Chapter 2

Was it as lonely up there as you might have imagined? Virgil “Plato” Oswald couldn’t tell you. To cope with life in orbit of everything familiar, the Kentucky-bred astronaut with an IQ he never bothered to measure had mastered a form of meditation that negated the space sickness he had somehow instinctively known would always menace him. Training for him was like something to occupy his time, NASA technicalities that stood between him and the right mindset to prevent a total mental breakdown as well as a soiled spacesuit that would only embarrass him in the event of a television broadcast. Not that anyone was clamoring for those anymore.

With fellow American Pliny Plummer and Russian cosmonaut Volkov to keep him company, Oswald, unless he somehow managed to suddenly break from his limited concept of social mechanics, already had the optimum level of company he needed. No, he was not lonely in that sense. The other sense would have to do with the isolation of knowing no one else was around for the next thousand miles or so, so that no such coincidental encounter with a fellow admirer of a particular way of walking was possible. Not that a lot of walking was going on where Oswald currently resided, a unit composed of several units crafted by nations no longer quite so protective of their pursuits. Volkov, meanwhile, was interested in the pursuit of cracking wise, which was amusing until Oswald realized he had no idea what most of the things the Russian was saying actually meant, and that strictly physical comedy was never enough for him. But Pliny always seemed to find him to be entertaining, especially with the “walking tools” bit.

The days of such routines were quickly coming to an end. Oswald and Pliny were scheduled to shuffle out, leaving Volkov and his jokes, or at least his antics, to a new American and a new Russian, presumably to better effect, as Oswald secretly suspected teams were assembled as much for their overall worth as for their camaraderie. He’d pretended to enjoy Volkov when the Russian had initially arrived, armed with new equipment and a hilarious joke about mutant parasites now running US politics, but his tolerance, and his ability to numb his continual space sickness, had quickly worn down, almost like some of the units that comprised this larger unit that had been his home for the past nine months.

He was already beginning to panic. The ride up had been one of the most traumatic episodes of his life, and he’d compensated by jabbering nonstop, to the point where even his friend Pliny was ready to jettison him. To think of the ride down, which he imagined would be even worse, was like setting the volume to a level intolerable even to most young drivers. As much as he hated what he could only ever consider an unnatural environment for human beings, he hated the transitions between that and plain old regular earth even more. He hated to fly, and he couldn’t even remember how many counseling sessions the space agency had put him through to figure out why he wanted to be, of all things, an astronaut. Oswald suspected his patience had been greater than NASA’s, and possibly his insanity as well. Whatever the case, he was now scheduled to rocket back to terra firma, where he knew he’d appreciate more than ever just how firm that terra really was, and how he would probably have to skip the next ten years worth of summer blockbusters at the multiplex. A very small price to pay.

“Shut up,” Pliny reminded him.

“Would love to, but you know it’s not going to happen,” Oswald said. “It’s like asking an ant to stop scurrying about, or to try and stomp on enough anthills to discourage them from rebuilding, or to conceive of a magnifying glass so magnificent that it could fry every ant in existence, but not, y’know, kill everything else. Because that would just be tragic, but it might keep the kitchen floor a little more clean, and that’s what everyone’s really after, right?”

“You know, some people just go to the store,” Pliny said.

“And some people are just unimaginative,” Oswald said. “We’re imaginative, though. We’re up here, studying things, making sure everything we think we know isn’t just one huge mistake, like the whole the-earth-is-flat thing, or the whole the-earth-is-the-center-of-the-universe thing, or things like that. Being imaginative is our job.”

“Actually, we’re really just sophisticated engineers,” Pliny said. “And no one has bothered to do a comic strip yet.”

“Which would be fun,” Oswald said. “In fact, that might be what I do when we get back, do a comic strip, hopefully get it into some significant syndication, and watch as it becomes a phenomenon with buttons and tee-shirts and diapers.”

“You mean you don’t want to try some relaxing?” Pliny said. “I should think that would be the first priority.”

“Believe me, anything else would be relaxing for me,” Oswald said, “even long form calculus with variables and squiggly marks up the yahoo.”

“I’ll never figure you out, Pluto,” Pliny said.

“That’s probably a good thing,” Oswald said. “Almost as good as finally getting home again, and by home I mean just about anywhere, Tahoe, Fargo, the Norwegian Flats.”

“Speaking of which, you still have to tell me what the Flats are,” Pliny said. “I’m not letting you continue to avoid that subject.”

But Oswald did, and when their time was finally up and they were suited and buckled, and, in Oswald’s case, properly meditated, with their replacements placed and the shuttle Douglas prepped and ready to depart, the descent began. Oswald was tapping the big toe on his right foot when the turbulence set in, as the Douglas burned its way through the atmosphere. Something felt loose. Oswald wasn’t sure what or where it was, but he felt as if something was not as secure as it should be, and he could feel himself rattling more than he should. He jiggled the whole leg as violently as he could, to try and distract himself, but it wasn’t working. He was in trouble, and he couldn’t turn his head to see Pliny, to communicate that something was wrong. His mouth wouldn’t work either, his vocal cords as lax as could be. His head, against all odds and measures, slammed back. He could almost feel his brain compress for an instant, and then the improbable moment passed. His body returned to the friction-breaking his training had told him would be normal, and the ride down and the splash into the Pacific continued as regularly scheduled.

For a while, it seemed as if he were suspended into a sort of earthly limbo. There was no Pliny beside him. There was no shuttlecraft Douglas encapsulating them. There was no Oswald for these thoughts to be rattling in. And then Pliny unbuckled, opened the hatch, and looked back to see Oswald detaching himself in kind. Douglas was toed in, and the brave astronauts were welcomed back in an orgasm of pride and celebration. Oswald could now feel nothing but relief, and not even being able to focus long enough to see his wife again could compete. He was back. He made a pathetic attempt at a wave of his hand, and only succeeded in flopping a little as he was transported back to land. As to what he was trying to gesture at, Oswald hadn’t a clue. But he was glad to do it.

“What’s that?” his wife asked him as they were reunited, as if he had tried to say something, when in fact he hadn’t. She had a habit of doing that, he remembered, but then he experienced the sensation of knowing he actually had tried to say something. Not far away, Pliny was talking up a storm, charming the assembled reporters while Oswald lay practically comatose on a gurney. Of all the luck, of all the irony. He was supposed to be the media darling. He even had an action figure to prove it, which came with a futuristic robot companion that was curiously shaped like a footstool. How that was dreamed up, he had no idea, but he had a dozen copies lied around his desk in an office he hoped to return to soon. He did, after all, have a comic strip to start on. It was now a matter of urgency to create, with Pliny catching all the immediate glitz. The Adventures of Oswald, and Pliny. It would be a huge hit. The footstool robot might get worked into it, too, if Oswald could dream up something suitable. Maybe its name would be Pliny.

There was something else bugging him, though. It had nothing to do with vengeful schemes against his partner, and less still than with his own further ambitions. A seagull flying by seemed to stare at him for the briefest of moments, and Oswald was startled enough to mull over it for the next few weeks, as his debriefing consumed most of his days and brainstorming for the comic strip most of the nights. He had the idea, and he had no idea why, to further transmute Pliny into a seagull, perhaps a robotic one for artistic integrity’s sake, and liked the idea so much the space agency seriously began to consider additional counseling sessions, since he wouldn’t stop talking about it. His wife remarked that gulls had never interested Oswald in the past, and even Oswald was forced to wonder why they were so fascinating now. Perhaps the brain-squashing session on the way down had done something to him, not that he’d spoken a word of it to anyone. There was no way he was going to do that, even if it was in his best interests. Instead he began to research for his comic strip on the Internet, and possibly inquire into other things as well, such as unnatural obsessions with gulls.

That was when his new obsession began, and his wife regretted upgrading his computer to facilitate this more than she ever had when putting up with his pre-mission days of constant meditation and smelly incense, which was never as fragrant as the label insisted it was. Their kitchen had been cleared of ants that way.