Zan. It was bad enough that she had to leave, but I hated to think that this would be one of her last memories of humanity.
“Hold on,” I said, then stepped out of the stall.
Roddy barely waited for me to clear the way before shoving past and slamming the door on me.
I realized that, for all the time I’d just spent in the toilet stall, I hadn’t actually gone myself.
Zan had stepped out into the bathroom with me. It wasn’t exactly private, though, with the three boys in the stalls. This wasn’t the way I wanted to end things at all.
“Good-bye, Dashiell,” Zan said.
“Wait—”
“I can’t. The time has come.” Zan gazed at me sadly with her piercing blue eyes. “Have a nice life,” she said.
Then she vanished for good.
Excerpt from The Official NASA Procedures for Contact with Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life © National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, 2029 (Classification Level AAA)
FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
A cautionary note: Any IEL we encounter may be from a civilization so radically different from ours that our systems of communication are indecipherable to each other. Perhaps we simply won’t be able to understand their language, or maybe they will communicate in a way so alien to us that we will be unable to even process it.I In this case, it may take a great deal of time to establish a rapport, although in time our top scientists will certainly be able to figure it out. In cases like this, do not get frustrated—and certainly do not take your frustrations out on the IEL. Instead, do your best to convey kindness, friendliness, and excitement that contact has been made.
* * *
I. For example, they might use a range of the aural or visual spectrum that we can’t detect, or communicate using senses that we don’t even possess.
21
NOT-SO-FOND FAREWELL
The very last lunar day
Evacuation time
We didn’t even see the rockets land. We were too busy suiting up in the staging area, and there were no windows aimed toward the launchpad, save for the small one in the air-lock door. Since there was no atmosphere on the moon, we couldn’t hear the landing either. The only way we knew it had happened was when Nina announced it.
“Touchdown is complete,” she said. “Prepare for evacuation.”
Despite her flat, emotionless monotone, the words were still among the most wonderful I had ever heard.
Our suiting up went much less chaotically than it had the day before. Partly this was because we had just done it and partly it was because there was no emergency this time. Since only half of us were leaving, the others were available to help us get our suits on.
The Sjobergs were nowhere to be seen. Lars and Lily had a decent excuse—both were locked up—but Sonja and Patton had simply wanted nothing to do with us.
Of course, it wasn’t like any of us really wanted to see them, either.
Dad and Chang had spent the past few hours stacking all the gear that was being returned to earth outside the base, making repeated trips back and forth through the air lock. Now they were back inside. Dad was helping Mom suit up while Chang assisted me.
Meanwhile, Daphne worked with Violet. Daphne was obviously trying to hold back tears. “I’m going to miss you so much,” she told my sister. “You’ve been like a little ray of sunshine around here.”
“We’ll still get to see each other back on earth,” Violet told her.
This wasn’t really true. Once we returned, there would be a two-week quarantine period at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, followed by a few weeks of rehab while we rebuilt the strength in our bodies to handle earth gravity. But after that we would all be returning to our real homes, which were scattered all over the world. My family would be going back to Hawaii, while Daphne would be going to NASA Mission Control in Houston. Chances were, we’d barely see her again, if ever.
Violet hadn’t put this together yet. Even though we’d only been on the moon for eight months, that was still a significant portion of her young life; she was only six and a half years old. After spending so much time in a cramped space with everyone close by, she seemed to have forgotten just how big the earth was. And no one wanted to burst her bubble by telling her the truth yet.
“Maybe we can have a slumber party!” Violet said excitedly.
“I’d like that,” Daphne told her. “It’s a date.” She tousled Violet’s hair one last time, then placed the helmet on over her head and locked it into place.
“Daphne’s right,” Chang told me. “Things are going to be pretty dull here without all you guys around.”
“Oh, there’ll still be plenty of fun things to do,” I teased. “You’ll have all the Sjobergs to play with. And there’s always the danger of asphyxiation to keep you on your toes.”
“You know what I’m not gonna miss?” Chang asked. “That attitude.” He smiled to let me know he was joking, then leaned in close and whispered, “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Dash. Keep in touch with me when we’re back on earth. NASA could use a brain like yours.”
I was so stunned by this, I wasn’t sure what to say. Having a supergenius like Chang tell me that I was smart was one of the most amazing things that had ever happened to me. All I could manage was, “Okay.”
“Good.” Chang held up my helmet. “Take one last good breath of Moon Base Alpha air, and then I’m closing you up.”
“Wait!” Kira bounded over. She had her entire suit on except for her helmet. “We’re not going to see each other on the ride back.”
“I know,” I said. “But we’ll see each other in quarantine.”
“Still, it’s going to be a few days, so . . .” Kira gave me a hug. Or the closest you could get to a hug while wearing a space suit, which wasn’t much of a hug at all. We were more like two sumo wrestlers bumping bellies. “Thanks for being my friend up here. It’s been wild.”
“It has,” I agreed.
To my surprise, Kira gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Have a safe ride,” she said, then turned to Violet. “You too,” she said, then gave her another sumo hug and, since Violet’s helmet was already on, a kiss on the face plate.
“Bye, Kira! See you on earth!” Violet yelled to be heard through her helmet.
“Yeah. See you down there.” Kira bounded back over to Dr. Alvarez, who helped her put her helmet on.
“Y’know,” Chang said to me thoughtfully, “if I liked girls, and I was your age, that’s the kind of girl I’d like.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, either. So I simply told Chang, “I’m ready to go.”
He put my helmet on and locked it into place.
Nearby, my parents were wrapping up their safety checks for each other. They came over and made sure that Violet and I were properly suited up as well, then said their good-byes to Chang and Daphne. There was lots more hugging.
Nina
emerged from her office, but she didn’t make a move to say good-bye, or give anyone a hug, or do anything else remotely human. She didn’t even wave to us. Instead she ordered, “Let’s move it, people. You don’t want to miss your liftoff window.”
So we headed for the air lock. The Howards and the Goldstein-Iwanyi family entered it first. While we waited for them, I took my last look around Moon Base Alpha.
“What a dump, right?” Roddy Marquez asked. He was wheezing heavily under the weight of his suit.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I said.
“Please. This place sucked. The veeyar system was five years out of date. I couldn’t even play the latest version of Warp War. Or Space Pirates of Xenon. Or anything. Which is exactly what I’m going to do when we get back to earth. The moment I get home, I’m jacking in for a week straight.”
“You’re not going to go outside?”
Roddy looked at me as if I was from another planet. “Why? There’s nothing out there that’s anywhere near as cool as what I can experience online.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. The last thing I wanted to do when I got back to earth was stay cooped up inside. When I got home, I was going to head right to the beach. And then climb a mountain. And maybe sleep out under the stars for the first few nights.
I noticed that the door to the Sjobergs’ tourist suite was now open a crack. Patton Sjoberg was peeking through it, glowering jealously at us. He gave me one last mean stare for the road, just to let me know that he was always going to be a jerk, no matter what, and then slammed the door.
The first group exited the air lock and shut the outer door.
“Next wave,” Nina said. My family moved inside the air lock with the Brahmaputra-Marquez family, and Nina closed the door behind us.
There was one last whoosh of air as the chamber depressurized. The light flashed green. We opened the outer door and left Moon Base Alpha forever.
Once we stepped onto the lunar surface, we could see the rockets. Two enormous, shimmering craft that loomed over the blast wall.
All the gear that was returning to earth was stacked right outside the air lock. The Howards and the Goldstein-Iwanyis had already grabbed what they could and were hauling it to the launchpad. Although I noticed one of them—it had to be Kira—set their load down for a moment and attempt some lunar gymnastics.
The pilots, Buster Reisman and Katya King, had emerged from the rockets to help with the loading. They said some quick, warm hellos to us and then grabbed what they could.
I grabbed some gear myself, as did everyone else except Violet. She was too little to help, and besides, my parents wanted to give her one last chance to bound around on the surface.
“You can take a quick run too,” Mom told me.
“Really?” I asked. “What about Nina?”
“Nina can stuff it,” Dad said. “She’s not our commander anymore.”
So I set my box of gear down. “Check this out. This is going to be one enormous leap for mankind,” I said, then bounded a few steps and leaped as far as I could.
I probably didn’t go that far at all, but in the low gravity, it felt like I did.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Dad announced over the radio, in his best sportscaster voice. “Dashiell Gibson has set a new lunar record in the broad jump!”
“Not for long,” Mom said. Then she dropped her crate of gear and took a flying leap as well.
Dad joined us a second later. And then everyone else noticed what we were doing, dropped their gear, and went to take one last romp on the moon as well. Even Katya and Buster.
For the next few minutes, we all completely defied protocol and goofed around. Moonies were doing somersaults and pirouettes and having contests to see who could jump the highest. Cesar pegged Roddy in the helmet with a clump of moon dust, and the next thing we knew, a moon-dust fight had broken out. It was kind of like a snowball fight, but since no one had ever done it before in human history, it was extra fun.
Everyone was happy and laughing and getting along great. It was exactly the kind of thing we had imagined when we had dreamed of coming to the moon—and the sort of thing that, up until that very moment, we hadn’t done at all.
Of course Nina didn’t like it one bit. “Stop that at once!” she ordered us over the radio. “This behavior is completely against official regulations.”
We ignored her. Instead we continued to romp and play and bean each other with handfuls of moon dust while Nina droned on and on about how we were in violation of some protocol or another.
Eventually, we all realized it had to end. We grew tired from the exertion, and our suits were getting creaky from all the moon dust in the joints. We returned to the cargo that we’d dropped, hoisted it back up, hauled it to the rockets, and secured it in the cargo bay.
Then we climbed aboard, sealed the air locks, shed our suits, and strapped into our seats.
It took another twenty minutes for all the safety checks to be done. And then Mission Control said the words that I had been dying to hear for the past eight months:
“Raptor Twelve, you are cleared for launch.”
Since we were inside the rocket, as opposed to the moon base, we could hear the thrusters fire this time. We certainly felt it. The whole craft shuddered, and then we were pressed back into our seats as the rocket lifted off.
Unlike the designers of MBA, the designers of the rockets had realized that the lunarnauts would want windows. I had one right next to my seat. I pressed my face up against the glass and watched Moon Base Alpha drop away beneath me.
It didn’t take long. From above, the base looked even smaller than I’d realized, a tiny outpost in a massive sea of moon dust. The solar arrays were much bigger than the base itself, but even they were smaller than your standard mall parking lot. The rocket quickly broke free of the weak lunar gravity, and soon I could barely even make out the place I had lived in on the vast, barren expanse of moon.
Due to the angle of the rocket, I couldn’t see the earth. Instead, as the moon dropped from sight, my view was of the endless void of space, speckled with a million stars.
I kept thinking that Zan might show herself to me one last time. After all, she wasn’t bound to the laws of physics when she appeared. I half expected to see her float by outside the window, or to zoom past riding a meteor—but she didn’t.
It saddened me that she was gone, but I didn’t dwell on it. After all, she had given me what she had promised. I had represented humanity well, and hopefully I now had the tools to save us from destroying ourselves.
On any given day, that would have been more than enough to be happy about. But I had something else wonderful on the horizon.
Within two days, I would be back on earth, where I could breathe air that wasn’t canned and eat food that actually tasted good and take a real shower and swim in the ocean and see birds and insects and other animals and do a million other wonderful things that I had taken for granted.
I was going home.
Excerpt from The Official NASA Procedures for Contact with Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life © National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, 2029 (Classification Level AAA)
SUCCESS
Ideally, with your hard work and that of all DEXA employees, successful rapport will be established between our species and the IEL, leading to an exchange of ideas and technology, and ultimately a great new chapter in human history. However, the process certainly will not go perfectly. In fact, there will doubtless be many hitches, hiccups, and mistakes along the way.
So try to keep in mind throughout this endeavor that even though it may be troublesome at times, you are participating in one of the greatest moments of our existence—and possibly the existence of the IEL as well. Your efforts here will go down in history, so act accordingly. Be the best representative of humanity that you can possibly be.
Epilogue Part One
TRANSMISSION
November 1
3, 2043
From: Dr. Chang Kowalski, PhD
Department of Lunar Science
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, CA
To: Dashiell Gibson
Subject: Re: Can you take a look at this?
Dash!
Just took a look at the equations you sent me. Holy cow! I knew you were smart, kiddo, but this is off the charts. We’re talking game-changing stuff here. Huge implications for humanity.
To be honest, some of this is even a bit beyond me, so I guess it’s a good thing you sent it to Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez too. Together, we’ve been able to analyze it all, and she’s in agreement with me that this is Einstein-quality work.
We have to talk about this ASAP. I’m dying to know how you even came up with it. I just tried to call you, but didn’t reach you. I’m betting you’re surfing. Or maybe chasing girls.
Anyhow, genius, call me IMMEDIATELY when you get this.
Chang
Epilogue Part Two
FAR-FLUNG DESTINATION
Earth year 2075
Bosco day 1
The planet is bigger than I expected.
I am used to looking at earth from space, and while the earth is certainly not small, it is significantly smaller than this. This planet’s circumference is about 50 percent larger than earth’s, which means there’s a lot more planet.
And nearly the entire surface appears to be water.
There is some land, most likely formed in similar ways to the land on earth: by volcanic eruptions and the smashing together of continental plates. This planet, like earth, has a dynamic surface. However, the land masses are dwarfed by the oceans, and they are few and far between. Even the biggest mass, one the size of North America, looks puny compared to the enormous blue sea around it.
It’s no wonder that intelligent life here stayed in the oceans.
I can’t believe, after all this time, that I am finally here.