

Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space

by

Mary Quijano

Copyright 2012 Mary Quijano

Published by Mary Quijano on Smashwords

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

First Edition License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to wherever you bought it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Table of Contents

1. Space

2. Mission Control

3. Trouble

4. Big Trouble

5. Awakening

6. Memories and Dreams

7. Uriel

8. Space Dream, Stage One

9. Gena, Preflight

10. Rendezvous

11. Gena, after

12. Ray's Predicament

13. Ray Gets Gena a Job

14. Meanwhile Back in Space

15. Gena and Ray...and Andy Too

16. More Space Dreams

17. And Awakens Again

18. Alex Finds Out What's Up

19. Daddy's Boy, a Retrospective

20. Defending His Life?

21. The Academic Life

22. Gena the Teacher

23. Gena and The Prom Queen

24. The McCormicks Move to Nasa

25. The Astronauts' Wives Club

26. Personal Reflection and Refraction

27. Whatever Happened to Ray?

28. The Name of The Game

29. Whatever Happened to Baby Alex?

30. It's About Time

31. Past Choices

32. Just Dinner

33. So Now What?

34. Awakening 2

35. The Pi Factor

36. Epilogue

* * *

1. Space

COMMANDER ALEX MCCORMICK, astronaut, looked up from the blinking and glowing panel of buttons, levers and gauges that encircled the pilot's chair of his Interplanetary

Space Vehicle, raising his eyes to the central viewing screen overhead: And gasped despite himself. He quickly closed his mouth into a firm line, but could not stem the unbidden welling of tears that filled his dark blue eyes, making them temporarily bright with a barely contained excitement bordering on ecstasy, an emotion which mocked his outward show of control and composure, a tiny chink in his perfect armor of professionalism.

This is... There aren't words, no words at all. My God, my God; it's beyond all—who could ever imagine this magnificence, this splendor. And the scale! It's, it goes on...forever.

"A - fucking - mazing," he said aloud, as more appropriate to his image. He swallowed down the huge lump in his throat, fought hard to reabsorb the welling tears. "In - fucking -credible," he added softly, for good measure.

Jupiter had moved into and partially filled the entire left half of the 48-inch viewing screen, an incredible glowing jewel of swirling ruby, cream and ochre torrents, stark against the velvet black backdrop of the universe. Its tiny moon Io was like a dot of negative space moving quickly to the right, across its windswept face. Alex peered forward, looking for the second moon, looking for Europa.

"Nope, no Europa yet. Probably on the back side right now."

All my life for this. Everything I've done, all I've given out and given up—for this one moment. And it's not enough, not nearly. No amount of sacrifice could ever be enough to earn this, this...

He swallowed hard again. Sighed deeply.

Ah, Gena, Andy...I only wish you were here to share this view. You earned it, as much as I did.

He leaned back in his captain's chair, glancing over at the smaller monitor to the left of this main screen, which was transmitting live feed from the main floor of Mission Control in Houston. Flight Director Ray Peterson, a large, handsome man in his early fifties, stopped momentarily his bustle of unnecessary and redundant direction giving—of tweaking and controlling the vast array of instruments, monitors and space flight technicians that everyone including Ray knew operated best when left alone to do their jobs—and mugged his lips close to the screen, planting a big wet kiss on the monitor.

"Who's your daddy?" Ray said.

"Watch it, big guy, people are gonna find out about us," Alex replied. "By the way, you guys see what I see?"

He looked deeper into his central monitor, squinting to try to bring Mission Control's own main background view screen into focus, to see what they saw. It was an odd view, watching the flight, people back home looking at him in their monitor, while he was looking back at them in his own—like one of those new wave art sculptures, where you looked into a fancy, over-priced box at a mirror within, which reflected the image of your eyes into a mirror on the opposite side and back again into the first mirror. If you looked hard enough you saw your eyes reflected in an ever diminishing traipse toward infinity, and either reared back in nausea or paid the bucks for the thrill of buying your one chance at eternity.

Here's lookin' at you, kid.

Of course, they wouldn't be seeing what Alex saw right now—this incredible view of Jupiter—not for another 35 minutes, the transmission time from Jupiter to Earth. As a matter of fact, their monitor screens at this very moment were showing what he had been looking at and doing 70 minutes ago. Time there and time back. And that big sloppy kiss from Ray was planted more than 35 minutes ago. By now—this exact now, no time/no space between us—the screen had already been wiped clean and Ray might well be planting a big sloppy kiss on someone else.

Like Gena?

Alex felt that familiar surge of anger, frustration, regret...and ultimately ennui at the thought of Gena. He sighed, a deep inhale of mind-cleansing canned air that immediately set off a chorus of little oxygen sensors blinking and beeping an overuse warning.

"Ah, shut it!" he said aloud, looking back up at the view of Jupiter. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Worth it all.

He checked the third monitor, this one to the right of the main overhead screen, which showed the rear view from the space capsule. The sky was a deep violet curtain backlit by a trillion points of light from distant stars and galaxies, and he lost himself in this vastness for a moment.

Way beyond this space capsule, if someone were there to look—which of course, no one was—from far out in space one might have thought the orange banded, softly glowing Jupiter looked like an enormous party light hung in a cosmic ballroom, twirling fast on an invisible string held by the hand of God.

From this proximity her thin ring of tiny rocky particles as well as her various moons, sixteen in all, would have been clearly visible, circling the glowing orb like moths. From the far lower right a faint pinpoint of white might have come into view, moving slowly and steadily towards the planet and her moons. And as this small white object drew closer: it might gradually have assumed the form of a small wedge-shaped spacecraft with twin thrusters at the end of each rear flange.

These small rockets would have been off at this moment, the tiny ship merely gliding through the empty corridor of its trajectory under its own inertial momentum. Closer still, and the insignia USA - EUROPA 1 might have become visible, stenciled along the side of the vehicle.

But of course, no one was really there to see this. Only in his imagination was it real.

Inside the space vehicle, Alex began to make adjustments on the control panel in front of him, flicking switches, reading gauges, pushing buttons. As he did so, he was simultaneously communicating his every move and the resultant read or reaction into the headset he was wearing, and receiving instantaneous feedback from a voice that to his ear sounded exactly like that of Flight Director Ray Peterson with a slight sinus infection.

In the monitor above, a small moon was just now appearing on the right side of the screen, a glowing white miniature planet of ice: Europa.

"I'm nearing approach window four-five-zero," Alex reported tersely. "All systems are nominal...preparing to adjust glide path to target."

"You're looking good, Europa One," replied the nasal voice of Flight Director Petersen. (Only of course it couldn't be Director Petersen: he was 70 minutes from a response.) "Prepare to ignite left forward thruster for a five-second burn at a distance of ten thousand K. Repeat, five-second burn at ten thousand K."

Of course it was just the onboard computer responding to Alex's input. He knew that. But it had been determined that a simulated voice from Mission Control was good for the psyche, so they made it sound like Petersen was right on top of things, in control. You're not really all alone out there, son.

"Roger that, Houston," Alex replied to the onboard computer. "Coming up on ten triple zero K. Five, four, three, two...Left thruster on...we have ignition."

The ISV suddenly began to shake, but not alarmingly. Some shaking was expected. There was a muffled roar from the rear of the ship, and when Alex glanced in the rear view monitor, flames appeared. As the left thruster rocket burned, Alex could feel the ship angle slowly to the right. The moon Europa appeared in the central monitor, now directly ahead of the rocket ship.

Alex's heart raced with excitement. The oxygen monitors bleeped and chirped in alarm.

"Fuck you," he muttered under his breath, as he reached forward to flip a switch, not sure if he were directing the comment at the sensors or himself.

"Left thruster off," he reported calmly.

"Looking good, Europa: Your trajectory is right on the line and holding steady. Prepare for final approach," said the simulated voice of Ray Petersen.

Alex was beginning to find the ruse a little annoying; insulting actually. It's me running the show up here, not Petersen.

He knew what he was doing, he knew the computer would verify and handle. He didn't need the pretense of talking to another human to figure things out. But he'd go ahead and play it their way. Had to, if he ever hoped to get another space assignment.

"Copy, Houston. Angle of approach 15 degrees, present speed 13 K per second, distance 7 thousand K and closing."

"We need to slow you down to about one tenth that before final approach, Alex."

"Alex"! Isn't that cute. They must have thrown that in for a comforting personal touch, figuring I might be getting a little nervous about now.

"Prepare to fire your back thrusters," the onboard computer continued, "for a thirty-second burn at the 5 K mark."

"Roger that, Houston," Alex responded drily. "Preparing to fire."

* * *

2. Mission Control

THE HUGE ROOM at the Johnson Space Center was an intense, if subdued, bustle of meaningful activity. Technical support personnel of all ilk—both male and female; young, and old; and all equally smart in their NASA jumpsuits—manned the banks of monitors set up in four rows before a wall-sized screen. The center of the screen mapped the trajectory of the space vehicle from Earth to its target, the moon Europa orbiting around the planet Jupiter. The screens to the right and left showed—respectively—the interior of the space vehicle, with Alex at the controls, and the view from the space vehicle's central monitor, showing its approach to Jupiter.

Ray Petersen, looking handsome and fit in his own jumpsuit, the one with the words "Flight Director" on the back, and special insignia on the arms and pocket, was conferring with one of the technicians.

"It does take a little getting used to, Dr. Nguyen," he agreed. "While he's making the adjustments to get the bird in orbit and landed, we're still watching him glide toward Jupiter. And by the time we get to actually see him make the maneuvers, he's either down or..." he glanced around as if to ensure no one was near enough to hear, lowered his voice, raised a brow and said, "dead."

"He'll be okay, boss," the techy reassured the older man, but his voice had the uncertainty of a question.

Ray patted his shoulder, knowing which of them needed the reassurance.

"I was kidding, Doc."

Ray walked over to the food service table near the side rear door and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee.

At the rear of the room was a large viewing area with several rows of upholstered seats and its own food service table. It was separated from the control room by a glass wall. Its primary access doors led out through the rear, so that there was no direct entry to Mission Control proper except through two doors flanked by armed military guards. The seats in this spectator gallery were filled with reporters and their camera crews, as well as a few dozen other interested parties.

Ray turned toward the viewing gallery, looking for a face. Spotting her, he nodded a formal solemn acknowledgment of her status in this proceeding; then, unable to resist, he gave her a slow wink.

In the first row, receiving the wink with a blush, sat a pretty Asian woman in her early thirties. She was small, but as elegant in her carriage as a much taller model; slender, but tough and wiry under the softness of breasts, curves and satin skin. She wore woolen slacks too hot for that part of the state at any time of year, and a white silk blouse. And she was trying very, very hard not to care too much, either about what might happen to her husband three hundred and ninety million miles away, nor what might happen tonight with the man ten feet away. But in her hands a tissue was being unwittingly shredded into tiny pieces. Seated next to her was a tall, handsome boy of about fifteen. Gena McCormick squeezed his hand.

"You okay, honey?" she asked.

Beads of perspiration gleamed on the boy's smooth forehead, sparkles of moisture alit on the soft line of hairs that had begun recently to darken his upper lip, a promise of the manhood soon to come. His jaw was set and grim; but as she looked towards him Gena saw that his eyes—like his father's right now, she imagined—were alight with inner excitement.

She smiled ruefully. Andy felt her gaze, and glanced over at her. Seeing her expression, he grinned wickedly

"Come on, Mom—you know he's in heaven right now. I mean," he was flustered at his misspeak, "not that way. Not...I just mean that he's having a ball."

"I know he is, honey. I know."

"You must be very proud right now," the reporter—who'd just appeared out of nowhere—insisted as she pushed her mike under Gena's nose to catch the expected affirmation.

"Proud?" Gena smiled. "Oh, oh soitinly."

Andy suppressed a giggle, just barely.

The reporter looked momentarily non-plussed, searching her retinue of response alternatives for one that would fit.

"Certainly," she repeated, buying time. "Certainly you are. Your husband," she checked her watch as if to confirm it, "has just come out of his last hiber-sleep a few moments ago to gaze upon the face of Jupiter from a vantage point never before seen by man. How do you think he must be feeling right now?"

"Oh, dirty, hungry, in need of a long satisfying pi—" the reporter drained white, and Gena took mercy on her—"Just messing with you a little," she grinned. "Sorry."

The reporter, looking relieved, pasted on a big good humored, I-can-take-a-joke grin, and nodded.

"I am sure this is the highlight of his life," Gena said with great sincerity. "This is what it was all about, everything he did, every extra effort, every sacrifice. It must be incredible, to know you've actually achieved your ultimate goal in life. Few of us ever do."

"So...you're proud of him," the reporter reiterated.

"Of course. We both are," Gena smiled, grabbing Andy around the shoulders for a solid squeeze.

Now the reporter could finally say the line she'd been trying to work into the interview, one she'd thought up all by herself last week. "So, you are the wind beneath his wings?"

Gena just looked at the woman, her smile never fading as it hardened into ice.

As the silence grew uncomfortable, the woman's eyes darted around the room to find a new target. They lit on a former astronaut soon to make a bid for the senate, and she quickly excused herself with what grace she could muster.

"I hate that song," Gena whispered to Andy as the woman walked away.

She gave his shoulder a fierce, final squeeze before releasing him. Then she rose and went forward to the window wall at the front of the spectator gallery to look across the control room at the simulated image of her husband in the central viewing monitor. She watched mutely as he stared in barely concealed ecstasy at his realized dreams, the visions of outer space playing across the smaller monitor screen before him, a video taken weeks ago just after he'd left the space station and begun the long long journey to Jupiter's moon.

I wish I could feel what you feel right now, Alex. I wish I still loved you that much, enough to feel your feelings. I really do...

A tear, honest in regret, slipped down her cheek.

* * *

3. Trouble

HIS PRACTICED HANDS at the controls, strapped into the captain's seat in his red NASA spacesuit, Alex was all business as he made the final adjustments that would send his little X-38R Interplanetary Space Vehicle into a smoothly descending glide down to the surface of Europa. With consummate control, even his excitement was confined, stilled to the faintest of quivers in the softening area of his belly, a nervous tickle in his balls.

"Approaching 5 K mark. On my count; five, four, three, two...firing back thrusters."

Once again the vehicle shook violently, and there was a muffled roar as the rockets at the rear of the little ship reignited. Alex spared a quick glance up at the overhead monitors, where fire filled the right screen completely, the view from the rear of the ship. This time the flames shot by the right and left sides of the central viewing screen as well, trailing up toward the front of the vehicle in two swirling streams of orange and blue fire.

"Looking good," Alex reported.

The two rockets attached to the wings or flanges of the wedge-shaped vehicle were doing their job, shooting jets of burning fuel from their forward facing ends to slow the ship's descent. All seemed to be going fine. Alex checked the read-outs intently for the rate of deceleration.

"Okay, okay—on the money, on the money—lining things up now."

Suddenly the left thruster flame began to diminish, sputtering. The vehicle immediately began to torque toward the left. Alex saw it first as a reading on the controls, then the noticeable skewing of his trajectory angle on the viewing screen above. That was before the real motion began.

"Houston, we have a problem," he reported calmly.

Outside the space vehicle, the left thruster flame grew rapidly smaller, then went out altogether.

Time became odd, a stop action series of events rather than continuous play, as if it had slowed down to single frames. Or perhaps his mind had merely speeded up to meet the challenge. But as Alex noted the thruster flame diminish and sputter out on the rear view monitor, at the same time reading the dials and working the controls before him to stabilize the craft, the torqueing rapidly yanked itself into a hard corkscrew twist which sent the vehicle into a wild out-of-control spiral.

Shit!

He fought to regain control, fought to not allow the hopelessness of his situation overcome him.

Alex's voice was still calm and controlled, even to his own ears, but inside his chest his heart fought like a wild thing to break free, to be out of this nightmare. His bowels felt loose and watery, and he had the vague thought, ridiculous in the midst of this incipient disaster, that if he shat himself there would be no way to clean it off his ass for another 20 months.

"Left thruster has shut down completely. I'm trying to control the spin. Pitch and Yaw are... I can't read the numbers...changing too fast. Damn! Trying to restart left thruster now...no go..."

* * *

4. Big Trouble

RAY PETERSEN HAD been circulating the room for the past half-hour, making small talk and off-color jokes in sotto voce to the various ground control technicians, all the while making sure his tightly rounded ass in the well-fitted jumpsuit got plenty of air time for the TV camera crews in the upper deck.

Finally, checking his watch against the big digital clock on the front wall, he walked over to the glass partition behind which Gena and Andy were seated, pointed to his timepiece and held up two fingers. Gena nodded her understanding, tightlipped. Andy handed her a new tissue to shred.

Ray turned, walking back to center stage in front of the enormous viewing screen.

"Okay, boys and girls, this is it. Two minutes to burn; let's look alive here."

On the screen above, Alex could be seen making adjustments on the ISV's control panel, flicking switches, reading gauges, pushing buttons. His voice, calm and businesslike, described his activities with minimal space static.

"I'm nearing approach window four-five-zero," Alex reported tersely. "All systems nominal...preparing to adjust glide path to target."

"You're looking good, Europa One," replied the simulated voice of Flight Director Petersen.

The real Ray Petersen in Mission Control Central looked around and grinned. "Pretty good voice simulation," he said to no one in particular.

"Prepare to ignite left forward thruster for a five-second burn at ten thousand K," ordered the simulated voice from the onboard computer.

"Roger that, Houston," Alex had replied calmly to the directive, actually given thirty-five minutes earlier than Mission Control's real time. "Coming up on ten triple zero K. Five, four, three, two... Left thruster on...we have ignition."

In the large viewing screen, the audience at Mission Control saw the moon Europa suddenly appear in the spacecraft's central monitor. A cheer went up from the forty plus technicians in the big room, while a babble of voices reported the successful maneuver to their viewing audiences from behind the glassed off spectator area. Gena sighed and grabbed Andy's hand.

On the screen, Alex reached forward and flipped a switch. "Left thruster off."

Ray Petersen, in a quiet voice, repeated the acknowledgement from the onboard computer. After all, it was his voice, preprogrammed into the machine to respond on cue to each maneuver.

"Looking good, Europa," he and the onboard computer said simultaneously. "Your trajectory is right on the line and holding steady. Prepare for final approach."

Of course there were alternative responses programmed into the flight computer as well. But he was glad not to have to be repeating any of them. Most of them meant trouble.

"Prepare to fire your back thrusters for a thirty-second burn at the 5 K mark," Petersen and the computer said.

"Roger that, Houston," Alex in the viewing screen acknowledged. "Preparing to fire, approaching 5 K mark. On my count: five, four, three, two...firing back thrusters...Looking good."

Again the room at Mission Control cheered as the onboard monitor showed swirling streams of fire shooting forward on the right and left sides. But the cheer sputtered and died as quickly as did the flame from the left thruster. The room went suddenly silent, took in one deeply held breath. Then Alex's voice on the monitor broke the silence.

"Houston, we have a problem."

A moment later the cockpit view on the screen became a dizzying spin as the craft began to yaw and tumble through space.

In the control room, barely controlled pandemonium ensued, with technicians shouting various readouts, comments and useless if heartfelt suggestions. On the large monitor screen at the front of the room, showing the cockpit of the vehicle, Alex was seen reading monitors, flipping levers, adjusting controls, his calm voice in curious juxtaposition to the almost hysterical cacophany from Mission Control personnel.

"Left thruster has shut down completely. I'm trying to control the spin. Pitch and Yaw are... I can't read the numbers...changing too fast. Damn! Trying to restart left thruster now...no go...trying again...still nothing."

Now, on both the spacecraft's central viewing monitor and on the duplicate large monitor in Mission Control, Jupiter was spinning crazily in circles across the screen, appearing and disappearing as the vehicle tumbled wildly end over end. Inside the viewing gallery the reporters babbled excitedly into their video cams.

Up in the viewing gallery, Gena half rose, her clenched fist up to her mouth. "Oh God, no..."

Andy started to get up as well, yelling, "Dad!" but she pulled him back down, holding him close.

Ray turned to the nearest technician. "Readouts, give me his goddam readouts!"

From the monitors came Alex's dispassionate voice: "Vehicle approach speed 6 KPS, distance to lunar surface 1000 kilometers and closing."

Ray looked up at the viewing screen, speaking earnestly into his headset microphone. "Alex, you've got to shut down your right thruster and try to control that spin."

The technician at the nearby console looked up at him oddly; "Sir? This feed is from 35 minutes ago. Whatever happened is already over."

On the monitor screen, however, Alex instantly responded.

"Roger that. Powering down right back thruster."

"Just caught up in the moment," Ray muttered. "On board computer must have told him the same thing... I input messages to cover all contingencies."

Gena stared at the monitor in stunned disbelief. As Alex reported his progress, he still seemed so calm, so remarkably calm. It gave the whole thing a surreal air. Could this really be happening? And what was he made of, this man she'd bedded and wedded, and once loved so deeply? She found herself gaining momentary confidence from his demeanor: maybe it was not as bad as it looked after all.

"Right back thruster is down."

* * *

Inside the ISV, Alex's spacecraft still tumbled end over end as the moon Europa loomed closer and closer in his view screen, its white icy surfaces cut by shadowy lines and ridges that grew larger and more pronounced by the second, its smooth planes aglow in the soft orange light from Jupiter on one side, the slightly brighter and whiter light of the distant sun on the other.

Oddly calm and peaceful now, he reported back to Houston, just for the record. "Air speed is 6 KPS. Distance to lunar surface now 500K."

He immediately got a response from the flight director. Funny how much the simulator sounded like Petersen now, rather than just a good imitation. And his voice, so intense, like he was really caught up in the moment, even though this moment would actually be long over before he ever knew it had happened.

"Fire your left forward rocket. You've got to control that spin."

"Pretty good voice simulation, Houston," he quipped. "Whoever built this bird must have thought of everything, eh? However I should point out to both you and HAL here, " he added with a sardonic edge to his voice, the first betrayal of any emotion. "that I'm already at ten times the max velocity for final approach, so. What's the point?"

"I don't give a fuck," the voice of the computer/Petersen shot back; "you've got to stabilize first! Just do it!"

Alex shrugged. "Copy, Houston. Firing left forward thruster."

The left thruster powered up, flames shooting out on cue. Then, after a second or two, the crazy spiraling motion of the spacecraft seemed to slow a bit, as if the craft might actually come out of the spin. At Mission Control, there was a small bleat of joy, an instant of hope. All eyes were on the overhead monitor, looking at the spacecraft's onboard screen where Europa loomed ever larger. Readouts beside the screen indicated the vehicle was now within a hundred miles of the surface and approaching fast.

Alex turned to face the camera, looking directly into the viewing monitor seen by Mission Control. His face almost filled the screen, his eyes huge, blue-gray.

"It's working, Ray! I think...."

As the larger than life image of Alex turned toward the unseen audience at Mission Control, those who watched from Earth could see behind him, in the space vehicle's central monitor, the surface of Europa rapidly approach, its ridges growing ever closer, more distinct.

"...I think I got it...."

A huge explosion reverberated through the room, as the enormous central viewing screen in Mission Control filled with a great red fireball, then static, then nothing at all.

Andy jumped to the viewing window, pressing against the glass as he yelled hoarsely, "Dad!"

Behind him Gena screamed once, then collapsed inside herself, her face a mask of open-mouthed horror and disbelief.

Ray looked up at her, his own mouth open in similar stunned surprise, his expression helpless, and not sure how to respond to such unfamiliar emotions. He turned to the technician on his right.

"It's over?" He meant it to be a statement, but it came out as a question.

"Sir, it was over a half-hour ago. Time lapse, remember?" the technician reminded him gently. But, silently he wondered: So, why were you yelling directions at a ghost?

Petersen stared at the man as if he had heard the unspoken question and was trying to comprehend this, then asked in a voice barely above a whisper, "But...but why was he responding?"

* * *

5. Awakening

ALEX SAT STRAIGHT up with a gasp, like a diver who'd been down too long, and had frantically fought his way to the surface just as the fading edges of blackness were closing in. His heart pounded in his chest, overly loud, but none-the-less comforting in its strength, the fact that it was beating at all. For a moment he hadn't a clue as to anything about himself, no sense of identity, no concept of location in time or space: no past, no future, not even a certainty of the present. Only this gulping of air, this thumping pulse of life.

He had not yet even opened his eyes, but now, as he became vaguely aware that he could and should do so, he forced open those reluctant lids, willing them to peel back from his unfocused and vacant eyes. Gradually, with concentration, the room he was in came into sharper clarity. His eyes, and only his eyes, roamed his immediate field of vision. But there was only whiteness.

He forced his gaze downward at his body to discover he was reclining in a white metal hospital bed, stark naked beneath a very white, very smoothly pressed sheet which covered him to the waist. His arms were held close to his sides beneath the sheet, one hand curled protectively over his genitals.

Gazing around again, he found the room itself was oddly featureless. There was a white ceiling, the whole of which seemed to glow with a soft diffuse light, though it lacked any visible light source. The walls were white as well, and the whole room appeared to be windowless, seamless, and without even a visible doorway. It was like being inside an ice cube. Even the floor was made of white tiles. The only other furniture in the room besides the bed on which he sat was a small white table which offered a clear crystal pitcher of water and a single drinking glass.

Now puzzlement began to override the blank unquestioning curiosity with which he initially viewed his surroundings: a touch of memory, a small inkling of some distant cause for alarm racing toward him. There were no machines in this room, no monitors. He wasn't hooked up to anything... Should he be?

He looked down more carefully at his body, letting go of his balls so he could check: Arms, hands, belly, neck—all seemed intact; smooth, flawless, completely devoid of any injury or

scar... Should they be?

He reached up to his face, running his fingers delicately across every inch, much like a blind person would do to envision another's features; then he swung his bare legs over the side of the bed and checked them out as well. Perfect. Except for that little scar just below the knee he got skateboarding as a kid. He inspected his belly again, then lifted the sheet to take a peek beneath, verifying with a small sigh of relief that his privates were also still perfectly intact.

I don't get it—where the hell am I?

Reaching to his left, Alex grasped the water pitcher and brought it back around in front of him. He held one hand behind it to create a reflection, then put his face up close, turning it and his head to various angles in a vain attempt to see the faint and slightly distorted image of his features. After a minute or two he gave up and poured himself a glass of the liquid, which seemed to sparkle a little in this light. Hesitating only for an instant, he shrugged and drained it in one thirsty gulp, then lay back down on the bed, closed his eyes and waited for the other shoe to drop. When nothing happened after a minute or two, he reopened his eyes and just lay there, straining at memories that wouldn't come. After a time, he drifted into a dream.

* * *

6. Memories and Dreams

ALEX STOOD AT the tailgate of a late model black SUV that looked vaguely familiar. Nissan? He shook his head. Looking down, he saw that he was in an Air Force uniform, a military flight bag in his left hand. He closed the back of his car, and turned. Gena and Andy stood a few feet away, watching him. Their faces showed a hidden secret strain, a wary distance that had nothing to do with space, but more with time and feeling and issues unresolved.

They were in a parking lot outside the Kennedy Space Center's flight ops command building. In the background was poised the giant white Titan IV that on this occasion would carry the best that mankind had to offer into space for a rendezvous with God. Between this symbol of man's ultimate conquest and the parking lot where the designated donor had just arrived, was a complex of white buildings housing all the equipment and support staff necessary to this particular undertaking. These were huddled in the shadow of the enormous 50-story vehicle assembly building with its giant NASA symbol on one face and a 20-story American flag painted on the other. And between here and there, a maze of onlookers, well-wishers and news crews, who had probably set up camp three days earlier. These now began to surge toward them like a dangerous tidal bore, the melding of their voices a susurration not unlike the water over stones.

Alex turned to his wife and son, forcing a grin. "Well, I'm off."

He reached out to pull Andy into a hug, but when he felt the boy tense up Alex dropped his grip quickly from his son's shoulder and instead put out a hand. Andy, seeing no way around it, settled for the manly handshake.

I'm only thirteen, Dad, he wanted to say. It's not that, don't you get it? But even as he thought that thought, considered springing it on his dad and forcing the issue, Alex had already presumed he knew what was wrong, backpedaling from reality by saying,

"Too big for hugs now, huh, kiddo? Well, take care of your mom for me, okay?"

Andy gave up. "I always do," he said diffidently.

Alex turned now to Gena, putting his hand to her chin and leaning in to give her a kiss. She turned her face at the last moment so that his lips met her cheek instead. While there, he whispered into her ear.

"C'mon, Gena, at least make it look real. There's a reporter in every bush."

He leaned back a little, turning her face to his with his hand and then gave her a big, long, sexy kiss on the lips. He could feel her resistance and body tension slowly dissolved toward the end of it. He moved his head back, his hand still grasping her chin, and looked deep into her eyes.

"There now, that wasn't so bad, was it? Almost like old times."

"Alex, I..." Gena faltered, then fell silent.

"It's okay. Just say goodbye," he told her gently.

"Good...good luck, Alex."

Alex nodded, holding her with his gaze a moment longer. Then he turned back to his son.

"Bye, kiddo. Wish me luck."

"Good luck, Dad," Andy said, looking down at the ground between his feet

"Andy?"

Andy raised his head, and father and son looked at each other a minute, neither knowing what to say to make it better.

"See ya, son," Alex said finally. Then he turned and walked resolutely toward the big building in the distance. He was about thirty feet away when Andy called after him.

"Dad!"

Alex stopped, turned.

"I..." Andy hesitated, unable to go on.

Alex nodded. "I love you too, son...Gena."

He turned again and walked toward the building without looking back.

* * *

Now, back within the strange white hospital room, a tear slipped from beneath Alex's long dark lashes. He opened his eyes for just a minute, staring upward at the memory just visited, then closed them again. After a moment his lids relaxed back into REM sleep, another moment and his heart began to race, his pupils moving rapidly back and forth beneath the lids in an agitated fashion, while little beads of perspiration popped out on his forehead.

* * *

Alex found himself encapsulated in a bright red space suit, a bulky, cumbersome thing beneath which his skin under the NASA jumpsuit was already beginning to itch, and his bladder

to twinge.

You just went, asshole, he reminded himself curtly. It's all in your head.

He carried his acrylic helmet under one arm, flight bag with personal effects in the other as he walked the long white corridor to destiny. The only sound besides the hollow echo of his footfalls was the syncopation provided by the adrenalin throb in his temples.

A shift in time, and now he was in an elevator, a metal cage rising so rapidly his stomach was left three flights below. He could see the buildings diminish beneath him, the distant cars in the parking lot appear over their rooftops. Suddenly the elevator lurched to a stop, and the jointed cage door opened. Alex stepped out onto an iron scaffolding, accompanied by three men in NASA coveralls that he'd never noticed were beside him in the elevator before this moment. Silently they helped him enter the space vehicle at the top of the large three-stage rocket. He paused just for a moment outside the ISV's door, looking down from this exhilarating height to the ground some twenty stories below. Workers scurried about, clearing away last minute details down there, then running for shelter. His heart rate picked up a little, both in speed and decibels.

Now Alex was being helped into the pilot's seat by the men in coveralls, who strapped him down and checked the adjustments to be sure there were no problems. No one had said anything so far, which was odd. They always said things, usually the wrong things, and always too much. Corny, ill-advised jokes meant to lighten the tension; good luck messages from their girlfriends, kids and mothers. These guys said not a word. They strapped him in, saluted him, then left, shutting the spacecraft door. Alex heard the clunk as it was locked into place.

No way out, no turning back now... Committed: The thumping in his chest grew a little stronger.

Alone in the cockpit, he focused on a digital readout of the official count down, which was displayed on the small screen in front of him. It proceeded backwards in a dead silence bordering on creepy: 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 0.....

Suddenly the entire structure began to shake violently and a tremendous roar obliterated all other sound, even his heartbeat, even the silence.

* * *

7. Uriel

IN THE HOSPITAL room, Alex sat up in the bed, gasping for air once again. A hidden door on the left side of the room slid open and a male of indeterminate age entered, wearing a look of benevolent concern. His head as well as his face was clean shaven and very pale, giving it the appearance of a lumpy egg. His tall, lanky frame was gowned in a long white Jesus robe.

"Commander McCormick, you need to relax," he soothed, coming over to the bedside and placing his cool right hand on the distraught man's forehead, while pushing him gently but firmly back down to the pillow with a surprising strength.

Alex panted, jerking away from the older man's touch, trying to regain some semblance of both internal and external control.

"Where the hell am I?!" he demanded. "What is this place, and who the fuck are you?"

"Don't worry, you're safe here."

Alex took a deep breath, resisting the urge to flash out at the man unnecessarily.

"Where is 'here'? That's what I asked," he said, raising back up on his elbows to scan the sterile environment. "What is this place? A hospital? How long have I been here, and why are there no bandages, no scars? I know I was some kind of astronaut, I can remember that much. Was there an accident, an explosion on takeoff or something, is that it?"

The taciturn caregiver just smiled, fluffed the pillow behind Alex's head and tried to gently push him back down into a reclining position, but the younger man resisted.

"Try to relax, Alex," the caregiver urged in a soothing voice. "Breathe—"

"I am breathing."

"Slowly. Deeply. Breathe to relax, to control—"

"Dammit! I am in control! Shit—okay, okay." Alex began to comply, purposely taking big slow breaths of air in through his nose, blowing out through his mouth.

"Good—that's much better," the robed man said after a couple of minutes. "Here, take a sip of water."

Alex drank the water, gulping it down, then turned to the older man. "I want to see my wife and son, where's my wife and son?"

The other sighed, taking the empty glass and putting it back on the nightstand.

"Sip, I say, and you gulp. Always in such a hurry, Alex. You must learn to slow down. Don't try to push yourself too fast on this. It will all come to you in good time."

"What will?" Alex demanded. "And, again, where is this place?!"

"This is a...recovery facility. You were brought here after the accident."

"So there was an accident, then. Are you a doctor?"

"Not exactly. Think of me more as your mentor, Uriel, I'm here to help you regroup and readjust...once you remember."

"So what kind of a place is this, no windows, no phone—not even a goddam TV? A TV would help me 'regroup' just fine."

"Sorry." Uriel shook his head. "No outside stimulus, Commander; no interference with the natural recovery process whatsoever."

"So, no TV. How about internet? Iphone?"

"I'm afraid not. Now..." he again placed his hands on Alex's shoulders and gently pushed him back to a reclining position, "you need to relax, just slip into a light, alpha wave sleep and let it happen."

"Let what happen?!"

"I'll check back with you later," Uriel assured him, then exited through a door that wasn't there a moment before and was gone again the moment the man passed through it.

"Hey! Let what happen?!"

Alex fell back onto the bed, angry and despairing. He put the heels of his palms against his eyes for a moment, suppressing a couple of wrenched sobs, then forced himself to calm down, closing his eyes, regulating his breathing. After a few minutes he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. After a minute or two more, he put his arms carefully back under the covers at his sides, muttering, "Okay, fuck it—'the recovery process' it is—whatever it is."

In a second his lids grew heavy and relaxed, drifting downward: a second more and his eyes began the REM dance again beneath his closed lids.

* * *

8. Space Dream, Stage One

IT WAS DAWN, predawn actually. The light from the still hidden sun illuminated the horizon, turning the bottoms of fat cumulus clouds a pale pinkish gold as the Earth whirled relentlessly towards its fierce glow.

Alex was strapped into the pilot's seat of the one-man spacecraft, facing the approaching dawn, facing as well the heat and flames of the manmade fireball about to explode under his precious ass in a matter of seconds. He licked his lips as the countdown proceeded as relentlessly as the revolving of sun and Earth.

Four, three, two, one.... There was a tremendous roar and vibration from the firing of the first stage booster rocket. Flames engulfed the central viewing screen above Alex's head, as the entire craft was momentarily swallowed by the fireball of ignition. The right side monitor, normally showing the rear view from the spacecraft, was presently off, the screen black. A moment later Alex was pressed back against the seat by the surge of gravitational force as the rocket lifted off.

The flight director's voice from Houston, amazingly, was heard clearly over all this noise, even his soft Texas accent somehow discernible. "Europa One, we have lift off."

Alex inhaled, willing the shake from his voice—his smile as tight as his buns were at the moment—as he responded,

"Roger that, Houston."

He looked up at the central viewing screen overhead, which by this time had cleared, the flames of takeoff receding as the rocket accelerated out ahead of its burning solid fuel cells. The screen now displayed a sky of blue with occasional tufts of clouds wisping by, and one out-of-control stray gull.

Alex laughed aloud at the ludicrous explosion of feathers in his monitor, then glanced over at the left screen in the spacecraft, where the entire miniature cadre of Mission Control technicians were cheering and giving high fives. He sent them a thumbs up in the onboard camera, knowing they could see his every move, his every expression, and would remember and talk about it for weeks.

His eyes, glittery bright with excitement, reflected back at him from every one of the brightly polished metal control knobs. His smile, which had grown into a rictus-like grin as the force of G's increased, was beginning to scare him. He managed to lean forward just far enough against the G's to click on the right screen, which displayed a shot down the length of the booster rocket and, in the distance, the east coast of North America growing steadily more brilliant as the rising tide of sunlight swept across its face.

"Shit," he whisper-sung under his breath. "Shine on you crazy diamond."

After jettisoning its two boosters, the craft left behind the lower troposphere, where the light was scattered and reflected by the molecules of air, water and various pollutants into a featureless blue haze, and accelerated into and through the stratosphere and mesosphere. Now the sky in the upper monitor was pitch-black, and filled with an intensity of stars unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He stared at them, transfixed, until the slow rotation of the craft brought him round again to a sudden blinding glare of deadly sunlight.

"Oops!"

Alex quickly made adjustments, closing the screen until he could maneuver the vehicle into a safe position so that it no longer was in the direct light of the sun. When he reopened the view screen, he was looking at the opalescent sky and sea of Earth far below; and ahead, the new International Space Station—still under construction.

"Hi, honey, I'm home." He grinned.

* * *

9. Gena, Preflight

IT WAS 3 A.M. in the morning, far too early for this fight to be taking place. But it was. Alex had managed to sidestep the issue right down to zero hour, and there was no time left. Gena had waited until they were in the car, on the road. And she'd opted to drive, so Alex's hands would be free when she handed him the papers to sign.

"What's this?" he asked.

"You know what it is, Alex. I need you to sign before you leave."

"Why, Gena? What's the rush? You got someone on the side, maybe? Some young Texas stud just waitin' in the wings for this ol' fly boy to be gone?"

"Oh, stuff it, Alex! I don't have anyone on the side and you know it."

"Then what's the big rush? Maybe we just need some time apart."

Gena laughed aloud. "Alex, that's all we have had, fourteen years of it. Time apart is the problem, not the solution."

"Do we have to do this now, Gena? I mean, in two hours I'm going to have my butt strapped to the biggest firecracker in all of creation, heading off into deep space, going where no man has gone before. For three years I'll be—"

"Forty months, but who's counting, and you sound like a movie trailer."

"Forty months I'll be stuck where you can be absolutely certain of my fidelity, while you—on the other hand—will have all that time free and clear to get whatever this is out of your

system."

"Jesus, Alex! Do you ever listen to anything I say?!"

"Okay, I mean, where you can have plenty of time to think, to reflect, to decide what you really want."

"While you sleep."

"Yeah, but I don't need to think, I'm the rocket man, remember? It's just my job five days a week." He grins over the seat at Andy, who just looks at him, refusing to smile.

Gena is less than amused. "I've already thought; I've thought and thought, and I know

what I don't want, I don't want this anymore."

"Well, what then? I mean, why are you in such a rush to get rid of me, if I'm going to be gone anyway? And what about all these years we've been together, are you just going to deny

what we've been to each other?"

"What we've been to each other? And what exactly is that? I mean, I know what I've been to you, I know what I've added to your life, but what do you think you've added to mine?"

They were pulling into the special reserved parking lot in front of the Kennedy Space Center. Reporters immediately began to converge before she even had time to shut off the engine. She looked at them, then looked at him, shaking her head. He'd done it again. He looked back at her, raising a brow.

"Fine, okay, I guess I can wait another three and a half years to be something other than Alex-McCormick-the-Astronaut's wife."

He looked at her, genuinely puzzled. "Is that really so bad?" he asked.

* * *

10. Rendezvous

ALEX BEGAN TO adjust the ship's trajectory with minute bursts from the pair of small rockets attached to the tips of its rear wing-like projections, gradually drawing closer to the docking bay of the ISS until it bumped into the port with a reverberating clang, much louder than he expected.

Almost instantly, a voice thickly accented was heard on the cabin radio. "Hey, not so rough, big guy! You ever think about calling first before you drop in? Now, move on up into my big tight hole nice and easy, and I just might let you stay awhile."

Alex shook his head, smiling ruefully as he maneuvered the ship closer still. He flipped some switches, manipulated some controls, and a moment later the cabin door overhead opened with a whoosh of escaping air, and the big unshaven face of Cosmonaut Rudi Gregori appeared, grinning foolishly.

"Hey, nice of you to come by—you want Bud Light?"

Alex laughed out loud. "I'm there, man."

He released his seat harness and floated up through the opening.

Alex followed Rudi down a short corridor in the International Space Station, and into a larger open area where another bearded man greeted him by pulling a Bud Light out of a small cupboard, twisting off the top and handing it to him with a wry expression.

"Meet my current girlfriend Tony. Foreign exchange student from Australia," Rudi offered by way of introduction.

"Greetings, mate, sorry it's not real beer, eh?" said Tony.

Alex looked around apprehensively, the beer not yet raised to his lips.

"Not to worry," Rudi reassured him, "the monitors in this little storeroom 'broke down' months ago and I just can't seem to get them working again. What a pity, no?"

"A pity." Alex grinned, raising the beer to his lips and taking a big swallow gratefully. "Mmmmm, ice crystals."

"We keep our secret little stash next to the outer shell, on the dark side of course," Tony confided.

Alex shook his head in disbelief. "How'd you ever manage to sneak this stuff on board?"

"Visitors, especially construction engineers, bring me little up now and again, in flight bags or tool box," Rudi confided. "Best kept secret in space, eh?"

He turned to open a small locker.

"I've even got a bottle of pure Russian happiness..." he pulled out a fifth of expensive Russian Vodka, "but I save that for times there's no one visiting at all." He shrugged. "Time

can grow long up here."

"Sure, mate, we know you just want to keep the good stuff for yourself. Anyway, drink up—but just the one," Tony advised. "There's work to be done and a precious narrow window to do it in."

The exterior of the International Space Station had the appearance of a skyscraper under construction, a complex of massive steel girders, open walkways hanging out over space—literally—and a series of ladders and half walls. Only a small portion—the living quarters, science lab, storage room and docking bay—were actually complete and air tight.

From out of a door in the docking bay emerged three figures, each in a different color space suit: The Russian led the way in a blue space suit, the Aussie in green, and Alex in his red NASA issue bringing up the rear. Knowing that their mission was being televised, bounced back to the civilized and not so civilized nations of Earth by a variety of satellites, Alex waved as he came out of the airlock. When he saw he was the only one of the three that did, he quickly dropped his arm. The other two men were each carrying several items of equipment: Tony carried what appeared to be two four-foot long rockets, Rudi a couple of cylindrical solid fuel cells and a tool box. Alex carried only himself, but he carried himself well, he thought, as he closed and latched the airlock behind them.

The three astronauts locked their safety lines onto the exterior guardrail that ran continuously along the walkway, then made their way to the rear of Alex's little spacecraft.

"Okay, mates, first we're going to attach these additional thrusters to the X-38's wingtip flanges, to help it adjust the glide path and slow for landing on Europa," Tony explained. Turning to Rudi, he asked, "Rudi, you got the right tools for the job?"

Rudi responded by grabbing his own crotch. "Always!"

Behind the oversized faceplate, Tony rolled his eyes at Alex, who laughed appreciatively.

The three men worked as a team for over an hour, Alex acting primarily as go-fer and parts holder while Tony and Rudi did the actual mechanical work, attaching the reverse thrusters to their preconfigured compartments on rear flanges of the Europa One's wingtips, and inserting additional solid fuel cells into the containers on each of the rockets.

An hour and a half later Alex was back in the pilot's seat, strapping himself in. Rudi peered down through the open door, watching the procedures with a practiced eye. Alex flicked on the left monitor screen, connecting him visually to Mission Control.

"Houston, this is Europa One. This bird has new feathers and is rarin' to fly," Alex reported into his headset.

"Roger that, Europa," replied the voice of flight commander Ray Petersen on a 2-second delay.

"I'm running a final check now," said Alex, as he reached forward, beginning to flick switches, push buttons and read dials while communicating his actions to Mission Control.

"Oh-two, 800 psi: T-one, check; t-two, check; t-three, check; t-four, check. Cee-Oh-two scrubber, check; fuel cell one, check; fuel cell two, check; fuel cell three, check; fuel cell

four...uh, hold it."

Alex leaned in and tapped the gauge. It was showing a low reading, in the red zone below nominal. He looked up questioningly at Rudi. Rudi frowned, then reached behind him into his tool box and produced a small wrench, which he handed to Alex.

"Try tapping gauge," he advised Alex. "Is probably just air bubble in monitor—happens all the time up here."

Alex tapped the gauge gently with the wrench as directed. In the ship's left monitor Ray Petersen could be seen leaning forward worriedly, trying to get a glimpse into the spaceship's cockpit.

"What's going on up there, Alex? What's the delay?"

Alex gave the gauge another tap, a little harder, and the marker rose into the borderline nominal range. He looked up at Rudi and shrugged; Rudi returned the shrug, giving him an uncertain thumbs up; Alex handed him back the wrench.

"Repeat, what's the delay, McCormick?" Petersen insisted over the intercom.

"Just a little glitch, Houston; minor false read on fuel cell four, probably an air bubble in the gauge itself. It's nominal now. Continuing checkout: Gimbal, check; guidance, check, communication, check, EDS, check. All flight systems nominal, Houston. This bird is ready to fly."

He waved goodbye at Rudi, who waved back, then closed and latched the compartment door.

From his radio, Ray Petersen called to him once again.

"Let's run one last check on your life support system, shall we, son? It's a long way to Jupiter."

"Roger that, Houston," Alex agreed. "Forty months of drinking your own urine could seem like an eternity."

"No shit." Petersen grinned.

"That too, sir."

* * *

11. Gena, After

THE FIREBALL THAT was Europa One still lit the main view screen in Mission Control, suspended like disbelief. The other monitors showed only static or nothing at all.

Down at the very front of the spectator gallery, Gena cringed against the glass, holding Andy between her and the descending crowd of carrion feeders that lit upon the two of them with glittery eyes, anxious to pick every shred of emotion out of the dying carcass of her soul; to tear at the flesh of her hopes and dreams, her life, trying to draw just a little more blood for the viewing audience.

"Mrs. McCormick! Mrs. McCormick! Do you think there's any chance your husband is still alive?"

"Mrs. McCormick, can you tell the American people how you are feeling right now? What are your thoughts?"

"When do you think recovery efforts might begin to find your husband's space capsule?"

"Can you tell us your husband's last words?"

Beyond the glass partition, Ray caught her desperate glance and began pushing through the crowd of distraught technicians and aides, some—many—weeping openly. Gena, at the same time, began to push through the blockade of reporters toward the door, her arm tightly around her son.

"Is this Commander McCormick's son? Mark? Is that your name?"

The boy turned his head just far enough out of his mother's crushing grip to mutter, "Andy."

"Andy! Of course it is. So, Andy, can you tell us what you are thinking right now about all this?"

Gena whirled on the reporter, teeth bared. "Go to hell, you emotion sucking vampire!" She had reached the door, but the reporter blocked the exit with his body, his microphone, his questions.

"But Mrs. McCormick, we're just trying to let the country share what's happened to your husband and his family. He's a national hero, beloved by millions... Don't you think he'd want you to tell the world about him?"

"He might, but I don't—so go fuck yourselves, you and all the millions who loved him so much! What do my and Andy's feelings matter to you now anyway? They never mattered to anyone

before!"

She pushed past him and ran down onto the floor, into the comfort and protection of Ray's embrace. For just a second, she caught in his expression that she had just made a big PR blunder, one that was, in its own way, almost as serious as the loss of Alex and the mission to Europa.

She sighed, Oh yeah, I forgot: keep the good public image, keep the funding coming...

But Ray was quick to cover, calling over his shoulder to the reporters even as he drew her and Andrew under the ample cover of his six-foot-two frame. "Come on, folks, she's just had a terrible loss, a terrible shock—let's give her some space, okay? We'll be having a press briefing in the anteroom in about ten minutes."

"Colonel Petersen, what can you tell us about what went wrong up there?"

"Is there any chance at all of a recovery?"

"Just how long would it take to send a rescue mission to Europa?"

Below Ray's chin, Gena tried to comfort Andy, but the boy seemed to be going out of control. He backed away, screaming something at his mother, then yelling at the news cameras about his dad.

Ray paused, torn between his duty to get the woman and her son out of this melee—and to prevent any more PR blunders from their end—and the desire to be on national TV. He signaled one of the subordinates, a young officer that stood guard at the room's left exit.

"Lieutenant Franks, could you escort Mrs. McCormick and her son to the chaplain's quarters?"

He turned to Gena, looking directly into her eyes. "I'll be up to see you as soon as I can, but I've got to handle things here for a while. You understand."

Gena looked up at him a moment longer than was necessary, and her almond eyes narrowed a degree. Sure, of course I do. Just like with Alex—the job always comes first, always.

The chaplain's office was as calculatedly homey and warm in color and furnishings as the rest of the complex was starkly functional. She and Andy sat awkwardly in the big brown leather chairs, not sure what to say, how to act. They couldn't even look at one another. After ascertaining that neither one wanted anything to drink, the young lieutenant hurried out of the room, anxious to avoid their pain.

Alex was dead. No, that just didn't seem right, didn't seem possible. Alex wasn't the type to die. That was like trying to imagine herself dead, a world without her in it.

Stupid. Of course there was a time when there was a world without you in it—thirty-two years ago and for all eternity before that there was a world without you in it, so why is it so hard to imagine there being a world after you are gone?

She looked over at Andy. Thirteen years ago, he didn't exist. The world back then never knew that there was an Andy in store for it. But she was quite sure Andy could never imagine a world that existed without him either.

Yet now Alex was gone, wasn't he? And the world would go on. Her head hurt too much to grieve. She didn't want to talk to the chaplain, she didn't want to see Ray. She just wanted to go home and go to bed and sleep until she woke up and—it wouldn't be over, would it? You couldn't sleep long enough for this to be over. But she could try.

"Let's go home," she told her son, and they walked out of the room and all the way to their SUV without anyone even noticing they were gone.

When she got home, she told Andy where all the frozen fast food was and how to work the microwave, not that he didn't already know. And then she pulled the plug on the phone, shut all the drapes, locked all the doors and windows, and went to bed.

* * *

12. Ray's Predicament

RAY HAD NOTED Gena and the boy slipping out the front door of the space complex, but he was in the middle of a live feed TV interview, and never missed a beat, never betrayed her quiet secret exit with so much as a micropause, by so much as a blink. Perfect self-control, perfect—and yet his heart lurched a little in his chest, seeing her go, thinking of the pain, the possibilities.

"A terrible blow" he responded to the reporter who'd just asked the obvious. "Both personally, to myself – Alex was a close close friend – to his dear family, and to the entire space program. But we will go on to learn from this, and his death will not be in vain," he proclaimed.

Yet even as he answered the reporters' continuing barrage of questions with practiced illusion, saying nothing while appearing to give a carefully weighed and newsworthy response, a part of his mind was racing back to the day he'd first laid eyes on Gena, trying to recall at what point he'd begun to want her this badly.

* * *

Almost three years earlier, Ray had walked into the "howdy" party at the officer's club, fashionably late, and wearing a much younger woman on his arm that he neglected to check with his overcoat at the front door.

This was booked as a "Welcome Tea" for the new crop of astronauts and their wives, just arrived at Houston's Johnson Space Center for their training. Only there was no tea anywhere to be seen, just plenty of beer, whiskey and cigars—plus wine and sweet cocktails for the ladies, of course. He liked meeting the men this way first; informally, and half drunk if he was lucky. He found out a lot more about them that way, and a lot faster too.

But more importantly, he also needed to evaluate their "better halfs"—those military wives that could be the make/breakpoint for an astronaut's career—and there was precious little time allotted for study of them. Whereas with the men, he'd be in almost daily contact—the morning meetings and evening debriefings a regular part of their training protocol—there was minimal opportunity to get to know their wives.

To this end, he had an "old girls" network in place: wives of the senior astronauts and key base personnel, who were instructed not just to befriend the incoming ladies and make them feel at home, but also to debrief him on a weekly basis as to what they were like and how they were adjusting. Undue bitchiness and itchiness were to be reported, and the underlying reasons found and debugged as quickly as possible. Any who could not be handled might well prove the death knell for their husband's aspirations, although of course the dismissed astronauts would never be told that was the reason they'd washed out. Spousal homicide is not exactly good for public relations, he chuckled. Or funding.

The sweet young thing on his arm, Barbara Preston, was actually a highly trained base psychologist there to do snap evaluations on the new crop of wives, and he sent the good doctor off on that mission with a resounding slap on her very nicely formed ass. Then he began to make the rounds—hand shaking, back slapping, introductions and congratulations—having spent the night before diligently memorizing the names and faces of every one of the new space cowboys and their wives. Being addressed by name this early always impressed them, inflated their already explosive egos—and scared them just a little as well, he hoped.

Ray had spotted the hot shot, the one most likely to fly the X-38 into deep space, the moment he walked in the door. Alex McCormick, as loud and brash and self-assured and handsome as he had every right to be, was holding court center stage in the middle of the officer's club, some exotic little dish on his arm. Well, he'd get to him later—not last, that would be too obvious; but not first either. The guy needed to wait. He spared one more glance at the pretty girl on Alex's arm, Gena...that was her name. Delicate little thing, made of pixie dust and razor blades: He could see it in her body language, even if he was too far away to read her eyes. And she's not too happy about all this either, he thought: We'll have to keep an eye on her.

He caught Barbara's eye and gave the slightest nod in Gena's direction. The psychologist glanced over, saw the target, and winked in acknowledgment. She'd wait a few minutes, then wend her way over to the subject and engage her. Barbara had the skills to elicit bird shit out of a turtle: she'd find out what was eating at this girl in short order and report it to him in the morning. Or maybe later tonight from the horizontal if he got lucky.

* * *

13. Ray Gets Gena a Job

IT WAS 2 A.M., the howdy party was history, and Ray had, as hoped, gotten lucky.

"So, what can you tell me about the new covey of wives?" he said by way of pillow talk.

"Now, Ray?" Barbara said, leaning up on her elbow. "You haven't even caught your breath yet."

"I've caught my breath," he assured her, reaching out to tickle one of her pink nipples with a fingertip. "I'm now working on my second wind."

"Well I haven't," she sighed, reaching under the covers to give his manhood a little pat. "Anyway, they seem pretty normal: The usual nervousness, the overwrought desire to make a good impression and fit in, to please.... Some to the point of nausea, I'd say, but oh well."

"What about the little Asian flower?"

"That didn't take you long."

"What do you mean?"

"You hardly took your eyes off her all night." Barbara smiled, trying to appear playful.

"I don't think you want to go there," Ray warned.

"I don't think you do either," the woman replied archly; then flopped back onto the pillow. "Anyway, Gena McCormick is not a very happy camper, in my estimation."

"Well, I'd hate to have her blow Alex up before he ever gets to the launch pad. He's the best prospect we've had in years; actually test piloted the X-38 prototype for Dryden. He knows the lifeboat inside and out, and our deep space model isn't that much different. So, did you find out what's eating her?"

"Of course, more or less," Barbara smiled, knowing her reticence was pure torture to the man.

He put his hand down between her legs, finding the G spot.

"Do I have to beat you into telling?" he whispered roughly into her ear.

"Oh, bastard! Please do... Okay, okay, I'll tell—if you promise not to stop. Mrs. McCormick had to give up her teaching job to come out here, that's what she says the problem is."

"You think it's more?"

"Keep going—there..." Barbara inhaled sharply, then after a minute continued. "She's a very bright woman. I think she could have done more with her own life. I think she thinks so too."

"Well, maybe I can get her a job on base, keep her productive at least. What's she teach?"

"Sex ed," Barbara groaned, rolling on top of the man.

* * *

The next day Gena found herself summoned to the office of Ray Petersen. She was more than a little apprehensive and more than a little irritated as well. Was this usual, for an astronaut's wife to be summoned before the big cheese within days of arrival? Had she done something wrong? That woman she'd seen him arrive with at the party last night had drilled her for almost half an hour, and not nearly as subtly as she believed.

What was up with that? If you weren't all gushy about the whole NASA experience, virtually flagellating yourself to make a good impression, were you immediately called on the carpet, like a kid sent to the principal's office? Damn it! Well, she'd do her best to put on a good face for Alex's sake. She could always tell the colonel she'd felt a little under the weather last night if it came up....Which he'd interpret as PMS, no doubt.

The uniformed adjutant ushered her into Ray's office after only a ten-minute wait. The flight commander stood up as she came through the door, his manners as courtly as his South Texas accent. He took her hand in both of his for a moment, then indicated a chair.

"Mrs. McCormick, my pleasure. Please, sit down. Thank you so much for allowing me to interrupt your busy schedule; I'm sure you still have a great deal of unpacking and settling in. Can I send an aide to help with the heavier items?"

"Oh," she said, taken aback by his charm, despite herself. "Oh, no thank you, sir. We've managed to set things up pretty well already, just a few boxes of personal items left to unpack,"

she lied.

"Well, you're probably wondering why I called you here, so I won't keep you waiting any longer. I understand you're a pretty fine teacher. Science, is it?"

"Why, yes, Commander Petersen. Life science and health, actually, although my specialty in college was environmental science and ethics."

"Really! I am impressed. And please, call me Ray. Tell me, are you happy about your husband's assignment here, Mrs. McCormick?"

"I am very happy for him," Gena said without missing a beat. Her hackles, though, instantly began to raise.

"But you miss your job?"

"I...like to stay busy, to feel I'm accomplishing something. Of my own."

He looked at her in silence for a moment. She didn't like him much, he could tell. It seemed almost as if she personally blamed him for whatever unhappiness was eating at her inside.

I'm going to win you over, Mrs. McCormick. I'm going to become like your favorite uncle, he decided then and there. It was a new challenge, and he always rose to a challenge.

Aloud he said, "Well now, it just happens we have an opening at the base school for a high school science teacher, if you're interested: biology and chemistry, I believe. And I think you'll find the students here on base quite a bit more amenable to classroom protocols and discipline than those you might have taught in the public schools."

"A job? Here on base?"

"If you're interested. It would start in the fall."

Gena licked her lips. Well, it wasn't grad school—but it wasn't public school either. And it was a good excuse to avoid most of the social BS. "Okay!" she said. "Where do I sign up?"

* * *

Ray remembered that meeting now, as he silently watched Gena and Andy sneak away from Mission Control. That was the pivotal point, the beginning of his internal imbroglio. His decision to win her over—purportedly for Alex's sake—had started the tangle of conflicting emotions until he was caught in his own trap, and found himself falling in love with the wife of his star astronaut.

Jesus! Whatever in the devil's own hell had he been thinking? Even now he shook his head at how close he had come to ruining it all by jumping the gun. To act on the impulse while Gena and Alex were still together, to allow the emotions he felt ever to manifest, would have been the death knell of his career. And he had plans, he had big plans, lifelong plans.

After the history making manned voyage to Jupiter he would step down as flight director for Mission Control, resign his military commission and make a bid for the Senate: Successful, of course. From there, perhaps, someday he would be appointed to the President's cabinet as Secretary of Defense, or even Secretary of State. He'd wanted this too long, worked for it too hard. No ill-conceived love affair was going to get in the way of all that, or so he'd told himself night after lonely night.

But try telling it to his hunger, try telling it to his need, to the ache in his balls and his heart every time he looked at Gena, every time he thought of her. He'd even come close, once, to succumbing to his desire, to her seduction. Now, however, Alex was gone. If he gave it a little time, waited a few months for the dust to settle, maybe it would be okay; maybe now it could work out, he could have it all.

* * *

14. Meanwhile Back in Space

ALEX PULLED OUT a checklist from the compartment beneath the control panel and began his life support system check. "Okay, Houston, proceeding with LSS checkout: Wastewater recycling system, go; Reverse Respiration/ Oh-two conversion system, go; Sleep/wake induction system, go...and a three-year supply of these yummy high protein doggy biscuits, go...please."

"I'll buy you the biggest steak in Texas when you get back here, son."

"I'll hold you to that, Ray."

Ray moved in a little closer to the Mission Control camera, his face filling the left monitor screen. "Okay. Now, you fully understand the sleep/wake inductor system?"

"I've been fully briefed, yes, sir," Alex replied. He was pumped and ready to go.

"Well, humor an old man; explain it to me one more time," Ray urged.

"The S-W induction system's primary function is to help conserve limited supplies of oxygen, water, and food on long interplanetary flights, sir."

"Go on. Please."

Alex felt itchy impatience crawl over his skin: he knew where this was going, but also knew he had to play along.

"Unless specifically overridden by the ship's commander, by Mission Control, or by automatic response to emergency sensors in the ship's guidance or life support systems—sir—the S-W system will function on a set schedule, administering a deep sleep inducing inhalant via this oxygen mask which I am about to don...if I ever get out of here."

Inside the main monitoring room at Mission Control, Flight Director Ray Petersen gave a good-humored grin to the bank of TV news people in the viewing gallery. Alex, inside the cockpit of the space vehicle, was visible in the large monitor screen on the front wall.

"You're right on schedule, Europa, don't worry. Now tell me how it works, exactly."

"Is this for extra credit?" Alex laughed. "Okay, the mask helps restrict the flow of O-two, C-O-two and H-two-O to a closed cycle, reducing waste build up and increasing the efficiency of the recycling system. The first inhalant drug acts as a strong sedative, inducing a state of deep sleep which mimics hibernation. Then, every three days, an antidotal stimulant is automatically administered to counteract the sedative, restoring heartbeat, metabolism and respirations to normal."

"My star pupil," Ray said to the TV cameras. "Anything else?"

"This wouldn't be for the benefit of our TV viewing audience, would it, Ray?" asked Alex.

"As I said, humor me."

"Every three days the astronaut is awakened so that he may exercise, eat, drink, and eliminate that which needs eliminating. After about 8 hours the stimulant wears off, the sedative is re-administered, and the cycle begins anew. Approximately one week out from Jupiter, the system is turned off completely so that the astronaut—that would be me—can return to full cognitive function before making his final approach and landing on the surface of Europa. Any questions, boys and girls?"

"Thank you, Commander McCormick," Ray responded. "I'm sure if there are any, we can answer them from here. Just remember, we here at Mission Control—and the whole world—will be with you on this trip twenty-four/seven, even while you're in hiber-sleep."

"I know, sir, and I appreciate that," Alex said sincerely.

"So, it sounds like you're ready to go."

"Yes, sir!"

"Not forgetting anything?" The older man grinned wickedly.

"No, sir."

Petersen stepped back from the camera a few feet, so that the view on the monitor widened. He pulled the two people standing behind him into range.

"Gena and Andy are here on the floor beside me. They wanted to say goodbye."

Alex licked his lips, a little nervous and troubled. "Uh, sure, of course: I didn't realize they'd be allowed down there. Hi you two!"

Flight Director Petersen stepped back a pace and motioned Gena and Andy toward the video camera connected to the computer directly in front of him. They saw Alex on both the small monitor of the computer and on the large screen at the front of the room. At a signal from Ray, Andy leaned forward towards the video cam, speaking self-consciously at the blank face of the little microphone attached to it.

"Dad? Dad, this is Andy...can you hear me?" the boy said.

"I can hear you just fine, Andy. How are you?" Alex was surprised by the sudden lump of emotion that had formed in his throat.

"Uh, I'm...okay I guess."

"It's pretty cool there in Mission Control, huh? Kind of like a big interlinked video game."

"Yeah, it's cool, Dad...only they don't let me touch anything." Andy grinned.

Alex laughed, "They're probably afraid you'll push a couple of buttons and I'll end up on Pluto instead of Europa." He paused a moment, not knowing what else to say at this point. "Well, I'd better get this show on the road, son. I'll see you when I get back, okay?"

"Okay. You wanna talk to mom?"

"Yeah, sure I do," Alex responded. "Put her on. Bye, Andy. I love you son."

Andy stepped aside, but Gena hesitated to take his place. Ray put his hand on the small of her back, gently urging her forward. She moved reluctantly in front of the video cam. Alex read it in her face, the discomfort, the distance. He had hoped she might have changed her mind by now about their marriage.

"Hi, Gena," he said carefully. "I just wanted to say, uh, take care of yourself, okay?"

"Okay. You...you too. Be careful up there. Come back safe."

"Will do," Alex said, his throat raw feeling. "I love you, hon."

Gena swallowed hard and turned away, trying to suppress her tears. She swiped away a stray one that slipped from beneath her thick dark lashes.

In the background a TV news crew captured the exchange.

The reporter spoke urgently into his microphone. "What an emotional moment here in Mission Control, as the world awaits the beginning of the first manned space voyage to the planet Jupiter. What happens now is that, in just a few moments, the Europa space vehicle will disengage from the International Space Station...."

As the reporter continued speaking, what he described happening was seen on the huge central viewing screen at Mission Control, the space vehicle disengaging from the space station and using brief ten- or fifteen-second bursts from its thrusters to pull ahead of it.

"...using its thrusters to pull ahead of the station, it will gradually gain speed and momentum as it begins a final orbit around the Earth...."

In the vehicle itself, Alex busily worked the controls to disengage from and back out of the docking bay on the ISS, then angle up and away, pressing the buttons to fire the rockets in brief spurts that would distance him from the structure. In his central monitor, he saw the ISS moving back and out of screen. He then adjusted his trajectory on the computerized guidance

system, and began to fire up the rockets.

Back in Mission Control, the TV reporter moved in front of the middle screen in the room, where computer graphics now displayed an animated sequence which showed how the spacecraft would orbit the Earth before being flung out into space. The TV reporter described this to the unseen audience.

"The Europa One spacecraft will take advantage of Earth's gravity to increase its velocity and inertial momentum. This force will sling it out across space toward Jupiter at a speed of more than thirty-five thousand miles per hour. Even at this tremendous speed, however, it will take more than nineteen and a half months for the ship to reach Europa, smallest of Jupiter's four large moons, and the one holding the most promise in man's ongoing search for extraterrestrial life."

* * *

15. Gena and Ray... and Andy Too

GENA AND ANDY began to gather up their belongings from beneath their chairs at the back of Mission Control central after the successful launch of Alex from the International Space Station.

The TV camera crew was packing up as well—show's over and Godspeed, little Europa One—now that the vessel had gotten safely through its maneuvers to escape Earth's gravity and been sling-shotted on its way to the planet Jupiter. The rest of this was a job for the technical staff, and unless something went dreadfully wrong there would be little to do or report for more than a year and a half, not until the final approach began as the vessel reached its destination.

Ray noticed Gena and Andy get up, and quickly excused himself from a perfunctory conversation with one of the techies to intercept them.

"Well, he's safely on his way at last, eh, son?" he said to Andy, but his eyes shifted constantly back to Gena.

"Yeah, I guess," Andy replied.

As they began to walk together toward the entrance, Ray navigated himself smoothly into position between them so that he could put his big muscular arms around the shoulders of both at the same time, giving them a fatherly squeeze.

"Quite a day, quite a day! I don't know about you two, but frankly, I'm starved! How about letting old Uncle Ray buy you both the biggest steak in Texas to celebrate."

"Celebrate what? Being starved?" Andy muttered.

"Andy!" Gena hissed.

"Your dad's history-making flight, of course—but then, you're probably used to that by now." He looked at Gena when he said this, and although his tone was jovial his eyes were not. They looked for her pain, found it, acknowledged it. Caressed it.

Gena took a breath, bit her upper lip. Then said, "Dinner would be great."

The steakhouse was Houston casual and Texas pricey. Gena had wine, which Ray kept the waiter refilling until she completely lost count, but knew it was more than she should have drunk and, worse, didn't care.

Ray drank whiskey neat and tried hard not to let his lust show, but he slipped up once or twice in baited innuendoes and off-color jokes that went one step over the line.

Gena found, after the third or so glass of wine, that she didn't mind so much him wanting her, that it made life kind of interesting, gave her something to think about. She might have laughed at his jokes a little too heartily, but oh well. Waiter, mas vino, por favor?

Andy had begun to fidget as soon as he'd polished off the last of his home fries. Dessert only quieted him for a few more minutes, and then came the drone.

"Mom, when are we gonna go home?"

"Mom! We've been here forever!"

And finally the kill stroke. "Mom, I've got school tomorrow!"

"Oh Gosh, that's right! So do I! Sorry, Ray, we'd better be going."

When she stood up, she suddenly was made aware of just how much alcohol she'd consumed, and had to sit back down quickly. Ray put his arm around her to steady her as he led her out to the parking lot.

"Listen, darlin'," he said when they got to their cars, parked next to one another in the dimly lit lot, "no way I can let you drive home like this." He quickly put a big gentle finger to her lips to stay her protest. "No, I insist. I'm the one who kept refillin' your glass, so let me drive you home, and I'll have one of my aides bring your car around first thing in the morning so you can get to work, okay?"

She smiled up at him from her tipsy daze. So sweet, so thoughtful and gentlemanly. Andy scowled sullenly, but didn't protest as he climbed into the big man's Lexus.

When they arrived home—finally a modest little two bedroom off-base home in suburban Houston—Ray walked her to the door. Andy grabbed the house key from her fumbling hand and opened the door himself, pushing past them without a word. Gena looked embarrassed, and began to apologize for the boy's rudeness, but Ray stopped her.

"Don't worry about it, Gena; someday he'll know how lucky he is to have a beautiful woman like you for a mom." He lifted her hand to his lips. "Alex's a lucky man too—I just hope he appreciates it."

She stared deep into his eyes, and what she saw there took her breath away. She felt a sudden hot flush that warmed the place between her legs and brought hot pink color to her cheeks and neck.

"Oh," she said. "I...good night. Good night, Ray." She fled inside before her lips could reach out and find his, and it would all be over.

He stood, staring at the closed door, his erection hard as rock inside his pants. Then he turned and went back to his car. A small voice deep inside of him said, Nineteen more months, but it was too deep for him to hear. Nevertheless, an inexplicable little smile formed on his lips at the secret thought.

Gena watched him drive away, then went to find Andy and chew him out for his behavior. He was in his room, lying on his bed watching TV.

"What were you thinking?" she railed.

"He's a slimeball," Andy retorted. "I saw the way he was looking at you, his stupid double entendres that he thought I was too lame to get."

"Andy, your dad and I are over."

"Yeah, but 'Uncle Ray' doesn't know that, does he?"

"Well, no, not really. I mean, we haven't announced it or anything."

"So then, that don't make him any less of a slimeball."

"That doesn't make him less..." she corrected.

"Right!" Andy grinned. "We agree!"

Gena had to laugh, and then hit him with a pillow.

* * *

Ray stood in the shower, eyes closed, pretending the drumming water that massaged his naked skin was her fingertips, imagining her lips on his, her sighing breath a moan as he took her and fed her and helped her to give in to her reluctant desires. His hand found flesh, still hard after the evening's anticipation and unfulfilled. He manipulated it gently, rocking back and forth, imagining still. She was so beautiful, Gena, a sexual enigma: cold and hot at the same moment, in equal parts intelligent and naive, with porcelain fragility painted over tempered steel. She was an epiphyte, an orchid: delicate, elegant, clinging to the strength of the tree, rooted in a chink in its armored skin, but creating her own life out of the air. A wonder, a wonder....

He stroked harder, yet found his erection softening the more clear her image became to him, too precious to serve as pure carnal bait. After a while he gave up, purged his mind of her altogether, and thought instead about the family dog he'd experimented on a number of guilty times between the ages of 12 and 13.

That worked.

Afterward he soaped thoroughly, rinsed, and realized he was falling in love.

* * *

16. More Space Dreams

BACK IN THE sterile white room on Europa, Alex still lay on the bed beneath the neatly tucked sheet, looking peaceful in repose. The only movement was the REM action of his eyes behind their closed lids.

* * *

Deep space, endless night.

Alex awoke slowly, still groggy from the sedative, momentarily disoriented and not particularly minding that he had no idea who he was or where. Beyond his tiny voyager the vast emptiness was ablaze with lights tiny and near, moving and still, which filled his three monitors, filled his senses even without the monitors. He was alone, so incredibly alone out here. And yet, instead of the endless void that surrounded him making him feel small and insignificant, he somehow felt enlarged by the scope of this universe, empowered by the fact that his eyes and his mind could encompass the entire enormity of it and hold it inside himself.

Then the urges and needs of his body suddenly awakened, bringing him back to the reality of his thirteen cubic feet of muscle and bone, of intestines and bladder that needed eliminating, of body and blood cells that needed food and water. Smallness, heaviness, separateness engulfed him. This is who I am, this is what I am, all I am, this tiny meat body riding in a tin can through space.

Loneliness arrived with that reality; loneliness riding in on thoughts of Gena. For him there had never been anyone else, never been time for anyone else. But that didn't seem to matter to her...and he really didn't know what did. He wanted to understand, but it was too much work, and he didn't have the time to figure it all out.

Quickly he took care of his bodily functions, checked all the readouts on his vessel, and then waited for the sedatives to be re-administered, to drop back into the hiber-sleep where this would all disappear for a while.

* * *

In the hospital bed, the REM movement of Alex's eyes suddenly increased, growing agitated. A moan escaped his lips, and his muscles began to twitch. In another room, the man called "Uriel" watched his charge carefully on a little monitor.

* * *

Alex fired the back thrusters on the spacecraft. The vehicle shook, and there was a muffled roar as the rockets ignited. In the overhead monitor, tongues of orange and blue flame shot by the right and left side of the screen in two swirling streams. All seemed well for a moment, and then the flame from the left reverse thruster began to sputter alarmingly and the vehicle responded with a hard torque to the left. Alex reacted to the readings on the spaceship control panels, as well as to the sudden violent skewing of his trajectory angle, evidenced by the disappearance of Europa from his viewing screen.

"Houston, we have a problem," he reported, the calm in his voice a stark contrast to the frantic activity he employed to resolve it.

Alex quickly scanned the monitors, flipping levers, adjusting controls, all the time communicating constantly with Houston his every move. Meanwhile on his central viewing monitor Jupiter spun crazily in circles across the screen, appearing and disappearing as the vehicle tumbled wildly end over end.

"Left thruster has shutdown completely. Trying to control the spin. Pitch and Yaw are... I can't read the numbers...changing too fast. Damn! Trying to restart left thruster...no go..."

* * *

The controlled voice of the flight director cut across Alex's frantic transmission; cut through his fear like a knife. "Alex, you've got to shut down your right thruster and try to control that spin."

Alex took a deep breath. "Roger that. Powering down right back thruster." There was a moment, then: "Right back thruster is down."

The spacecraft still tumbled end over end; the moon Europa—appearing in and out of the vehicle's view screen—loomed ever closer, its white icy surfaces cut by shadowy lines and ridges that grew larger and more pronounced by the second, its smooth planes aglow in the soft orange light from Jupiter on one side, from the slightly brighter and whiter light of the distant sun on the other.

Alex's voice now took on an eerie calm. "Air speed 6 KPS. Distance to lunar surface 500K."

"Fire your left forward rocket!" Ray ordered forcefully. "You've got to control that spin!"

"I'm already ten times the velocity for final approach, sir," Alex objected dispassionately.

"I don't give a fuck, you got to stabilize first! Just do it!"

Alex shrugged. Now I'm taking orders from a psychotic computer? One that says "I don't give a fuck"? Hell, why not?

"Copy. Firing left forward thruster."

As the left thruster powered up, flames shooting out from its rear were seen in the right monitor. In the central monitor, the crazy spiraling motion of the spacecraft seemed to slow for a moment, as if the vehicle was going to come out of its spin after all. Yet the moon Europa, the reference point for that spin, loomed ever larger in the screen, closer and closer, more and more detailed. "It's working, Ray!" Alex cried, his eyes alight with momentary hope. "I think... I think I got it...."

A HUGE EXPLOSION REVERBERATED THROUGH THE SPACECRAFT, AS IT FILLED WITH A GREAT RED FIREBALL.

* * *

17. And Awakens Again

ALEX SAT STRAIGHT up in the hospital bed, shaking and drenched in sweat, gasping for breath. A scream of horror was lodged in his throat, unable to escape, and he gagged on it, retching loudly over the side. After a moment he willed himself to get up, dragged himself from the bed and staggered over to the hidden door from which Uriel had come and gone earlier.

Trying to quell the uncontrolled shaking that racked him, Alex pushed against the wall with both hands, then began to systematically explore the area where he thought the doorway should be, prodding the smooth wall for any niche. Finding none, he finally kicked at it in growing agitation, but all to no avail. The secret orifice simply would not reveal itself. He began to pound his fists against the seamless surface in frustration.

"Let me out!" he yelled. "I want out of here!"

The door opened soundlessly, and Uriel was suddenly there, right in front of him. Alex stared at the odd-looking man, his expression a mix of awe, terror, confusion and hope.

"I didn't blow up on the launch pad," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"No," Uriel replied.

"It was on Europa, wasn't it? I crashed on the surface of Europa?"

"Yes," Uriel agreed.

Alex grabbed the cloth of the man's robe near the neck, ferocious in his fear. "Then how in hell did I get here?" he demanded. "Mission Control couldn't—they couldn't have rescued me, not at that distance. It would have taken more than two years just to get here, provided they even had a ship ready. I didn't have enough food and water to last that long...."

"You're right," Uriel acknowledged, gently dislodging Alex's grip.

"I'm right?"

"They couldn't," Uriel nodded. "And they didn't."

"Then, then where am I? What is this place?"

"Europa. This is a recovery facility."

Alex stared at him a moment before he could find his voice to ask quietly, "You're not from Earth then, are you? Are you some sort of...extraterrestrial?"

"Technically, yes."

"But, this is amazing! Amazing!" He was opened-mouthed, shaking his head. "Incredible."

Alex began to pace in a tight little circle, his bare feet padding softly on the white tile floor. "We, we'd always thought that if there was life anywhere else in the solar system, it would most likely be found on Europa. But we had in mind microorganisms: bacteria, one-celled things, you know, not..." he opened his arms wide as if to encompass the hospital room and Uriel, "this, not you. Not some highly evolved race capable of advanced technology."

"That assessment is—not entirely correct," Uriel cautioned.

"But obviously you saved my life, patched me up without so much as a scar anywhere—surely that demonstrates advanced medical technology." He was turning his arms over and back as

he said this, as if to demonstrate the point.

"That's not precisely correct either," Uriel advised.

"I don't get it," Alex said, his smile beginning to fade.

"I think it's time we took a little walk, Alex. I have something to show you that may help you understand."

"A walk?" He looked down at his own nakedness, then back up at Uriel. "Can I have...?"

"Oh, sure. Here," Uriel whipped the sheet off the bed with a graceful flourish and expertly wrapped it around Alex toga style, fastening it with a couple of knots. He indicated a pair of slippers that had suddenly appeared next to the bed, and Alex slipped his feet into them.

"I feel like I'm going to an Animal House party," he commented ruefully.

Uriel smiled, then turned and walked through the wall, which suddenly was a door again, signaling Alex to follow him through the opening.

* * *

18. Alex Finds Out What's Up

URIEL LED ALEX down a featureless white hallway which seemed to go on for miles, and finally past a small "nurses' station," which was little more than a large desk with a single white uniformed nurse seated at it. She glanced up at Alex as they passed, her face pale, and of no discernible age or noteworthy feature, vanishing from his consciousness almost as soon as it was out of his vision. Except for the wink. She'd winked at him just as he went by, and that single eye movement stayed with him even when all the rest had faded into the white oblivion of mind and surroundings. A haunting pale blue eye, winking knowingly.

They went into another hallway, Uriel leading, Alex silently following. An elevator door at the end of the hall opened at their approach. They entered. Uriel pushed the only button in the elevator. There was no sound, no sense of movement up or down. Yet after a few seconds passed, the door reopened and Uriel exited into another area. Alex dutifully followed, but not unquestioningly. The questions for now remained in his mind, unspoken; but this whole thing seemed just too odd, too contrived.

Alex now followed Uriel down a hallway that seemed to be identical in every way to the one they'd just left. After walking for what seemed like a city block or more of featureless corridor, they passed another "nurses' station" exactly like the first. Alex glanced over at the nurse as they walked by, and she looked up at him, returning his stare. To his shock, he felt certain he was seeing the same pale and unremarkable face as before—yet since the first woman's features had failed to register in his memory, this one might or might not have been the same person. Then, once again, she winked, and he was suddenly sure.

"Hey!" he blurted, turning to accost Uriel with his suspicions. But Uriel was already twenty feet ahead. Alex hurried to catch up with him, still looking back over his shoulder at the mysterious nurse.

"Wait," he called to Uriel, grabbing his arm. "Isn't this the same hallway we were in before? What's going on?"

They had just arrived at a doorway identical to the one that had led out of his own hospital room, and Alex felt certain that he'd been led in a big circle, and was now going back to his old room, where he'd be dumped off like some fool. So when Uriel opened the door to reveal instead a small auditorium within, Alex was dumbfounded.

"I thought..." He faltered.

"I know. Come in." Uriel smiled.

The little auditorium was much like one of those movie theaters in a multiscreen cineplex, or maybe a small college lecture hall. Up front there was a full-sized movie screen hanging before a fairly sizable stage. Rows of upholstered theater seats led up from this stage, but all of them were empty at present.

Near the center of the room, between the rows of chairs, there was a rectangular metal control box, and it was to this that Uriel proceeded. Alex started to follow, but the robed man stopped and turned toward him.

"Sit where ever you like, Alex," Uriel advised him. "Make yourself comfortable, please."

Alex looked around, wondering if this was a test, if one seating section was better than another. He could go way down by the front, or up near the back. He could sit by the door, ready to bolt. But instead, he chose a seat in close proximity to Uriel at the central control panel. He told himself it was to keep a careful eye on what the other man was doing, but in truth it was more because he felt a little less vulnerable there, though he couldn't have said so, as that word was not in his vocabulary.

Once Alex was settled, Uriel flicked a switch in the control box, and the room went completely dark. On the movie screen down in front, a motion picture began without preamble or introduction. It was another damn instant replay of the last moments leading up to Alex's crash on Europa, but this viewpoint was from the perspective of those at Mission Control only.

On the main floor of Mission Control Central, barely controlled pandemonium had just erupted: with technicians at their individual computers and monitors shouting various readouts. Some made ill-advised comments, others well intentioned, but useless, suggestions. On the large monitor screen at the front of the room, Alex was seen in the cockpit of his out-of-control vehicle. He was reading monitors, flipping levers, adjusting controls. Meanwhile on both his ship's central viewing monitor and on the duplicate monitor in Mission Control, Jupiter spun crazily in circles across the screen, appearing and disappearing as the vehicle tumbled wildly end over end. Inside the upper glass-walled spectator gallery the television news anchors talked excitedly into their video cams.

Back on the main floor, a technician called his readouts to the flight director, Ray Petersen. "Vehicle approach speed was 6 KPS, distance to surface was 1000 kilometers and closing."

"He's got to control that spin!" Ray shouted.

"But sir, it's too—"

"Alex," Ray shouted into the relay feed, ignoring the techy's protest, "you've got to shut down your right thruster and try to control that spin."

"...late," the techy finished.

The angle changed, moving close in on the spectator gallery. Behind the glass, Gena half rose, her clenched fist up to her mouth.

"Oh God, no," she breathed in horror.

Alex leaned forward in his chair. "She still cares about me," he whispered.

The camera angle on the movie screen went back to the flight room. "Fire your left forward rocket," the director ordered. "You've got to control that spin!"

Within Mission Control, all eyes were on the huge monitor screen above them, as the larger than life image of Alex turned to face the camera directly. Behind him in the space vehicle's onboard monitor, the surface of Europa filled the screen, its ridges growing closer, closer.

"...I think I got it...." Alex began.

A HUGE EXPLOSION REVERBERATES THROUGH THE ROOM, AS THE VIEW SCREEN IS FILLED WITH A GREAT RED FIREBALL.

Andy jumped to the viewing window, his face and arms pushed up against it as he screamed, "Dad!"

Gena and Andy both pressed against the glass, looking down onto the main floor of Mission Control. They were immediately surrounded by a babble of reporters pushing voices and mikes into their faces, their pain. After a stunned moment, Gena angrily fended off the crowd as she, with Andy in tow, began to push through them towards the door.

* * *

Inside the darkened auditorium, the movie screen suddenly went blank; then, at the flick of a switch by Uriel, it raised up to reveal the darkened stage behind. Another flick, and the lights on this stage came on, revealing an exact replica of Mission Control at the moment of the crash.

The fully three dimension image of flight director Ray Petersen has just acknowledged the worst.

"Oh my God," Ray said, staring up at the fireball on the center screen, "we've lost him!"

From his seat in the auditorium, Alex half rose. "What the hell!?" he exclaimed. "What's he talking about...lost him?!"

Gena rushed on stage a moment later, a reluctant Andy following a few feet behind

"Ray, no! Oh no!" she cried out forlornly. "It isn't, it can't be...."

The flight director took her into his arms, crushing her tightly against his chest as she shook her head and moaned in utter despair and denial.

"Dad." Andy said simply, looking lost and forgotten, standing there alone in the middle of all this uproar, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Then Ray reached out to bring him into his embrace as well.

"What the hell's going on here?" Alex turned toward Uriel. "This can't be real. How did you do this?"

"It's— let's call it virtual reality. It's as real as it needs to get. But remember, it's only one version of reality, there might be others.... Go ahead, go on down, join the party. It's for you, after all."

Alex reluctantly left his seat and went down into the virtual reality of Mission Control, wending through the pandemonium of technicians reacting to the accident in various ways: swearing, crying, pounding their fists against their monitors, staring in disbelief. As he walked all around the grieving figures, staring at them curiously, he noticed that none seemed at all aware of his presence. He looked on with special interest as Gena stepped back to question Ray tearfully.

"He's...gone? Are you sure?" she whimpered.

Ray nodded. Alex looked at him closely, from all angles, searching his face for guile. If Ray was hiding anything, he was doing a good job of it.

Gena now turned to Andy and—seeing the lost expression on his face—moved forward to embrace him, crying, "Oh, Andy, oh, my poor baby...I'm so sorry."

Alex reached out to them, trying to touch first Gena, then Andy. But his hand passed right through them. He looked up questioningly toward Uriel

"Why can't I touch them?"

"Because you're insubstantial." Uriel shrugged. "As a matter of fact so are they; they're just a bunch of three-dimensional light images, holograms."

"But, but I can't be unsubstantial. I'm alive, I...I feel. I feel things, I feel alive. They're wrong, aren't they? They've made a mistake...?"

"No, Alex, they're right," Uriel said, with just the right intonation of regret.

"No, no...I'm alive! Look at me!" Alex insisted.

"You died in the crash, Alex."

"No," Alex said, but with less certainty.

"You're dead." Uriel nodded, matter-of-factly. "We gave you this apparent physical form as a point of reference, to help you through the transition."

Behind Alex on the stage, as this odd dialogue was going on, Andy had pulled away from Gena's embrace, bitter and angry in his grief.

"He got exactly what he wanted, didn't he!" Andy shouted. "It's all he ever wanted!"

He pointed accusingly at Ray; mimicking him in a mocking, eerily accurate imitation of the older man's voice, although his was partly choked by tears.

"Don't worry, son, you haven't really lost a father, you've gained a national hero! Well, you're right..." he turned now in fury on his mother, "except I lost my father a long time ago, didn't I, Mom? Didn't I!!"

He stormed out, disappearing from the rear of the stage's virtual Mission Control room. Alex watched him go, shocked and a little angry.

"Why the hell is he acting like that? I was a decent father...and I'm dead, for God's sake, the insensitive little prick!"

He turned to Uriel, puzzled. "I can't believe Andy would really act that way, certainly not in public. Is this actually how it happened down there, or are you all just fucking with my mind?"

"You really don't know?"

Alex shakes his head, both mystified and saddened. "I...I thought I was a pretty good man, a pretty good role model. I tried to be the kind of dad any boy could be proud of."

"I'm sure you did."

"I was an astronaut, practically an icon...you can't accomplish that in a 9-to-5 job! What did he expect?!"

"You're right, of course; it was a trade-off. Always is. You can't do everything perfectly, can't please everyone," Uriel agreed.

"It's impossible, there's simply not enough time," Alex defended.

"So you make your choices along the way: how much time for this person, how much time for that one. How much for yourself?"

"It wasn't just for myself," Alex countered. "I mean, I loved being a test pilot and an astronaut, sure, and it took a lot of time; but it was a job that benefited the whole world!"

"Ah yes, the advancement of scientific knowledge to the betterment of mankind...what a huge benefactor compared to one small boy. And what a grand audience."

"Go to hell!" Alex shot back. "I was a good father."

* * *

19. Daddy's Boy, a Retrospective

"Come on, honey, he's only two!" Gena protested mildly, smiling nonetheless at how cute the birthday boy looked in his little blue and gray pinstriped Dodger's uniform.

"First you complain about how I never play with him," Alex countered, adjusting the tight pants over the bulge of Andy's diaper, "then you complain when I do."

"I know, I'm sorry," she said, putting the little blue cap on the baby's head.

Alex adjusted it so it was cocked sideways over one ear, then slipped on the miniature glove, still massive compared to the toddler's tiny hand. It slipped right off again.

"Got any film left in that camera?" Alex grinned, stepping back to admire his work. "Here ya go, kiddo." He put the tiny Louisville slugger in Andy's hands, placing them just right.

"Swing away while Mommy takes your picture." Andy grinned up at his dad, and began whacking at space, whirling around in circles with the bat outstretched, while Alex and Gena laughed helplessly and jumped out of his way. When the phone went flying Gena's laughter stopped.

"Okay, enough, gimme that," she said, grabbing the little bat out of his hands.

Andy began to howl in protest.

"Aah, Mommy's an old meany, isn't she?" Alex said, picking up the sobbing child.

"He's dangerous! Here, play with the ball and glove instead, at least inside the house."

"Then Mommy has to play with us, huh kiddo?" Alex said.

"But honey, I've got all this party mess to clean up." She looked around at the paper plates full of barely nibbled birthday cake and liquefying ice cream, at the pieces and blobs of both that had managed to miss mouths and hit carpet instead; the blown-out party favors, popped and un-popped balloons, tattered wrapping paper, ribbons, and boxes strewn across the cramped living room floor. In the far corner there was a decapitated and disemboweled paper mache Buzz Lightyear bleeding the last remaining individually wrapped tootsie rolls – like small turds - from his body cavity.

"I'll help you later. Come on, it's his birthday. Let's spend a little of that good old quality time I'm always hearing about."

Gena sighed, relented, and for the next hour Alex taught his little boy, barely able to walk, how to catch and throw a baseball. Actually Alex caught the ball that Gena would toss gently to them, manipulating Andy's little hands in the oversized glove to snatch it out of the air and pull it to his chest, with few fumbles and great cheers at each success. Andy chortled happily at all the attention.

The stats were a little lower for throwing. Although Alex again manipulated Andy's chubby hands through the motions of lifting and hurling the ball at his waiting mother, who wore his tiny glove on her three middle fingers, getting the kid to actually let go of the missile was the problem. More often than not he didn't release it at the appropriate time, and the ball ended up dropping at his feet or flying off in the wrong direction. Once it nailed the cat, which made them all roll on the floor in laughter. Andy looked back and forth at his parents, clapping his hands with pleasure at his own entertainment value.

Then it was time for Andy's nap. Alex took one with him, while Gena cleaned the birthday party mess alone. The bat, ball and glove were put away in the closet and—despite Alex's well-intentioned promise to play with him daily after that—they were not seen again until three years later, when Gena was packing for their move to Edwards Air Force Base where Alex had just been assigned to advanced pilot training. The once massive glove would now never make it past Andy's knuckles.

She sighed and dropped it in the box for the Good Will truck.

Of course other father/son occasions had come along now and then in the years between, good times Alex and Andy had spent together; like the infamous and not to be forgotten camping trip to the national forest with another couple from base, who had a four-year-old daughter that attended preschool with Andy.

They'd driven up to the mountains in separate cars, then picked a nice site by the river to set up camp. Once the tents were up and sleeping bags unrolled, Alex and Brad took the two kids out by the shore to teach them how to fish while the ladies unpacked everything else and started dinner.

Later they roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over an open fire, ate s'mores until they all felt sick, and prepared to call it an early night. Bethany, the other couple's four-year-old, noticed Gena putting the big night diaper on Andy, and began to tease.

"Baby, baby, baby...gotta wear a diaper to bed!"

"Hush now, Bethany," her mother scolded. "He's younger than you!"

"But Mommy, I haven't worn a diaper in two years!" She held up three fingers.

Alex turned to Gena. "Don't you think he's old enough to go the night? He never wears one during the day," he explained to the other couple. "I think Gena's just being paranoid." To Gena he said, "Leave it off, tonight. What's the worst that can happen?"

At 3 a.m. they found out, when a cold and sodden little boy tried to crawl into their double sleeping bag between them, reeking of urine. Gena cleaned him up best she could by flashlight, dressed him in warm dry pajamas—and a diaper – and let sleep with them the rest of the night.

The next day, after a breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs with campfire burnt toast, the guys once again took the little ones fishing while the women cleaned the breakfast mess.

Actually, the two men fished, while the children played on the bank behind them. But after a while Andy got bored with simply watching, and even more bored with the tedious little blonde haired brat that kept bothering him all the time. So he picked up his kid-sized beginner fishing outfit, detached the hook from the safety cork handle, and tried to cast it into the water. Of course, he didn't wait to ask Daddy to bait the hook or give him the go ahead, he just whipped his line out behind him nice and neat like he'd seen Daddy do—just did it, knowing he'd do it right and Daddy would clap his hands and cheer, and maybe give him a big hug.

Instead, there was a shrill scream of pain from behind him as he whipped the line forward again, and a sharp tug.

"I already a fish?" he thought in wonderment. Until Daddy grabbed the pole out of his hand and shoved him to the ground.

"What the hell have you done, Andrew James McCormick!" he yelled.

There was this terrible howling now from somewhere nearby, and the hoarse angry voice of the other daddy calling the mommys from the tent. Now the mommys were running towards them and screaming, and he knew he was in really big trouble. He rolled over and looked behind him. Blood was running down the side of the little blonde girl's nose, and she was trying to reach its source, but her dad had her arms pinned tightly to her sides. Andy's fishhook was stuck clean through her upper lid.

"Oh my God, oh my God, she's blind!" the girl's mommy screamed as she arrived and saw the hook penetrating the child's eye.

"What the hell's wrong with that kid of yours? Is he a retard or something?" the other daddy hollered at his daddy.

"S-s-s-sorry, Daddy!" Andy wailed from his place in the dirt, hoping for sympathy.

"She's okay, she's okay," Gena soothed them all, peering closely at the little girl's fear-contorted face. "It doesn't seem to have touched the eyeball at all, just hooked clean through the upper lid—Alex, where's that little tool you have for cutting out fishhooks?"

"Don't you dare touch her," Bethany's mother hissed at Gena. "We need a specialist, not some gook."

"What did you call my wife?" Alex growled, hackles rising.

"Shut up all of you and give me the goddam tool," Gena ordered, taking charge. "Linda, we are miles from the nearest phone let alone 'specialist,' and we can get this thing safely out in two seconds if you will all just settle down."

Alex handed her the needle nosed wire cutters.

"Okay, now, Brad, you keep hold of her arms just like you're doing. Linda, no, Alex, you hold her head real still. Linda, you take hold of this end of the fishhook, just hold it tight and steady while I snap off the business end...there, done!"

Gena held up the barbed end of the hook for all to see, then carefully pulled the millimeter of remaining shaft out of the little girl's lid. Only a tiny amount of blood continued to drip from the wound, and this stopped after a minute.

"Well, I still think we'd better pack up and take her to a specialist, there could be unseen damage," the mother sniffed.

"And you better get a handle on that little monster," Brad added, picking up his snuffling child and heading for the campsite, where they proceeded to break camp in a silent huff and leave within half an hour of the accident.

After the others were gone, Gena, Alex and Andy sat down and had a good talk.

"You are not going to spank a three-year-old boy for mimicking his father. It's your fault you weren't watching him more carefully," is what Gena said for openers.

"Yeah? Well, why the hell did you tell that hysterical, shakey-handed bitch to help hold the hook? She might have put the kid's eye out," Alex countered, sidestepping neatly.

"Exactly...and then she couldn't have placed all the blame on the two of us, could she?"

"Fwee," Andy chimed in, holding up two fingers.

He looked back and forth at the two of them, as they burst into laughter, and then he knew it was okay again and laughed too.

There were other good father-son times too. Like the time Andy had just turned four, when his dad took the training wheels off his bicycle and encouraged him ride on his own— cheering him on right over a curb and into a parked car, requiring five stitches to sew up his chin.

And then, when he was not quite five, his dad signed up to be an assistant coach for his T-ball team, primarily so Andy could be allowed into the league a few weeks earlier than the age criteria set for everyone else. Turns out there was a good reason for age criteria, called physical development and coordination.

Actually, Andy was kind of relieved when his dad quit coaching the team two months later so that when he missed the ball three times swinging, he didn't have to hear his dad say, "It was right there, son; sittin' on the damn T!"

And when he ducked instead of catching the occasional fly balls that aimed to conk him on the head in far right field; he didn't have to see the look of disappointment and embarrassment in his dads eyes, even though he was trying his best. About the time Andy was actually old enough to play, Alex found he suddenly had a lot of work to do and had to stop helping the team, Andy and Coach Rooney were not that disappointed to see him go, especially when Gena volunteered to take his place. They didn't win many games that season, but somehow it was a lot more fun.

The next year they'd moved to Edwards, and Alex was so busy flying jets he only came to a few of the T-ball games there. But every time he did, Andy got real nervous and struck out or made other dumb plays, so his dad never really got to see how much better he was getting. The next year he entered the Little League Minors, and once his dad had stopped coming altogether, he continued to improve.

His Minor League coach had tried him in a lot of different positions: first base, second, shortstop, catcher. Some he did better than others, but by the time he was ten they'd discovered that Andy's real talent was pitching, a talent so strong it more than made up for any other inherent weaknesses. Yet when Andy ran home excitedly to tell his dad he'd been allowed to play in the Little League Majors and had been made the alternate pitcher for his team, his dad hadn't seemed that into it, like maybe he didn't really believe him. Maybe he even secretly thought "alternate" was just a way to keep Andy from screwing up too badly everywhere else, like some sort of glorified bench warmer. In any case, he never came to a single one of the games to find out.

Andy looked for him every time he got on the mound, looked for him at the end of every game he saved. But Alex was never there, so he never talked to his dad about the game again. And his dad never asked.

* * *

20. Defending His Life?

"I TRIED to be a good dad, I really did."

"Of course, of course you did, Alex," Uriel agreed. "You went camping once, fishing, I believe. You even taught him baseball and how to ride a two-wheeler at a remarkably early age."

"Okay, maybe some of those turned out badly, but we did try for quality time..."

"And when he got a little older, out of that cute age? You spend any quality time shooting hoops, shooting the breeze...watching him play Little League?"

"I tried, but I had a really busy schedule."

Uriel raised a heavy black brow.

"Okay, maybe I could have done a little more," Alex admitted.

"You want to see where?" Uriel asked him.

"Where what?"

"Where you made bad choices in your life; your missteps?"

"Why?" Alex asked petulantly. "To torture me?"

"Don't you want to know which were the pivotal choices, those which—if done differently—might have led to entirely different outcomes, a different life path, even?" Uriel prodded gently.

"What's the point? It's too late; I'm already dead," Alex snapped, "or so you say."

"What if you had it to do over?"

Alex looked at him a long thoughtful moment before responding, "I don't know...do I?"

"Shall we take a look at your life?"

"You're not Albert Brooks, are you?"

Uriel gave him a mildly exasperated look.

"Just kidding. Got any popcorn?"

"Popcorn?"

"This is liable to be longer than Gone With The Wind. I get hungry during long movies."

Uriel pushed a button on his control panel, whispered something into a little microphone, then turned to Alex.

"Buttered or plain?"

"Buttered...and can I have a large Dr. Pepper with that?"

Uriel nodded, whispered the order into his microphone, and almost instantly a white-robed aide appeared carrying a large cardboard bucket of fragrant buttered popcorn, and soda in a paper cup. Alex stared up at the aide's face a moment, trying to place him, the pale blue eyes; but before he was able the man left, and the memory of his face faded almost instantly. Alex shrugged and took a handful of the popcorn, then another, suddenly famished.

Between hungry mouthfuls washed down with gulps of the soda he looked over at Uriel.

"Not bad, tastes like the real thing—only then it would be Coke. Bye the way, if I'm so dead, how can I eat food?"

"Virtual food," Uriel replied, then turned down the lights in the auditorium, as simultaneously the lights on the stage below brightened.

* * *

The stage was no longer Mission Control, but instead the large well-manicured backyard of an upper middle-class home. The brick patio around a large free-form swimming pool was set up with a catered bar, and tables laden with trays of hors d'oeuvres as well as more substantial food: cold cuts, various cheeses, breads and homemade salads. The center table held a five tiered wedding cake and iced pails of champagne chilling for the celebration. On the outer perimeter of the pool, and on down into the yard a number of white patio tables and chairs were set up for the reception. Further down, guests filled the six rows of folding white wooden chairs that had been set up on the plush green lawn. The rows—and guests—were separated into two groups by a wide center aisle. At the front of the aisle, farthest from the home, a white wooden arch interwoven with flowers had been erected; in front this symbolic gateway waited a very young, very nervous Alex in an Air Force dress uniform.

Behind the arch stood a frocked minister, beaming and checking his watch; while to Alex's left stood three bridesmaids, looking over the crowd hungrily for prospects. His older cousin Sam stood at his right elbow, looking bemused as only a twenty-two-year-old college senior can when he feels a younger relative is making the mistake of his life, and is anticipating the years ahead he'll have to rag him about it.

Music began from a stereo system set up around the pool area, and Gena entered from the left: her bridal dressing room the pool house. Alex, watching from the seats in the auditorium, swallowed hard. So did the younger Alex under the wedding arch. She looked so very young he never remembered her being that young—and so elegant, so beautiful in her simple white silk wedding gown. She was escorted by her father, a small but ferocious looking man who even now was unable to erase the perpetual scowl from his face.

Alex turned to whisper to Uriel, "It's my wedding day! Why are you showing me this? Are you saying my marriage to Gena was a mistake?!"

"Not necessarily," Uriel replied, "but it was a pivotal choice, life directing, don't you agree? And so early—notice your eyes."

Alex leaned forward, looking hard; then he got up from his seat to go down to the stage itself, wanting to study the virtual image of his younger self and the other players from this scene of his past from a closer vantage point.

As young Alex watched his approaching bride, his fixed smile twitching imperceptibly at the corners, older Alex could see the fear in his eyes, the uncertainty. He shot a quick glance toward the array of smilingly tearful bridesmaids, whose eyes were all focused lovingly on the approaching bride, their sister or girlfriend...nothing much there. He then let his eyes wander back across the people seated in the first row of chairs on the left, the bride's family. They all were looking back anxiously at Gena. He approached them for a closer view. The bride's mother looked at once hopeful, and fearful, perhaps remembering her own wedding day....

Gena had told him a little about her mother, and mostly in disparaging terms; the way she allowed her husband and sons to boss her about, ever submissive, ever dutiful.

"She's very smart, my mother," Gena had insisted; "but you'll almost never see it. She never lets it show at all in front of my father, and only to us kids when he's not around: To be smarter than your husband is considered disrespect. Even my brothers would never listen to her any more after a certain age. So rude, I wanted to slap them, I wanted her to slap them. But she just took it. I would never be like that!"

Alex had read the statement rightly as a warning, and nodded his full agreement, squeezing her hand.

Now the older Alex read that worry clearly in the older woman's eyes. Don't be like me, they cried out to the approaching bride; be strong... Oh, I hope this is not a mistake, she's so young, too young to truly know herself yet.

And then the woman looked over at the teenaged groom with an expression that was pure malice, and the older Alex shuddered.

He shifted his study to the ancient grandmother, her wobbly head bobbing on the slender stalk of neck, her expression benign, loving, a little puzzled. The aunt, the bride's sister, looked more serious than happy about the match, almost as wary as the mother, but without the history. Aunt Jen—a lawyer—had never married. Next to her sat two very serious looking older brothers, Takeo and Johnny. The older of these turned back toward the front and caught young Alex's eye, raising a mildly threatening brow. The groom nervously widened his smile, gave the hostile brother a little nod of recognition, and turned his attention back to his bride, who was just now being delivered the final few steps to the arch by her truculent father.

The weathered little Asian looked directly at Alex for just a second. Treat her right, he nodded; but don't take any shit. He then took the empty seat next to the bride's mother in the front row.

The young Alex turned to face Gena as she joined him under the flower bedecked wedding arch . For just a second their eyes met, and Gena appeared to see something in his that made her own smile fade into a questioning expression. Alex—both of them—loved her for that, and it showed in the warmth that immediately flooded the groom's eyes, replacing the nervousness and doubt. He gave her a wink, she smiled back, and they turned to face the minister.

Alex turned to Uriel, as behind him the lights on the stage dimmed, then went totally dark.

"Everybody seemed so sure it wouldn't work. I mean, I was only nineteen, sure, but I was going away to the Air Force Academy for four years..." he explained.

"And her older brothers convinced you that married men got more perks in the military?"

"Off base housing, family allowance, more credits at the PX," Alex nodded. "Besides, we loved each other, we were going to get married someday anyway..."

"You were horny as hell," Uriel interrupted, "and she was old fashioned, plus she had a couple of older brothers none too fond of you in the first place."

"That too," Alex admitted a little sheepishly. "But we were already engaged anyway..."

"And since that hadn't done the trick..."

"Come on, it wasn't for that. I loved her, she loved me. So we figured..."

"Why not now?" Uriel finished. "She figured, actually...and you went along for the ride. Even at the wedding ceremony, you still didn't listen to that little voice."

"How could I?" Alex argued. "Not then, not there. It was too late. I could never hurt or embarrass her or her family that way."

"Oh, I fully agree, you couldn't. Not then, not there. And up to that moment, maybe it just hadn't seemed that real to you, what you were about to commit to. So you did what you felt to be 'the right thing,' and your life changed forever. Especially when you consider how it led almost immediately to your next major misstep. Look."

The lights came up on the stage again, and Alex turned to find it was no longer the setting of his wedding, but the hotel honeymoon suite in Laughlin a few hours later. Young Alex was still in his Air Force dress uniform, though the jacket was gone, slung over a nearby chair. He held Gena in his arms, clumsily disrobing her as he kissed her lips, her face and throat. He folded her down onto the bed as passion increased, and she only fell the last foot or so.

In the background, feeling a bit like a voyeur, older Alex giggled at the klutz he once was.

Now, still kissing Gena passionately, young Alex began to tug at his own pants, struggling to get them past his enormous erection. Gena pulled her lips away from his for just a moment to whisper breathlessly.

"Do you have...you know?"

"What?" he groaned between kisses and debriefing.

"Protection?"

"Shit," he stopped for a moment to look at her, "I didn't think...you're not on the pill?"

"Of course not silly...I..." He had begun to stroke between her legs, distracting her, "mmmm... oh jeez...I've never...you know... Oh, Alex...so why would I need to?"

"Oh...yeah, huh?"

He was too inflamed to stop now, burying his face in her neck, fumbling open her brassiere and kissing her breasts.

"But we're married now," he mumbled against the sweetness of her flesh, "so it's okay, right?"

"I don't want to get pregnant, Alex...not just yet," Gena protested feebly, just as his mouth found hers again.

"Don't worry," he assured her between kisses, "you won't, I promise."

"I've got to finish college, get my degree," she moaned as he found her wet spot.

"I'll buy some tomorrow, I promise, but..."

Gena pushed him back, giving it one last try. "But Alex..."

Alex raised up on his elbows, giving her his best puppy dog eyes. "Honey, please. It's three a.m., the drug store's closed... Anyway, no one gets pregnant the first time."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Well..."

Alex had gone back to kissing her, touching and stroking. Passion overcame reason.

"...OK, then."

"Bad call, don't you see," Uriel called down to the older Alex from the auditorium seats.

Alex looked up at him, shrugged ruefully. "All right, all right, I admit it. I screwed up."

"Literally. And nine months later..." He nodded toward the stage, and Alex turned around to see the scene had once again changed.

It was now the maternity ward of the base hospital, the delivery room to be exact, and Gena was in the final stages of labor. Alex stood next to her, ineptly trying to coach and comfort, and looking very young and sheepish as—between pants and pains—Gena found the energy somehow to curse him vehemently.

"Damn you, Alex McCormick, you and your stupid p-p-penis!" she cried. "No one ever gets pregnant the first time! You asshole!"

The obstetrician glanced up from his view between Gena's legs to give Alex a wry grin, before ducking back to the business that was occurring between the surgical drapes. The delivery room nurse gave Alex a comforting pat on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, sugar," the woman told him. "They all say things like that, 'specially the first time. She'll get over it soon as the baby's out."

"But even though she may have stopped cursing you," Uriel explained from off stage, "she never did get over it, did she? A baby's not something you get over, like the flu. And your life direction changed inexorably."

Alex turned and walked up a few steps back toward Uriel.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't want to not have Andy either—he's a great kid."

As Alex turned to Uriel in the seating area, down on the stage below the delivery proceeded, finalized by the sound of an infant crying lustily. Alex turned to see his son, his face as alight with hope and joy as it had been at the actual moment, fifteen years earlier. But behind him the stage had dimmed once again, now dark and barren as the irretrievable past. He turned toward Uriel, stricken.

"Wouldn't he have been just as great a kid five years later?" Uriel asked gently.

"But would he have still been Andy?" Alex countered, walking a few steps closer to this strange being that now controlled his past and present, maybe even his future. "Different egg, different sperm, different kid? Anyway, it wasn't so bad."

"For you, maybe."

The lights once more went up on the stage below, which had now become the interior of a small, cheaply furnished apartment. It was night outside the windows, dark with stars and latent dreams.

Gena carried the crying baby over her shoulder, pacing back and forth across the kitchen with him, patting him on the back with one hand while she attempted to read a biology textbook balanced in the other. Alex sat at the nearby kitchen table with textbooks on military science and aerodynamics piled around him. His head was bent over a book, trying to study. Finally he looked up in exasperation.

"Jeez, Gena, can't you keep him quiet? I'm trying to study!"

"So am I!" The exhausted woman flashed back in frustration. "I've got a biology final tomorrow! As a matter of fact, why don't you walk him for a while?"

"Because I've got two finals this week, and they're at the academy, not some community college," he replied steadily.

"Oh, well gee, that's just so much more important than my little test, how could I even dream..."

"Ah, come on, Gena—I told you you shouldn't have signed up for classes this semester," he snapped back.

Alex, looking on from the steps in the auditorium, winced.

"You also told me no one gets pregnant the first time," Gena yelled at him angrily. Baby Andy's cries had increased in tempo and volume in response to this noise, and her patting of him increased accordingly, not really helping the situation.

"Again, Gena!!?? You gonna throw that up at me the rest of my life? Well no one twisted your arm—you knew as well as I did there was a chance..."

Gena rolled her eyes. She'd heard this one too many times already. "Right, Alex. So now I'm supposed to give up my life, my career, my dreams..."

Alex interrupted, trying to sound like the voice of reason. "It's just for a while, honey, three more years, tops."

"...because your career, your dreams, are so much more important."

"I'm not saying that; it's not that way at all. You're not your mom, Gena, honey."

He immediately regretted the bite of sarcasm in his voice, the tears it brought to her eyes. He set down his manuals and got up from the table to come over to her, wrapping his arms around her and the crying baby.

"It's just that I can't drop any classes, sweetheart, you know that. The Air Force training regimen is rigid; they allow no exceptions. If I drop a class, I may as well drop out of the academy all together."

"I know," Gena responded tearfully, "but..."

He took the baby from her, kissing her cheek. "Go ahead, hon; study for a while. I need a break anyway...and Gen?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll get your degree, sweetheart; I promise, from the bottom of my heart. It's just so hard right now on all of us: you, me...Andy."

"I know..." she whispered, kissing the sleepy baby nestled against Alex's neck, then walking over to the table with her textbook.

"It's just until I graduate, okay? Then we can afford to put Andy in preschool, and you can go to school full time. I'll take care of him at night while you study, I'll even do all the cooking and cleaning."

Gena had turned away, so only the older Alex could see her mouth silently in response: "How big of you."

Alex turned toward Uriel defensively, "But it did all work out that way!"

"More or less," Uriel responded. "More or less."

"Okay, so maybe it took a little longer for her to graduate."

"Eight years," Uriel nodded. "And you never washed a single dish. You were too busy..."

He touched a button on the control panel, and the movie screen rolled back down, the projector flickered on.

* * *

21. The Academic Life

THE DRONE OF the engines through the open jump door was deafening, drowning out not just speech but coherent thought. The air at this altitude—almost 10 thousand feet—felt like needles against his skin, frosting his cheeks below the dive goggles and turning his ears and lips thick and numb.

One after the other the men ahead of him in line made the jump, instantly disappearing into the empty blue below his line of sight. Alex had purposely placed himself in the middle of the group of skydivers—knowing that he would be swept along, unable to hesitate when the time came, as he otherwise might if he were in first or last position. But his fear was trying to leap up out of his throat, and his skin felt clammy despite the icy cold as his turn approached.

He'd only jumped a couple of times before, and that was on an automatic rip line. His cocky confidence, insisting to the instructor that he was ready for free fall—embellishing the truth a little regarding previous jumps as a civilian in order to convince him—that had occurred when he was back on the ground and still high on adrenalin from the first jump of the day. Now he wasn't so sure. What if he froze in panic and forgot to pull the ripcord?

"Go!" said the jumpmaster and, mindless lemming, he went.

"Why do you have to do this skydiving thing?" Gena had complained when he'd told her he enrolled in the parachuting elective.

He heard her voice in his head with crystal clarity now as he leapt into space, and all the arguments and reasons he'd given her evaporated with the sweat on his brow. Why indeed?

"What the hell am I doing?!" he yelled aloud as he plummeted downward.

The first sensation of falling was of paralyzing speed, as gravity sucked him toward Earth faster and faster. Then—as he reached max acceleration—it felt as if he wasn't falling anymore at all, he was floating. Floating in space like a bubble, a big soap bubble rising softly into the air now, was he?

Floating up and free....

The ground loomed closer and closer. Suddenly Alex snapped out of his euphoria and became aware of where he was. His heart slammed in panic. He checked his wrist altimeter and simultaneously pulled the ripcord right at the lower limit of safety. As it opened, dramatically slowing his plunge, he let out a yell of relief that might have sounded and felt like joy, then maneuvered the chute with shaking hands to a landing that was in respectable proximity to the big white X on the air field.

As he pulled his flaccid parachute in, he debated for a moment whether he would ever do this again. It wasn't absolutely mandatory for his acceptance into the Undergraduate Pilot Training program, despite what he'd told Gena. But on the other hand, he now only had to make four more free falls like this and he'd have his Air Force Parachutist Wings—that certainly ought to be worth a couple of brownie points on the rating in scale. Besides, it was bound to get easier.

That night, after dinner, he grabbed a couple of beers from the icebox, grabbed Gena down onto his lap, and told her about the day's adventure. As hoped, the story of his brush with death aroused her, but once the sex was over she'd been angry.

"If you don't have to do it, why take such chances with your life? What about me and Andy, do you ever think how we'd feel if anything happened to you?"

He rolled up onto an elbow, touching her cheek gently. "Babe, danger is what I'm going to be doing the rest of my life—being a test pilot is a risky occupation, but it's what I live for. You knew that when we first got together."

"I know," she sighed, touching him back. "I know. It's...nothing. Me being selfish, I guess. Just, try not to take any unnecessary chances, okay? Go with the odds."

"Gotcha," he agreed, kissing her nose. Then her lips, and heading for more.

"But the next year, a new adventure beckoned," Uriel interrupted, ending the moment: "Soaring."

* * *

They floated on invisible ribbons of air, enveloped by a silence neither man wanted to interfere with, as if the atmosphere that held reign here was a living entity that had more to say in its immutable quiet than they could ever put into words, and that to interrupt its message would be an almost intolerable insolence.

The long slender wings of the sailplane tipped and lifted gently under the instructor's practiced hand, adjusting to the errant changes in wind and pressure that came through the mountain passes of the towering Rockies directly to their west.

As they approached the opening to a particularly wide valley, the pilot turned to Alex.

"Ready?"

Alex grinned in response, "Roger that!"

"Take the controls then. You're on."

The cadet instructor was only a couple of years older than Alex, yet he wore the authority of his rank and expertise like an unspoken challenge. He also wore a worrisome little smirk that set off tiny alarm bells in Alex's primal core. Within a minute he learned why.

The sailplane suddenly pitched steeply downward, almost a free fall. Alex resisted the urge to yank the stick sharply back toward him to bring the nose up, opting instead to ease it gently back in order to level the plane out of its dive, and then a little more to bring it back into a gradual climb. Yet he had barely accomplished this feat when once again the nose pitched downward, and this time the plane simultaneously veered to the right as well, hit by a hard cross wind.

Alex's heart drummed violently inside his chest, but his hand was steady, face calm, his manipulation of the levers and rudders perfectly controlled and unhurried. He brought the plane out of its twisting dive, maneuvering it into a long angling loop. The air hissed by the fuselage like an angry librarian: Sshhhhsshh.

Another lever, more rudder, and the sailplane arced around, climbing in a slow spiral upward until it had returned to the point above the valley where he'd first been handed the controls. But Alex was ready this time, as the plane once again hit the huge invisible air pocket and began to drop like a rock. And as he controlled that change he was already anticipating the next, ready to adjust the rudder the second the fierce cross winds knocked the plane sideways again.

Once Alex had returned the plane to its easy upward spiral, the instructor gave him a nod.

"Bank left and take her home, cadet," he ordered. He wrote something into his instructor's log, saw Alex glancing over at the entry quizzically, and graced him with a tight little smile. "Just recommended you for solo."

"Okay," Alex replied. But after the best of efforts at suppression, the grin broke through anyway.

* * *

"Gena. Hey, Gena, guess what?" he called out as he came through the front door of their little apartment that Saturday afternoon. "I got the go ahead for solo, next flight out!"

"The what?" she asked, barely turning from the stove where she was fixing something that smelled great.

"Solo flight—in the sailplane?"

"Great, honey... Uh, could you go see what Andy's up to, maybe give him a bath while I finish

dinner?"

* * *

Just before the start of his senior year Alex was notified that he'd been selected to enter the Undergraduate Pilot Training program.

"This is it, honey!" he told her excitedly, waving his acceptance notice in the air in front of her.

She looked up from her English Lit and Composition textbook. "If I do good this year..."

"Well," she corrected.

"Well what? If I am very, very good and work very, very hard, I will get into the aviator program post grad, where I can train to be a jet pilot."

"So, what exactly does that entail, all those very, very's?" she asked dubiously.

"Time, honey, lots of time."

"That's what I thought," she said, turning back to her textbook with a sigh.

"There's a mandatory Introductory Flight Training, of course. The ground school is scheduled in as part of the regular curriculum, but there's fifty hours of flight time that has to be done on weekends."

"Of course it does."

"Come on, Gena."

She shrugged, looking up. "Don't mind me, I'm PMSing. So, what's that gonna be, ten Saturdays? Twenty? We'll get through it."

"Sure," he said. "It'll be over in no time."

He decided that this might not be the best time to tell her about the Project Fledgling course he'd also signed up for, and all its required "flying time" in the T-37 simulator; nor about his plans to join the Aero Club and the Air Force Academy's cross country soaring team as soon as his IFT was completed. She'd find out soon enough, and he'd just have to deal with her objections when she did.

* * *

"No! Absolutely not. Gena, honey, we can work this out ourselves."

"We haven't so far. I can't get you to listen, to change a thing. Maybe a marriage counselor will help."

"For God's sake, Gena, if they think my marriage is in trouble they might drop me from the UFT."

"Oh bullshit, you're already in, why would they drop you? And so what, anyway, I'm sick of this whole thing!"

"Think about what you're saying, Gena! The whole reason you're pissed is because of the time I've spent away from you and Andy to get to this point. Now you want me to just throw it all away?! Four years of hard work and sacrifice? That would make it a complete waste for all of us!"

"The Aero Club, Alex? Flying every weekend, every spare minute of off time in whatever bird you could get your hands on? The stupid cross-country soaring competitions, gone for weeks at a time? Those didn't have anything to do with UFT, and you can't tell me they did! I know lots of guys who got into UFT without doing any of those things!"

"Yeah, but I want to be more than a military transport pilot, more than even a fighter pilot. I want to test the newest and best flying machines they can come up with, and eventually I want to go to NASA. That's the top of the line, babe, and if you want in, you'd better show them you have..."

"The right stuff?" she finished, raising a brow. "What about the right stuff for the other parts of your life?"

"It'll be different, Gena—soon as I graduate UFT and get my assignment. Just hang in there a little while longer, okay?"

* * *

22. Gena the Teacher

ALEX LOOKED OVER at Uriel, making a face.

"But things did get better, especially after Andy entered kindergarten and she was able to go to school full time."

"Without any help from you."

"Whatever. The point is, she did finish. And she got a good job," Alex argued.

"Teaching middle school?"

"What's wrong with teaching?"

Uriel looked at him with a wry expression, and indicated the stage with a jerk of his head.

The movie screen had disappeared, and lights once again brightened on the stage below, which had now become a virtual classroom. It was a large dirty room, with graffiti on the marred tables and chairs, obscenities scrawled across the displays of student work hung neatly on the cork bulletin boards at either end of the room. At the front of the room were two large posters showing the internal and external anatomy of Rana pipiens. Someone had crudely drawn inappropriate genitalia with a black marker at the points on the posters where they thought it should be.

The classroom was filled with thirty-six unruly twelve-year olds. They were huddled around lab tables in nine groups, each comprised of four students. On the table in front of each group was a large, partially dissected frog pinned to a dissection tray belly up. Gena stood in the middle of the room, holding up a specimen frog which had already been partially dissected to expose the internal organs of the chest and abdomen. She was attempting to discourse on the internal structures over the loud and continuous uproar of loud chatter, screams and laughter from the ill-behaved and overly excited students.

"All right, all right, settle down class. Please!" Gena ordered, her voice loud and firm, and a little desperate. Finally they sputtered into a tenuous calm. "Okay, so this little white triangle in the center of the chest is the what?"

There is no answer. For once, absolute silence greeted her, accentuated by the slow drip of saliva.

"Come on now," she urged, trying not to let exasperation enter her voice. "I just told you thirty seconds ago! Wasn't anyone listening?! What's this triangular organ?"

Just then a boy got up with his frog in hand and chased a shrieking girl right past Gena, both of them rudely pushing the teacher aside in their play. Gena grabbed the boy by his upper arm as he shoved past.

"Back to your seat, Juan Carlos. One more outbreak and you'll be writing standards instead of doing this lab."

Juan responded by brushing her hand off his arm, hostile and threatening. "Hey, man, you can't touch me! I know my rights—I'll sue your ass!"

"Yeah, sure," Gena told him, "you go get one —tell him he can sue this."

Everyone laughed.

"Say what, teach?!" Juan said, chin and chest pushed out towards her.

Gena held up her frog. "I said he can sue this! The frog's worth more than I am...and what did you say the triangular shaped organ in his chest is?"

"Shit," Juan sneered.

"Good guess, but that's in another organ." Smiled Gena."No, actually boys and girls, this is the lower chamber of the heart. It's called the ventricle, and in the frog there's only one. Who remembers how many there are in a human heart?"

"Eight?" replied a chubby girl up in front. Gena feared she might be serious.

"Fifteen?" called out another, obviously now just playing.

A boy at the back of the room, way too tough and street wise for a child only three years older than Andy, spoke up next. "Nah, it's trick question. Humans don't have no hearts. Check

it."

The boy opened his shirt to bare his thin hairless chest. Juan immediately rose to the bait. "Hey, let me get my knife here and see."

He picked up a dissection scalpel from the nearest table and made a jab at the other boy. Gena reacted instantly, grabbing the scalpel from Juan, but as she was distracted by that problem a girl behind her suddenly screamed and jumped out of her seat, brushing at her face and neck frantically. Gena whirled, scalpel in hand and eyes now a little wild.

"Su Lin! What is going on!" she demanded.

The slight Asian girl had already stopped brushing at herself and begun ripping out the innards of her frog with her bare hands in a fury.

"Su Lin!" Gena cried in alarm.

But Su Lin had eyes only for Tyrone, the boy seated one group behind hers. "Bastard! I'll teach you respect!"

She ran after the grinning offender, trying to shove a handful of frog guts in his face.

Gena grabbed at her, but missed. "Stop that! What are you doing! Stop this instant!" Her orders fell on deaf ears, and Su Lin completed her mission.

"He started it!" the girl cried in her own defense. "He threw his frog heart in my face!"

"I'll get him for you, Su Lin," yelled one of the girls from Su Lin's table.

So saying, she threw her entire frog at the boy. Immediately there erupted a free-for-all of flying frogs and frog body parts.

"Stop it!" Gena screamed, to no avail. "All of you, stop it right now! Stop or you'll all be suspended!"

No one was listening; every student was up and armed, tearing off pieces of frogs and throwing them at one another with loud shrieks.

"Stop! Okay, I'm calling the school police!"

As she turned to grab the wall phone a frog hit her square in the face.

Alex shook his head at the scene being played out on the stage below, at once amazed, amused and sorry as he witnessed Gena lean her head up against the wall beside the phone, tears of frustration coursing down her cheeks.

He turned to Uriel. "Jesus! No wonder she came home so bitchy sometimes. I had no idea."

"Then again, this is but one version of reality," Uriel shrugged.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, maybe it could have gone a different way. Take a look."

The classroom scene reappeared on the stage below. Gena stood in the middle of the room, holding up a specimen frog which had already been partially dissected to expose the internal organs of the chest and abdomen. She was attempting to discourse on the internal structures over the loud and continuous uproar of loud chatter, screams and laughter from the ill-behaved and overly excited students.

"All right, all right, settle down class. Please!" Gena ordered, her voice loud and firm, and a little desperate. Finally they sputtered into a tenuous calm. "Okay, so this little white triangle in the center of the chest is the what?"

Just then a boy got up with his frog in hand and chased a shrieking girl right past Gena, both of them rudely pushing the teacher aside in their play. Gena grabbed the boy by his upper

arm as he shoved past.

"Back to your seat, Juan Carlos. One more outbreak and you'll be writing standards instead of doing this lab."

Juan responded by brushing her hand off his arm, hostile and threatening. "Hey, man, you can't touch me! I know my rights—I'll sue your ass!"

Gena whirled and grabbed him up by the shirt collar, lifting him close to her face. "You wanna fuck with me? Try it! I'll have your scrawny little wetback ass deported back to El Salvador faster that you can count to five using all your little webbed fingers!"

The students gasped as one; the room went dead silent.

She turned to face them all, her expression dangerous.

"What? You think I don't know? I have friends in the INS. First week of school all I do is check your records, find out who's got the green cards and who doesn't—and most of you don't. So you'd better shut your little yaps, sit down and behave now that you know what's up."

They continued to stare, open-mouthed. Juan Carlos slipped cautiously back into his seat and folded his hands on the desk in front of him.

Gena continued the lesson as if nothing had happened.

"Okay, so who can tell me what this triangular thing in the center of Rana pipiens little hairless chest is?" she asked.

Hands shot up all over the room.

* * *

In the auditorium, Alex laughed and shook his head.

"So, which one was the real past?" Uriel asked him.

"I don't know, probably the first one. She wouldn't have the nerve to say what she said in scene two...although I'm pretty sure she'd think it. Then again," he reconsidered, "it could have gone either way; she was pretty conflicted about the respect thing."

"Want to see why?" Uriel asked, reactivating the movie screen.

* * *

23. Gena and The Prom Queen

GENA, TEN-YEARS-OLD AND knobby-kneed thin, skipped down the steps of the old brick elementary school, and through the light and shadows of the tree-lined street in the late afternoon sun. The old green Toyota was parked just up the block where it always was, Lucy inside, engine running. And, as always, she gave the horn a sharp blast just as Gena got to the door, making the little girl jump and squeal. She yanked open the door, laughing and scolding her seventeen year-old sister.

"Why do you always do that?!"

"Why do you always jump?" Lucy grinned. "Buckle up."

After they'd moved out into traffic where the teenager didn't have to concentrate quite so hard, she turned to her little sister with barely restrained excitement.

"I was invited to the prom!" she bragged.

"So?" Gena shrugged.

"Do you even know what a prom is?"

"No, what?"

"It's a dance, a really special dance."

"Like hip-hop or something?"

"No, I mean a dance dance—like the ball in Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast."

"Oh. Okay, so?"

"So there's this big dance called the Senior Prom coming up next month and this boy in my class asked me to go with him."

"With him? Cool." Gena nodded.

"But I don't know if Papa will let me."

"Why not?"

"He's...you know."

"Mean?"

Lucy looked over at her and made a face. "Yeah...but I was gonna say old fashioned. He doesn't think girls should be seen or heard. We're not supposed to grow up, definitely not supposed to date; but somehow, despite all that, we're supposed to magically find a mate so we can get out of their hair..."

"What's a mate?"

"Something you have sex with." Lucy grinned.

"Ewwww! You're not going to do that, are you?"

"Just dance, Gena, just dance. Anyway, I'm going to ask Mama to talk to Papa for me."

"Did Johnny or Takeo ever go to a prom?"

"I know Johnny did last year—I don't remember if Takeo did or not; I would have been your age back then."

"So what's Mama going to do to make Papa say yes?"

They were just pulling into the rear parking lot of the family business, a little restaurant called "A Taste of Tokyo." Lucy turned off the engine, then turned to look straight at her younger sister seriously.

"I don't know, Gen-Gen. I'm sure she'll be on my side, but I don't know how much she'll be able to stand up to Papa."

"Guess it depends on how hard he says no, huh?"

Lucy laughed, pinching Gena's cheeks. "You are so smart for a little twit! Anyway, I want you to spy for me when Mama asks, okay?"

"Oh sure, cool!" Gena happily agreed.

Later, as the young girl cut fresh vegetables for the dinner entrees and the other two women busily prepared ingredients for the various courses, Gena eavesdropped on Lucy's conversation with her mother.

"So, who is this boy?" Mama asked, slicing chicken into paper-thin strips.

"He's a very nice boy, Mama; a straight A student, and leader of the school debate team," Lucy replied, stirring a large vat of boiling rice. "He's in my AP chemistry class."

"Asian?"

"No, Mama."

"Caucasian, then?"

"No, Mama."

"He's black?!"

"No, Mama, he's Latino...Mexican American."

A period of silence greeted this news, as Mama finished cutting the chicken and began to cube a shank of pork. Finally she said, "Your father would be easier to convince if your date was an Asian boy...not Korean, though."

"An Asian boy didn't ask me, Mama. And Miguel is the one I want to go with anyway."

"What about a dress?"

"I've saved all my tips; it won't cost you or Papa a cent. It's really important to me, Mom!" She turned her mother gently to face her, wanting her to see how much this meant. "This is my senior year, my senior prom. You've got to make Papa let me go!"

The tired and rather sad-looking little Asian woman smiled sweetly at her elder daughter and, taking Lucy's hands in her own, kissed her on one cheek and then the other.

"I remember how it felt, to be young, to be alive. You think I don't, but I do. I will do my best to convince your father to let you go," she promised.

Then they all returned to their tasks; preparing for the dinner rush superseded further discussion.

Hitoshi Nishimoto and his eldest son Takeo acted as hosts in the exclusive little restaurant, taking reservations, seating guests and managing the cash register. Lucy and Johnny waited tables, while Gena bussed dirty dishes back to the hired help and assisted with water, drinks and condiments.

Kazuko, the mother, supervised the kitchen help as they prepared and filled the orders. Then, after the restaurant closed and the rest of the family went home—the girls to their homework, the boys to their nightlife, the father to his TV—Kazuko would stay and total all the day's receipts, making sure the customer checks balanced with the cash register tape. The next day, while the children went to school she would return to the restaurant to check inventories and reorder supplies, pay the creditors whose bills were due, update the payroll records and balance the books. Hitoshi would arrive midday to do maintenance work and clean.

Tonight, however, after the restaurant closed but before Papa had time to escape to his television shows, Gena knew Mama would find a way to bring up Lucy's request. She was anxious to be there and fulfill her espionage task—so much so that, toward closing time, Gena began to dog her mother's every step. The woman nearly tripped over her a couple of times, before losing patience.

"Gena! What is wrong with you? Please stay out from under my feet!" Kazuko admonished the girl. Lucy, in the background, shook her head, suppressing a smile.

At last, just after the doors were locked behind the final customers of the evening, Mama found the opportunity to bring the subject of the prom up to her husband. She was sitting at the scarred wooden desk in the little office space between the kitchen and the pantry, beginning to sort through the customer checks to separate the credit card charges from cash sales. Hitoshi had just brought her the cash register tape, and was preparing to leave. Gena listened from her hidden vantage point, seated on a little stool deep inside the pantry among the bags of rice and dried seaweed wrappers.

"Lucy has been invited to her senior prom," Mama said, keeping her eyes on the receipts in front of her.

Papa, as expected, said nothing.

After allowing a sufficient period of respectful silence to be sure she was not interrupting either his thoughts or any pending verbal response on the matter, Mama tried again.

"She says the boy is very nice, very smart; a straight 'A' student."

"Is he Asian then?" Papa asked. (Gena in the back room rolled her eyes and stifled a snicker. She couldn't wait to tell Lucy that one.)

This time it was Mama's turn to hesitate. Gena could picture her lips drawing into a thin worried line. She always made that face when she was about to say something she knew papa wouldn't like.

"No," she admitted cautiously. "He's Mexican, but very bright nonetheless. He's in Lucy's AP chemistry class."

"She can't go," Papa said with finality.

Gena's mouth dropped open. She knew Papa was biased, but she didn't think he was this bad. Mama must have been just as surprised, for she foolishly and immediately protested.

"But Hitoshi, he is a very nice boy, and Lucy is a very nice, hard-working girl. She deserves—"

"I said no." His voice cracked like a whip.

"You allowed Johnny to go last year!"

Gena felt the first inkling of alarm. She'd never heard her mother talk back to her father like this, and it was making her own heart beat a little faster, in admiration as well as in fear.

"Johnny is a man. And he took a Nipponese girl."

"The Prom Queen?! Nipponese or not, that girl was dressed like a tramp!"

Gena remembered now the very low cut front and even lower back of the thin silk dress that had them all gawking when Johnny's prom date arrived for him in her sporty little Camry last spring. But Papa's memory apparently remembered her differently. Now his voice grew even more vicious and dangerous in its barely suppressed rage.

"I won't have you disparage our son like this, nor will I permit you to argue with me further. You are a stupid, ugly and useless woman, and have no right to speak to me at all unless I allow it, do you understand?"

Perhaps it was because she knew Gena was listening, perhaps it was simply that she had finally reached her limit, but Kazuko would not let that pass.

"This is not right!" she protested angrily. Gena could hear the tears of frustration in her

voice.

Then she heard the loud crack of a hand slapping flesh, and the inadvertent cry of pain.

Gena leapt out of her hiding place. "Don't hit Mama! And don't talk to her that way! She's not stupid, you are!"

Papa's hand was so fast and so hard Gena never saw it coming. It connected with the side of her head and slammed her back against the pantry shelves, bringing an instant flow of blood from her mouth. Her face on that side would remain swollen and bruised for more than two weeks, and the ringing in her left ear would bother her for months. But at the moment she was too dizzy and stunned to even cry out. She watched in a surreal daze as Lucy came running into the room, screaming at her father in rage, spitting her disgust for him in a wad of yellow sputum at his feet.

She and Mama took Gena into their arms, and the three women looked up at him with cold hatred in their eyes. He stared back at the girls with ice in his, then turned directly to his wife.

"Is this how you raise your daughters, to be disrespectful little whores just like you?" He whirled and left the room, his two sons flanking him.

Later Mama had insisted they all apologize, and when the girls protested, she said they must, or she would never speak to them again.

"I made a mistake," she said. "He is an honorable man, and we must show him respect. That is our way, our culture. Now come."

And they had, the three of them together. They made their act of contrition, bowed their submissive little heads and begged his forgiveness. But Gena and Lucy had stolen a look at one another from beneath the curtains of straight black tresses that hung over their lowered faces. And with that look of understanding they had removed themselves from both father and mother, and from a heritage that would take away their self-respect and dignity simply because their genitalia were internal rather than external.

* * *

24. The McCormicks Move to NASA

"I never knew... she never told me." He shook his head, wondering what other secrets she'd kept."So I guess teaching middle school wasn't gonna do it for her, the respect thing, " Alex said.

"She wanted to do graduate research in environmental science; did you know that?" Uriel asked.

"No! She never said..."

"She said... Did you ever listen?"

The lights on the stage below came back on to reveal the entry hall of their military base housing block at Edwards. Gena entered, bent under the weight of an overstuffed backpack full of papers to grade. She looked worn, the dark circles under her eyes and stress lines on her forehead adding years she'd never earned.

Alex supposed it had been another "one of those days" she used to complain about. Middle school kids at their very best, she would say, were enough to turn a beat cop's hair gray and make his trigger finger itch a little. At their worst they could drive even Mother Teresa to break several major commandments. And Gena was no Mother Teresa.

Teaching, she had told him more than once, was not her cup of tea; at least, not at a secondary school level. College, that's where she longed to be; Professor McCormick, environmental researcher and respected faculty member, teaching an upper level class of interested-to-the-point-of-worship young university students, all of them with IQ's considerably higher than the caloric content of a carrot stick.

Alex remembered those heated conversations, but had always thought she was just blowing off steam. Now, as she picked up the mail from her overstuffed box in the apartment building entry, what she found there lit her face like a shaft of sunlight through a midwinter arctic gloom. It was a large envelope containing an application to the UCLA graduate school program, along with a financial aid packet and information regarding the GRE testing schedule.

"I am so outta here," she grinned, grabbing the packets to her chest and locking the little mailbox. Her hand shook so badly from excitement that it took three tries to fit the key into the lock before she succeeded.

The stage setting switched in a blink; now the interior of their second-floor apartment—one of the hundreds of identical, non-descript standard issue living quarters at Edwards Air Force Base in California's hot dry Mojave Desert.

Alex remembered how she'd nagged him about living off base in Rosamond, renting a nice little house with a yard, or maybe even buying. But he wouldn't hear of it.

"This is temporary, Gena; a jumping off point, a little rest stop on the road of our life. It is not a final destination," he'd assured her. "If I were you, I wouldn't even unpack the fine china."

Three years later, they were still in that same little two bedroom apartment, still poised for that jump, and still listening to the sounds all around them that assaulted their privacy through the paper thin walls—the sounds of fights and fucking, the sounds of loud TV shows they didn't watch and louder music they didn't like, country and rap blasting together in an immiscible attack on ears and sensibilities. And the smells that permeated their space as well, smells of frying bacon, of onions and hamburger patties, of fish and boiled cabbage.

Now, sitting down at the kitchen table, the catalogs and info packets strewn around her, Gena began to fill out the college application forms, her eyes shining with a film of happy tears.

When Andy came in a moment later in his Little League uniform, tossing a baseball into the air and catching it in his gloved hand; she barely looked up.

"No ball in the house, sport. You can have two cookies, no more. I'll start dinner in a few."

"Okay, Mom," the gangly 12-year-old said, grabbing four chocolate chip cookies on the way through to his room, still tossing the ball.

Gena kept on writing, oblivious.

She had just finished the basic information section on the application when Alex burst through the front door like a needle in a balloon. He was wearing a smile that split his face, so excited he was wiggling like a puppy. He held a small manila envelope in his hand, something else behind his back.

"Guess what this is?" he asked, sounding out of breath.

Gena didn't look up until she had signed and dated her grad school application. Then she raised her head. "What?"

"Well, guess!" he insisted.

Gena glanced at his hand. "A manila envelope?"

"It's from NASA! I've been accepted into the space program! We're going to Houston!!"

Gena set down her pen and looked up at him, her expression stunned. "Great. Perfect," she muttered. She rested her arms across the pile of brochures and applications, and simply stared at him. There was only the slightest quiver of her lower lip to betray her emotions.

"What's wrong with you?" he demanded. "I thought you'd be happy for me."

He looked down at the pile of paperwork she rested her arms on, seeing it for the first time. He reached around her to pick up the pamphlet from UCLA.

"What's all this?"

Gena responded in a flat, dead tone, not even able to meet his eyes, "My application to graduate school at UCLA...I told you."

"Yeah, but we have to go to Houston now."

"Houston," Gena repeated dully, tasting the word.

"Houston. NASA? The space program? It's what I've been working for all these years, Gena, and now I've finally got it! Look!" He brought the bottle of champagne he'd been hiding behind his back into view. "I got this to celebrate!"

Gena pushed her paperwork aside, and tried on a smile as she got up to give Alex a hug and a gentle peck on the cheek.

"That's great, honey. I'm proud of you."

She turned back to the table and began to straighten up her piles of papers and brochures, making them into a neat stack. A tear slipped down her cheek.

* * *

Alex turned to Uriel, shaking his head. "I didn't realize how important it was to her."

"Go on down," Uriel suggested.

Alex hurried down onto the stage and impulsively tried to put his arms around Gena, but there was no substance to the hug, to the being. His arms went through her to inadvertently embrace himself, then dropped helplessly to his sides. He took a step back.

Meanwhile the virtual Alex, still blissfully unaware of anything but his own success, had returned from the kitchen with a corkscrew and a couple of wine glasses. He filled them both, handing one to his wife.

"This is it, baby, this is what we've been working for, praying for—and now we're on our way. Look out Houston, here come the McCormicks!"

Andy walked back into the room just as his dad was saying this, still dressed in his baseball uniform. He tossed a ball in his glove.

"What's a Houston?" he asked curiously.

"Texas, sport: Houston, Texas. NASA space program headquarters."

"What about it?" Andy asked warily. He'd stopped tossing his ball.

"We're moving there," Alex replied. "I've been accepted into the space program, son—your dad's gonna be an astronaut!"

Virtual Alex grinned, then giggled as the reality of this hit him anew, shaking his head and doing a little jig. "An astronaut! Hot damn, I'm an astronaut!"

But the later Alex was staring at his son as if for the first time really seeing him.

"We're moving?" the boy responded. "Uh...when?"

"Couple of weeks. My new assignment begins July first."

"But, but what about my Little League?!"

* * *

Alex looked up toward Uriel, who watched them all from the auditorium seats, then back at the Andy and Alex on stage.

* * *

"Don't worry, son," Alex was saying, as he sipped his champagne, never noticing that Gena wasn't drinking hers, "I'm sure they've got Little League in Houston."

"Yeah, but my team needs me here! We start the regional playoffs next week, in case you've forgotten."

Alex was beginning to feel a little miffed that his family was giving him a hard time about this. He felt they should be as excited as he was, fully behind him and this dream come true. But he took a deep breath, not wanting to spoil his moment by becoming impatient.

"Andy! Son, you're not the only player."

"I'm the starting pitcher, Dad," the boy exclaimed, his voice rising.

Alex turned to Uriel. "He was the actual starting pitcher? The main one?"

Uriel nodded.

"And they had already made the regional playoffs?" Uriel nodded again.

"Damn! How'd that slip by me?"

"Someone else can pitch," Virtual Alex argued. "It's Little League, for Christ's sake, not the World Series!"

"Shit! Dad...!" the twelve-year-old cried in pain and anger.

"Andy..." Gena interjected.

"Don't use that kind of language in this house!" said Alex.

"Why not? You do."

"Andy dammit!" Alex took a breath, calming himself. "Listen, son, I've worked my whole life for this moment. This is my dream..."

"Well Little League's my dream," Andy interrupted.

That did it. Alex lost all control, and began to yell, "...And I am not about to turn down an opportunity to join the space program for the sake of some stupid, meaningless baseball tournament between a bunch of clumsy, prepubescent spoiled brats! Now, go to your room and start figuring out what you want to take with you to Houston."

Andy stared at him open-mouthed, then burst into tears, threw his baseball and mitt on the floor and rushed from the room.

Alex looked up at Uriel from the stage. "Oops! I guess I could have worded things a little more tactfully."

"Considerably. And in Texas, did he play?"

"I, I tried to encourage him to sign up the following year, but he said he wasn't interested anymore."

The stage went black for a moment, then relit. It was the practice field, silent and dusty orange under the setting desert sun, just Andy and his best friend walking away, heads down in the attitude of abject despair only the prepubescent can pull off well.

"It's so not fair!"

Andy threw his favorite mitt on the ground, then stared at it a moment before reluctantly picking it back up and brushing off the dust. Some dirt particles clung stubbornly to the sheen of fresh oil on the leather skin, and he smacked the glove hard against his leg to shake them free.

"Can't you sue him or something?" His best friend Charlie, first baseman for the Edwards Sidewinders, was nearly in tears as they walked through the windswept desert arroyo near their government issue housing tract.

"He's my dad. You can't sue them; it's like the law or something."

"But how are we supposed to win the championship without you? Did he even think about that?"

"I dunno; you got Ricky."

"Ricardo sucks!"

"Yeah, well..." Andy squinted up at the desert sun, still too intense even at 7PM in late May. "Mom's trying to convince him to let us stay behind until the playoffs are over. She's using the end of school term thing as an excuse. But he's being...Dad. Like it's so important that we all go together. He says it's bad Dee-R or something if we don't."

"I think that's P-R...Public Relatives. My dad says that's all the Space Program cares about these days, especially since the shuttle disasters: keep a good public image so the program keeps getting funding."

"I don't care, it still sucks."

"Yeah," Charlie agreed. "It sucks all right."

They sat on the ground, the setting sun hot against the back of their necks, tossing rocks at a can. There was nothing else to say.

* * *

"And Gena?" Uriel inquired. "How did she take to Texas?"

Alex shrugged, beginning to realize he'd failed her too perhaps.

"She did, okay. Didn't ever get around to signing up for graduate school, but she did get a job teaching at the base. The kids were a lot better behaved, she said... And the other astronauts' wives took her under their wing. They're a close knit group, supportive."

"How supportive?"

Alex looked at him levelly. "Very."

You don't know the half," Uriel chuckled, flicking on the screen again.

* * *

25. The Astronauts' Wives Club

GENA SLOWED AS she drove past the familiar four-bedroom ranch style home, set back from the street by a wide lawn as lushly maintained as any in this quiet middle-class Houston suburb. Several cars already occupied the available spaces in front of the home, but there was a spot directly across the wide tree-lined avenue just long enough for her 5-year-old Miata to squeeze into.

She pulled a quick U-turn at the corner, came back around and maneuvered the little sports car neatly into the narrow space with inches to spare.

"Nice parking job!" Sarah called out to her from the porch, as Gena came up the walk. "Ever thought of being an astronaut?"

"Right," Gena laughed. "Just don't look too closely at the fenders of the cars in front and back."

"I won't tell Patty and Michelle...come on in."

Gena paused a moment to look up at the western sky, aglow in the vibrant bands of red and orange that marked a South Texas sunset. The evening air was still balmy, even for this late in September.

Inside the house, she was sure, the regulars had already begun the ritual wine and cheese tasting; the one tradition of the Astronauts' Wives Club that Gena always looked forward to, even when she wasn't really up for some of the rest of it. In truth, though, the club had turned out to be a whole lot more fun than she'd thought it would be when she was originally recruited.

The Astronauts' Wives Club, she was informed by Ray Petersen last June—just after he'd promised to get her that teaching job at the base high school—was a charitable as well as social organization that many of the wives of the various shuttle crews belonged to.

"It's purely voluntary, of course," the flight director had assured her; "but they do great work in the community, helping local missions to feed hundreds of holiday dinners to the needy at Thanksgiving and Easter, running the annual Christmas Toy Drive for the entire base, and raising money for special programs and computers at the base schools. I'm sure they could use your organizational skills, at least until your new teaching position starts in the fall."

"Oh, oh sure, of course...I'd be delighted," Gena had agreed, pasting on a smile she hoped looked sincere. What else could she say to her husband's new commander, the man who had already promised her a teaching position within four days of her arrival?

Ray had handed her a little business card, embossed with the name and logo of the Astronauts' Wives Club—interestingly, a dodo bird flying backward into the elongated nose cone of a rocket, saying "AWC!" It was the mindset of whoever'd come up with that design that made her think it might not be that bad after all. Below the logo were the names and phone numbers of the club president and vice president.

"Just give either of these ladies a call, tell them Ray recommended you, and they'll let you know the time and place of the next meeting."

The AWC, it turned out, had been scheduled to meet at the club president's house the following week. Gena had said she'd be delighted to come.

"Cheese, wine or a dessert?" Sarah French had asked her.

"I beg your pardon?" Gena'd replied.

"We have a little tradition," Sarah'd laughed. "We 'taste' a selection of wines, exotic cheeses and favorite desserts each meeting, while planning how to squeeze as many bucks as we can out of the pillars of Houston society—which is an oxymoron if I ever heard one."

Gena had stifled a giggle, but she needn't have bothered. Sarah laughed so heartily it had drowned them both out.

"Anyway," she'd admitted, after catching her breath, "sometimes we don't get very much work done at our meetings—depending on the wine list—but that's why we meet so often."

"Wow, my kind of club. I'll do...dessert I guess, until I get a better feel for all your tastes."

"That's y'all's tastes...we're in the South, honey," Sarah'd laughed again.

Gena had liked her laugh; it was deep, throaty and real, and enjoyed itself immensely. She had the feeling Sarah was the same way.

"Well then I'll see y'all Friday," she'd said, smiling as she hung up the phone, a thirty-something Nipponese now affecting a southern drawl, my my.

By the third glass of wine that first meeting, Gena had found herself tipsily volunteering to handle all the club financial records for the upcoming Halloween Ball, a fundraiser expected to bring in over $10,000 for the Free Thanksgiving Dinner programs. However, she'd warned them, it was just until school started in September.

"Are y'all comin' in or what?" Sarah called out the door, breaking in on Gena's sunset-induced trance. "The girls are finishing off all the wine!"

There were ten or so of the astronauts' wives already inside, and no one stood on ceremony in that group when it came to sampling the wine and hors d'oeuvres. Giggling, soft laughter, the occasional raucous snort, and murmurs of oral pleasure drifted toward her from the direction of Sarah's formal dining room.

Gena peeked around the corner, then presented her own offering, a nice 1989 Pinot Noir from Northern California.

"Oh, yum," purred Sheila Connell, grabbing the bottle and attacking it expertly with a corkscrew.

Sheila was the wife of Buzz Connell, a space engineer currently halfway through a three-month stint on the International Space Station. With her three teenage daughters back in school and no job, she had a plethora of time to kill and no viable weapon, so she'd readily agreed last meeting to take over a large part of Gena's responsibilities for the Halloween Ball finances now that Gena's new teaching job had started.

"How's the bookkeeping coming?" Gena asked.

"Not too bad; I got my daughters to help download those disks you gave me. And how about you, how's the teaching coming?" she inquired as she worked the screw expertly into the stopper, then pulled down the little metal side arms that popped the cork out.

"Great," Gena said, letting the other woman fill her glass. "I can't believe the difference between high school kids and middle school. They're like a whole different species."

Sarah, standing nearby, laughed at this. "More to the point, it's probably the fact that if a kid screws around in a base school, their old man—"

"Or woman, mom that is," Patty Austin interrupted as she sampled her way around the table.

Patty was one of the handful of new astronauts' wives that had arrived last June at the same time as Gena and Alex. They had even met each other a time or two back at Edwards, where both husbands had been stationed.

"Or mom," Sarah agreed, continuing her thought, "will be called on the carpet by the base commandant before the day is over. And that kid will get the fear of God put into him that night, so deep and so profound that the very thought of screwing off in class again will put a wet spot in his—"

"Or her," Patty interrupted again through a mouthful of cheese and crackers.

"Aren't y'all just the little feminist firebrand tonight," Sarah sighed. "Or her...panties, you can be sure."

"Well," Gena said, "...good, whatever the reason."

"By the way, sugar, do you have any idea what kind of strings Ray Petersen had to pull to get you that job?" Sarah asked archly.

"What are you talking about? He said there was an opening."

"Not until he made one," Melanie Gibson chimed in.

Melanie was the club's vice president and wife of one of NASA's senior space flight training officers. "They got rid of a civilian biology teacher from Houston Unified to give you that 'opening'...and not without a pitched battle from the local teacher's union, I might add. The teacher went, but he went screaming and kicking."

"Well, he had been on staff there for more than ten years," Sarah explained.

"Gosh, wow...I had no idea—did he get another job?" Gena inquired.

"Oh sure, sugar...in a Houston public high school...back to Planet of the Apes."

"No wonder he didn't want to go," exclaimed Patty, still gaining weight.

"In any case, Gena doll; you might want to watch out for that Colonel Petersen—he's been known to have an eye for the ladies," Melanie warned.

"Oh hush, Melly...he'd never mess with an astronaut's wife and you know it." Sarah turned to Gena. "It's common knowledge he's got political ambitions. A scandalous affair like that would destroy him—and I'm quite sure that's a cost more than he's willing to bear."

Gena found her glass being refilled, as she looked back and forth among the women, not quite sure what to make of all this.

"Nonetheless," Melanie purred, "it is a little odd how much trouble he went to just for little old you."

"I, I'm sure it's just because of my husband's importance to the program. I mean, he's the only one that's really familiar with the X-38 deep spacecraft. He was the primary test pilot for its prototype back at Edwards," Gena explained.

"Oh, maybe so, sugar, maybe so...but just be sure you keep your belt buckled tight, your boot heels sharp and your jeans above the knees when he's around," Sarah winked.

"So, has he always been...bad?" Gena asked with a little smile, sipping her wine and trying not to appear unduly interested.

"Pretty much...although he did have a wife and kid once: Kind of sad, actually."

* * *

26. Personal Reflection and Refraction

THE AIDE THAT had earlier brought the popcorn and soda re-entered the small auditorium and scurried up to the two men. He bent to whisper something in Uriel's ear. Uriel nodded, whispered a reply and turned to Alex.

"My aide informs me that there's quite a spectacular meteor shower going on outside right now that you might find enjoyable. Perhaps this would be a good point to take a little break, allow you some time for personal reflection."

Alex shrugged. "You the man," he muttered.

He was feeling pretty depressed about all this by now. What they did or didn't do wasn't of much interest anymore. He'd actually like to sleep, but he followed the robed man out the door without argument.

Instead of leading into another long white corridor, this door led outside the hospital into a big open space, a courtyard approximately the size of two football fields. The hospital building comprised one end of the enclosure, the other three sides were surrounded by high smooth white walls made from blocks of marble or perhaps ice. The left half of the courtyard sloped upward, forming a steep ice hill which leveled off at the crest, with a high white wall running along its zenith.

As Alex disconsolately followed Uriel and the aide into the courtyard, he glanced up, and at once stopped, awestruck at the incredible vista. The sky was a deep bluish violet along the right horizon, fading gradually into a reddish glow on the left, where the great hulking body of Jupiter occupied nearly one fourth of the sky. Io—Jupiter's closest moon—was a dark shiny sphere situated near the left periphery of Jupiter, about twice the size of a full moon on Earth.

The meteor shower was nothing like any Alex had ever seen or imagined. A series of large glowing rocks hurtled across the sky one after the other, sometimes two or three at a time. So large they looked more like comets, their tails burned blue and green and violet behind them like the feathers of some exotic and otherworldly bird of paradise. About half of these meteors passed between Europa and Jupiter uneventfully, skipping across the thin film of oxygen surrounding Europa and along the edge of the thick Jovian atmosphere where they were extinguished in a spectacular but harmless display of fireworks. Others entered Jupiter's atmosphere more directly, igniting in bright flashes as they exploded against the impenetrable wall of gases that made up the bulk of the enormous planet. A few even entered the thin atmosphere of sulfur dioxide and sodium ions that covered nearby Io, streaking downward in bright eerie blue and green trails before exploding in tiny red flares against that moon's volatile volcanic surface.

Uriel glanced over at Alex, who had tears of emotion in his eyes at the beauty of it, a mouth that gaped open.

"Yes, quite spectacular," he said to the astronaut. "Tell me, Alex, was it worth it?"

Alex turned, confused. "What?"

"Your life? To see this show? Was it worth it?"

"I...don't know. Maybe. Right now, looking up, I'd say yes...but that's probably because I haven't really accepted that it's over."

He continued to stare at the sky show above him for a moment, then turned back to Uriel. "But I do regret what it cost my family."

They both looked back up, and continued to stare at the spectacular display in silence for a while.

Once more, Uriel broke the silence. "Do you think you could have done things a little differently, spent a little more time with your wife and son, and still have made it here?"

Alex stared at him, thinking about the question before answering.

"Maybe...yeah. I lagged, I lagged a lot. Hanging out with the guys after my shift was done, just shooting the shit...some was definitely brownnosing—that I had to do. Assignments at NASA tend to be somewhat...political. But some of it was just fun," he admitted.

He gazed back up at the meteor shower, eyes filling with tears. "Mostly I just loved it there. Loved it." He shook his head. "Maybe if I'd put a little more time into my family I'd have loved it there just as much, huh?"

"Maybe you would have," Uriel agreed.

Alex looked over at him thoughtfully. "So, is that it? Is that my lesson?"

Uriel took a breath before answering carefully. "You were a fairly successful man by society's standards, Alex. You must have been doing most things right in your life to get where you were. But now, now you're just plain dead. Do you think there might have been a misstep in there somewhere? Not just in your personal, but in your professional life as well?"

"But the crash was due to a malfunction, an unforeseeable technical failure."

"Unforeseeable? Are you certain?"

"What do you mean, I couldn't have..." Alex paused grabbing for the whisper of a thought, a memory; then his eyes widened in realization. "The little glitch with the pressure gauge on the left reverse thruster..."

* * *

Alex reached forward, beginning to flick switches, push buttons and read dials while communicating his actions to Mission Control. He was back in the Europa One, getting ready to move away from the International Space Station and begin his 19-month voyage to Jupiter.

"Oh-two, 800 psi: T-one, check; t-two, check; t-three, check; t-four, check. Cee-Oh-two scrubber, check; fuel cell one, check; fuel cell two, check; fuel cell three, check; fuel cell four...uh, hold it."

Alex stopped his instrument check and leaned forward for a closer look at the fuel cell 4 gauge, which was not reading what it was supposed to. He tapped the gauge with his finger, but no change. It was still showing a low reading, in the red zone below nominal. He looked up questioningly at Rudi, who hung through the opening into the vehicle like a giant bat. Rudi frowned, then reached behind him into his tool box and produced a small wrench which he handed to Alex. Alex tapped the gauge a little harder as the flight director—who could be seen on the left monitor of the spaceship—leaned forward worriedly to question the delay.

"What's going on up there, Alex?" Ray asked.

"Hold on," Alex said.

Another tap, and the little gauge rose into the borderline nominal range. Alex looked up at Rudi and shrugged; Rudi returned the shrug, giving him an uncertain thumbs up as Alex handed him back the wrench.

"Just a little glitch," Alex reported to Mission Control. "A minor false read on fuel cell four, probably just an air bubble. It's nominal now. Continuing instrument readout: Gimbal, check; guidance, check, communication, check, EDS, check. All flight systems nominal, Houston. This bird is ready to fly."

* * *

"Your orders were to report any potential problems and let Mission Control decide," Uriel reminded him.

"I fixed it. It was just an air bubble in the gauge," Alex defended his action.

"It was still borderline."

Alex turned to him, his hands and brows raised expressively. "It was minutes before lift off from the space station; there wasn't time for extensive repairs."

"Or you'd miss your window of opportunity."

"Yes!" Alex shouted. "Yes!! There wouldn't be as favorable an alignment for another six years, another opportunity at all for nearly a year...that's a long time."

"Long enough to train someone new, if for some reason you happened to lose your public relations edge?"

Alex took a deep breath, then looked up at Uriel. "Gena was divorcing me. She'd promised to wait until the mission was over."

"Uh-oh, divorce," Uriel chided. "Not exactly the All-American Family image NASA's PR department wants for its heroes."

"I think she might have waited the extra year if it meant I couldn't do the mission—plus the three and a half more until my return to Earth."

"Then again, she might not have."

"Yeah," Alex said, "that's what I thought."

Uriel put an arm around Alex's shoulder. "Maybe we need to go back inside and try to figure out

why," he suggested.

* * *

Alex found he was back in the auditorium with Uriel seated nearby, but he didn't remember getting there. Before he had time to puzzle over that oddity, the stage below lightened a little, the setting that of a darkened living room. Alex recognized their rented home in Houston. He leaned forward.

There was a faint rattle, then the front door opened quietly, and Gena slipped in. It was very dark, and she was obviously a little tipsy, as she bumped into the hall table, and had to make a quick clumsy grab at the vase of silk flowers to prevent them from falling. She giggled. Alex, hidden in the shadows of the living room a few feet away, watched from an easy chair, anything but easy.

His voice, when it came, cut through the thick black stillness of the room like a hot knife.

"Where have you been?

Gena turned, startled. "Oh, hi! I thought you were staying at the base again tonight."

"The mission's been delayed a couple of days...technical problems. Which doesn't answer my question."

Gena shrugged, taking off her coat, turning on a light to look at him in its cold glow.

"Me? Just out with the girls. We always get together before a launch, have a few drinks, laugh, joke, cry... It's our support system. You know that."

Alex got up to follow her into the kitchen, where she browsed in the refrigerator until she located the wine cooler she'd secreted among the fresh vegetables.

"I thought you went out the night before a launch, not the week before," he accused.

"How the hell would you know?" she shot back, whirling to face him. "You're never home."

"Don't start with me, Gena!" Alex warned.

"Then don't start with me!" She took a sip of her drink, a deep breath.

"Anyway, I only meant that since you guys have to sleep, eat, and pee at Mission Control the last few weeks before any mission, how could you possibly know what your wives are doing...or care," she added, sotto voce.

"So who's watching our son while all this sisterly, co-dependent support shit is going down?" He made a gesture with his hand to indicate her tippling the bottle of wine cooler.

"Fuck you, Alex! A drink or two and I'm an alcoholic, right?"

Alex grinned cruelly. "My, the little 'drinky or two' certainly has a leveling effect on your college-educated vocabulary. If your students could only hear you now!"

Andy came into the room, rubbing his eyes. He was a tall, good-looking boy of thirteen.

"I heard yelling," he said.

"Go back to bed, honey. It's nothing," Gena told him.

"Nah, wait! Andy! Why didn't your mom get you a babysitter?"

"He's thirteen, for chrissake! I was waiting tables in my parents' restaurant for pay when I was his age. I babysat for the neighbors from the time I was nine!"

"You're a girl."

"So? Are you saying males are less responsible?"

"He's my son—" Alex began.

"GOOD answer," Gena interrupted.

"...and I want to make sure he's safe and well cared for," Alex finished, sounding a bit pompous even to his own ears.

"Oh?" Gena countered. "Tell me, dear, does this sense of propriety only surface when there's some parcel of blame to be meted out?"

"No..." Alex felt flustered now. She was so cold; he hadn't expected this. It made him uneasy. "No, I just... Damn it, Gena, I just wish—"

"You wish what? That it was all different somehow? That you could have it all: the honor and glory of being an astronaut, as well as the PR advantage of a doting wife and son, proud just to stand in the shadow of your refracted light, to be the fucking 'wind beneath your wings'?!"

"I know I don't give you enough time..." he apologized.

"Or credit," Gena finished for him.

"...but I will," he said. "I promise I—"

"No. Don't, don't say it. It's fine, it's perfect, Alex," she said, setting down the bottle. She licked her lips, swallowed, then went on in careful, measured tones—a speech she had rehearsed in her head too many times, too many nights. "Just, just try to understand this. That all those hours and days and weeks when you're away from us, doing your thing, living your dreams, we...." She sighed, swallowed again. "We don't just sit here, Alex, like props in your play, waiting for you to come back and reanimate us."

Andy looked back and forth between his mother and father, intrigued by the drama. Alex directed his gaze at the boy as he responded, "I know that."

"Do you, Alex?" Gena said, looking at him looking at their boy. "Do you really? Somehow I don't think you do, quite. None of you Type A fly boys do."

"Oh, tell it to your support system!" Alex yelled, suddenly losing it. He stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

27. Whatever Happened to Ray?

"You fucking asshole!" Marna screamed, throwing the half empty bottle of Merlot against the wall.

The wine splattered onto the white stucco surface like a Rorschach test blot. But what was it? A Bird? A Butterfly? A Cunt?

Yes, a cunt, Ray thought, and it made him smile.

"Don't smile! How can you smile at my pain, you bastard! What kind of a man are you?!"

"You're an alcoholic, Marna," he said levelly. "Get help. Get God... Get something!"

"You womanizing piece of shit, how dare you tell me to get God!? If you could keep your goddam dick in your pants, maybe I wouldn't have to drink..."

She was throwing clothes in an oversized suitcase as she ranted. Ray Junior's bag was already packed, and the toddler was already strapped into his car seat, sound asleep on the floor nearby despite the commotion around him.

"Where do you think you're going?" Ray challenged, grabbing her arm.

She yanked it away. "Mom's. I'm done sitting home waiting for you to get finished with your whores."

"Well you're not taking the car...!"

"The hell I'm not!"

"...you're drunk! And you're not taking the baby."

"The hell I'm not!!"

She whirled on him, fury making her momentarily sober...and almost pretty again.

She'd been a beautiful woman once: long red hair, green eyes, big breasts. But she'd put on sixty-five pounds in four years, stopped taking care of her hair and complexion, and no longer applied any makeup except to go out. She could, he thought, use some about now.

He sighed. If he were to be painfully honest, he'd have to confess his cheating on her had started before she'd changed appearance; the first time just six months after their wedding day. So, the question was, was her physical disintegration into sloppy housewife the cause of his infidelity, or was it the effect? Who knew...and by now, who cared?

"I only had a couple of small glasses of wine, Raymond," she said in that whiny, defensive tone he hated, "and I ate."

"I'll bet."

"Just enough to take the edge off the pain."

"Right."

"I can drive just fine."

"So you're going to your mom's...for how long?"

"I'm leaving you, Ray. It's for good, this time."

"You're serious?" He saw that she was. "But, but what about my career? Do you know what this will do to it?!"

She stopped her packing to stare at him in open-mouthed amazement, then began to laugh hysterically. "What about my career!?" she mimicked, laughing so hard it brought tears to her eyes. "Frankly, Scarlett my dear, I don't give a damn," she gasped between snorts and chortles.

* * *

He got the phone call about three hours later. He'd been debating whether to go ahead and give Elena a call, maybe have her come over, spend the night, since Marna would be gone anyway. But what if the woman snuck back later just to catch him in the act? Better to wait until he got the call from Marna's mother up in Dallas, telling him she'd made it there okay, Ray'd decided.

He answered the phone on the second ring. "That you, Mrs. Pickett?"

The man on the other end asked if he was Raymond Petersen. The voice was professionally polite, and Ray knew, he just knew, without another word.

The funeral had two closed coffins to look upon, two to bury. A large white one, and its duplicate in miniature. But the second coffin was empty, and only he and the funeral director knew the truth.

You see, he couldn't bear the thought of his baby boy being all alone in that dark box, all alone for all eternity. Truth be told, he couldn't bear the idea of Marna being all alone either...she'd had enough of that in life. So he'd had Ray Junior's remains put into the coffin with his mother, had the funeral director wrap her burned and shattered arms around his crushed little chest, tuck his tiny head up under her chin, her red hair drawn down around his shoulders like a shawl. They were put in the ground together like that, to comfort him, if no one else.

Ray's solution to grief, to guilt, his self-imposed penance, was to fuck every woman he wanted whenever he wanted, and to love none of them. Nor to allow any to love him. It had worked pretty well for almost twenty-five years; until Gena McCormick entered his life.

* * *

28. The Name of the Game

ALEX REMAINED SEATED in the auditorium staring at the darkened stage. His head hung down, his depression now palpable. Uriel waited, as silent as he was patient. After several minutes Alex looked up at him.

"So why are you showing me all this? Is this, like, hell or purgatory or something?"

"You want another shot at it?" Uriel asked quietly.

"At what? What are you talking about?"

"Your life. That's what we do here, Alex. Play games; life games. No Heaven, no Hell...unless of course you choose that game, but trust me, it gets boring real fast."

Alex stared at him, the light not quite willing to dawn this early in the night. Again, it was a minute or two before he spoke.

"I don't understand. You mean, like, reincarnation?"

"Sort of," Uriel said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, choosing his words well ahead of speech, "sort of. But there's no working your way up from cockroach to saint stuff. Unless of course you choose to...but most likely you wouldn't, being a cockroach is only fun once. And the only karmic burden you carry is whatever you decide to impose on yourself to help you learn."

"So what is it like, then?" Alex demanded, sitting forward with growing interest.

"You can play the same role over and over if you wish," Uriel explained, "doing it a little bit better each time until you finally get it right. Or you—"

"You mean I could go back into my old body, my old identity?" Alex interrupted excitedly.

Uriel nodded. "At the moment of conception. All entries into new life roles are made at the moment of conception. You'd start your present life over, but with the freedom to make completely different choices along the way," he shrugged, "or the same ones over again."

"Will I remember any of this?" Alex asked, outstretching his arms to indicate Uriel, the compound, his experiences here.

Uriel shook his head.

"Then will I at least remember having lived this life before?"

"Not really, not consciously anyway...except in those rare moments of what you call 'déjà vus.'"

There was another long pause while Alex mulled this over.

Uriel stood up to straighten his robe, which had bunched uncomfortably under his thighs.

"What if I don't want to?" Alex said.

"Don't want to what?" Uriel turned, frowning.

"Relive this life."

"Then you don't have to. You can choose any role, any identity, past, present or future."

"What do you mean, any identity?"

"I mean you could choose to be born Napoleon or Mozart, Cleopatra or Anthony, Hitler, Gandhi, or Joan of Arc...You could be born to a beggar or a millionaire, a preacher or a whore. You could be American, Israeli, Iraqi or god-save-em a Brit. Anyone at all, anywhere at all, any time at all."

"But how?" Alex asked, amazed at the concept. "How is this possible?"

Uriel smiled. "It's all done with smoke and mirrors, son."

Alex raised a skeptical brow.

"You want the mechanics? Okay, it's...like entering a multisensory hologram. You simply take on the identity of the particular holographic image you choose, feeling what the sensory input of the hologram tells you to feel, hearing what it tells you to hear."

Alex looked confused, dubious.

"Come," Uriel said. "I'll show you."

He flipped some switches on the control box, picked up a small hand-held device, then walked down to the stage. Alex followed, continuing to question him.

"Multisensory? So, not just laser light, 3D images but..."

The lights came back on the stage. Alex saw they were surrounded by the virtual props from the last scene. Gena sat on the sofa, silently crying into her hands. Andy stood next to her, a hand on his mother's shaking shoulder, watching her sorrow helplessly. Alex walked over to where they were, then all around the pair, but they seemed unaware of his presence.

"Watch," Uriel instructed.

The robed man pressed one of the glowing colored buttons on his hand-held device and the sofa disappeared, yet Gena remained seated on its invisible surface in the same position as before, oblivious to its disappearance. He touched another button, and she began to shiver.

"Close the window, Andy. There's a draft."

As Andy walked over to the non-existent window to comply, Uriel flicked another switch, and the boy vanished as well. Yet Gena seemed still to see him.

"Thanks, sweetie. Now, you better go back to bed." There was a pause, where Gena seemed to be listening to a reply that only she could hear. "No, really, I'll be fine. You go on to bed."

She lifted her chin and kissed the air.

"What the hell's going on?" Alex said, turning toward Uriel.

On the stage around them, the entire scene including Gena winked out and disappeared.

"Think about it, what is the world you've always considered reality, Alex? How do you perceive that world? Through your senses, right?"

"Yeah...but," Alex began.

"No but," Uriel corrected him. "Everything you knowabout, everything you believe to be real, is known only through your senses; the reception of various energies which your mind then interprets as sight, sound, heat..."

"...taste, smell, gravity..." Alex interjected. "I got it. So?"

"But these are only real in your mind, don't you see? You are programmed to accept and interpret these sensory stimuli as evidence of external reality, when in actual fact you never leave this room," Uriel concluded.

"What do you mean, never leave this room?"

"You are always right here, Alex: the time is always right now."

"You mean, now that I've died and gone here, if I choose to play your little game...."

"No, Alex. This is all it's ever been. Your last life, all the lives you've ever played: they've always been right here, right now. It's always been a hologram."

"No, huh-uh. I don't believe you, man!" Alex disclaimed, beginning to pace in agitation. "That was real, my life was real!"

"Close your eyes."

"No!"

"Close your eyes, Alex... It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to demonstrate something, okay? Your eyes?"

Alex slowly, reluctantly closed his eyes.

Uriel pressed a button, and a sparkle of energy appeared in front of Alex's nose.

"Okay," he said to the astronaut, "what do you smell?"

Alex inhaled, thought. "A peach. Or, it smells like a peach."

"Okay, now I'm going to hand it to you," Uriel said. "Hold up your palm."

The little electrical sparkle moved to Alex's hand, just the faintest outline of energy. Alex's hand moved down noticeably, as if an object of definite mass had been placed in it.

"Describe it to me, Alex; weight, size, texture..."

Alex made motions with his hands as if hefting the invisible peach, running his fingers across its skin and pinching it.

"It, it probably weighs about a half a pound; it's fuzzy, cool, firm—but with a little give, as if it's at perfect ripeness."

"Go ahead, take a bite—but keep your eyes closed," Uriel told him.

Alex lifted the invisible peach to his mouth and took a bite, wiping the invisible juice from his chin with a fingertip.

"Mmm, juicy."

"Open your eyes, Alex."

Alex did as told, looked down at his hand, and was shocked to see no peach there. He looked up at Uriel, astonished.

"How did you...?"

"It's all just energy fields...virtual reality. Smoke and mirrors, that's all there is."

Alex wagged his head slowly back and forth, having a hard time taking this all in. He began to pace again, thinking out loud.

"Okay, let's say I buy this idea that you can live in—no, that you can experience—a world that isn't really there, a world of pure energy that's being input into your mind while you sit in a movie theater somewhere in space."

He laughed, shaking his head again at the absurdity, the wonder of it.

"But even if I can accept that, I still don't get the other thing you said, the thing about my playing any life from any time period. You mean the real life, the actual Hitler or Gandhi or whoever?"

"That's correct."

"I don't see how that's possible," Alex disagreed. "How can you manipulate time? Past is...past. It's over and done with."

"What does the concept of 'eternity' mean to you?" Uriel inquired softly.

"I don't know. Forever? But that's just another word for something impossible to imagine. I guess it's simply endlessness, time going on and on and on without ever stopping."

"And without ever starting either," Uriel nodded. "No beginning, no end. Well, you're a space scientist. Do you believe that term applies to the span of our universe, does it go on and on as well, or does it have finite boundaries?"

"The paradigms keep changing on that. The big bang theory would give it a starting point at least, but it's impossible to conceptualize a beginning without an end...or time without space for that matter: they're interwoven, interdependent."

"Okay," Uriel nodded, "so you have the space-time continuum, wormholes, superstrings and entanglement, infinite expansion versus ultimate contraction... What does your science conclude from all this? Is the Universe infinite?"

As Uriel said this, the stage around them darkened, and night undressed the sky. Stars and galaxies appeared, making it look as if the two men were floating in the midst of the universe itself. Alex looked around at the cosmic splendor in awe, as he contemplated Uriel's last question. Close behind him materialized the image of a tremendous explosion.

"The big bang theory," he said, staring at its manifestation, "states that the present universe began about 15 billion years ago, when all matter in the universe condensed to a single mathematical point in space and then expanded outward in a huge explosion, hurtling the primordial matter of galaxies in all directions. This," he turned to Uriel; "seemingly gives the universe a starting point..."

"Seemingly a beginning," Uriel reiterated. "However?"

"However that theory never approaches the question of where the pre big bang matter came from, what it was like, or how long it had existed before it collapsed into that single point."

"Or even why it collapsed? Or how it would be actually possible to get all the matter in the universe down to a single point of virtually no volume or mass, other than in the mind of a mathematician?"

"Right."

"So, no clear beginning after all," Uriel summarized. "And an end?"

"The most recent evidence points to a universe that will keep expanding outward forever... But even if it doesn't, the other alternative is that it will collapse into a singularity and big bang all over again...and again."

"Thus, either way, no end." Uriel smiled, folding his hands together.

"So much for science, whose only purpose, by the way, is to dissect the infinite into finite pieces small enough for small minds to grasp...and to thereby entrap them within its limited view of the truth...but I digress."

"'S' okay," Alex said, fascinated.

"So," Uriel went on, "if we were to picture this infinite universe as a highway continuing forever, a roadway of endless space across a track of endless time, how much relative time along this track would a single human lifetime occupy?"

As the two men in the center of the little stage debated infinity, and Uriel posed this last question, the images of the holographic universe around them began to shift and move, making it appear as if Uriel and Alex were now flying outward along a glowing golden monorail of light, moving through time, through clusters of stars and galaxies at breathtaking speed, while the glow from the big bang receded further and further behind them.

"None," Alex answered, his mouth agape as the universe unfolded around him. "A single human life would occupy no time at all. Well, virtually none."

"Then what about the entire recorded history of man? What is that, some ten or fifteen thousand years? How much relative time would the whole of mankind's civilized history on Earth occupy against this span of infinite time?"

Alex shrugged. "Again, so minute as to be meaningless, dimensionless." Then his face changed. "Oh...."

"Exactly! In the face of infinity, all finite time becomes dimensionless. Can you see that? In the face of infinity, of on and on and on, there is no time at all. One second, one lifetime, one billion lifetimes...they're all the same. Time has no real meaning in relativistic terms; no past, no future... it's all just now."

"And space?" Alex asked. "Being infinite, it too is all just..."

The 3D image of the universe around them faded. There was just the empty stage.

"Here," Uriel finished Alex's thought. "Here and now, that's the only true reality. Everything else is just part of the illusion, part of the game."

"It's all just illusion? Everything?"

"Pretty much," Uriel told him. "Thus you can play any role that's ever been played in any time period, and do it as many times as you like. Also," he smiled, "despite science fiction caveats against it, you can change the past—and thus the future—by playing the role a little differently every time you do it."

"But wouldn't that screw everything up?"

"On the contrary, we encourage change, the making of different choices, taking different paths, especially at the pivotal points. When you alter the future for one role, it changes it for many others as well, making the whole game infinitely more complex and interesting, don't you see?"

"Yeah, but why?"

"Why? Well, say you choose the life of someone who previously was destined to become an alcoholic bum on skid row, but the next time you play that role, you make a few critical life choices differently, and turn your destiny into that of a billionaire industrialist, or a medical researcher who—"

"No, no," Alex interrupted, "I meant why play the game at all?"

Uriel laughed aloud. "What else is there? We have nothing to do, and all of eternity to do it in!"

"So you create time?" Alex suggested.

"We create games. The games create time."

"To stave off boredom?!" Alex continued.

"Exactly. Which leads to my next question. Are you ready to play again?"

Alex looked at him for a long moment before slowly shaking his head.

"No...no, I don't think so."

"No?" Uriel repeated, genuinely surprised.

"You know all those bad choices I made in my life?" Alex asked.

"Yes?"

"I think the common thread, the one single 'fatal flaw' that I saw running through every one of my pivotal mistakes, was impulsiveness. I didn't take the time to think things through carefully before acting...or, for that matter, speaking. I don't want to start my new life on that same mistake."

Uriel nodded, smiling. "Very good. Then take all the time you need." He turned and began to walk out of the auditorium.

"Hey! Hey wait!" Alex called after him.

The tall, robed bald man stopped and turned. For just a moment he looked like G. Gordon Liddy without the mustache. "Yes?"

"Do I have to stay inside here while I think about it?"

"No, of course not. Choose any exit, wander at will; mi casa es su casa... I'll check back with you later," he concluded with a little bow, then exited.

* * *

29. Whatever Happened to Baby Alex?

ALEX WANDERED AIMLESSLY out onto the grounds of the compound, his mind clambering back over the terrain of his life, trying to see not just the brightly lit high ground, but the dark places, the crevasses and ravines, the pits into which he'd most certainly fallen from time to time. Those were the hard parts to recall. He had a feeling they were, for that very reason, important. Especially the things that had happened when he was a kid...for he could barely remember life before age ten at all.

He stopped in almost the exact center of the great courtyard, taking it all in: the glowing white walls, the great hulking mass of Jupiter with its orange and cream striped mass taking up a sizable corner of the sky on the left, the distant rising sun casting a pale glow across the compound from the right, causing a thin stream of vapor to trail up from the tops of the high ice walls like wispy ghosts.

Ghosts.

* * *

Alex looked up at his father, eyes shining. Dad looked down from his enormous height, gave the boy a wink and a smile, and squeezed his hand a bit harder as they walked up the stone steps. Alex stretched his gait to match his father's long stride. They walked into the aging stone precinct building and up to the front desk like they owned the place.

The officer manning the desk—a middle-aged black man in a gut-tight uniform—looked up and grinned.

"Ah, good mornin', Detective McCormick. See you got a dangerous suspect in custody there. You want me to cuff him for you?"

"Would you, Officer Smits?" Alex's daddy smiled. "He's a wild one; I can barely hold him back."

Alex giggled.

The desk officer brought out a pair of handcuffs from his desk drawer and snapped the oversized metal hasps around Alex's scrawny wrists.

"Cool," the boy said happily; then after a moment: "Where's the key?"

"Key?" Officer Smits said.

"Key?" Alex's dad said.

"Da-ad!" the boy cried, almost worried.

The men laughed until their eyes watered; then the desk officer produced a key and freed the boy.

"It's my son's ninth birthday today," Alex's dad told the man. "I thought I'd bring him in and show him around, let him meet the guys; then maybe take him to the shooting range and teach him how to handle a twenty-two."

"Cool," Officer Smits said, giving Alex two thumbs up.

"Yeah, cool," Alex agreed, returning the thumbs up sign.

Alex was proud of the way everyone in the police station seemed to know his dad, the way they all greeted him with big smiles and jokes, like he was their best friend. And he liked how they shook his own hand, making him feel important just for being Detective McCormick's son.

Dad took him to the vending machines near the restrooms to get a package of donuts and a little carton of chocolate milk, then let him sit in his office chair with his feet up on the desk eating them while Dad made a few important phone calls that Alex didn't really understand. After that, they went to the shooting gallery. Dad signed him out for protective headgear, gloves, and a gun that was twice as big as his hand.

"Of course he's twelve," Dad told the officer in charge, and the man never even argued with him.

His dad fired his own gun first to show him how it was done. After 12 rounds, he pushed the button to advance the target and inspect his aim. There was no head or upper chest left on the paper target's figure. Then it was Alex's turn.

His heart beat hard, but he felt better when his dad stood behind him, enclosing Alex's smaller hands with his big ones to control and aim the big revolver. He helped him to align the gun's sight with the target, then his finger squeezed Alex's slowly against the trigger until it hit the firing pin.

Alex was amazed and a little frightened by how hard the gun bucked, throwing his arms back over his head even with his dad holding onto them. The explosion was so loud and so close, that the force of the sound waves on his eardrums made them ring for hours after, despite the protective headgear.

But when his dad said, "That was great son," Alex had grinned up at him. And when he said, "Do you want to try it again?" Alex had nodded eagerly.

When they got home, Mama was elbow deep in the birthday dinner preparations. Pots of water and marinara sauce simmered on the stove, a big sheet cake cooled on the counter. The kitchen was warm and redolent with the smells of garlic and chocolate, sautéed onion and butter cream frosting.

"Hi, honey," Dad said, kissing Mama on the cheek.

"Hi, babe...Alex, get your finger out of the frosting and go blow up those balloons on the kitchen table."

Alex took one more finger load from the bowl of chocolate fudge frosting before complying.

"Can you set these hors d'oeuvres on the coffee table in the living room?" Mama asked Dad, handing him a hollowed out loaf of sourdough filled with spinach dip, a tray of cheese and crackers.

As he carried the snacks into the other room, he called back over his shoulder, "I can't stay."

Alex cringed. He could tell by the way Dad was trying to sound so off hand about it, there was a good chance Mom would go postal. The explosion came almost instantly.

"You what!? Oh, Ronald, not again! It's Alex's birthday for chrissake! I got everyone coming over: Mama, my sisters and their kids, that neighbor whassername across the street. What am I supposed to tell them?"

Daddy came up and put his big hands on her shoulders, almost as if he were keeping her from flying up into the air in her rage. Her eyes were wet with frustration and disappointment.

"You tell them that your husband's a detective, that he's working on a real important case..."

"It can't wait?"

"They got a new lead; they're picking up a 'person of interest' even as we speak. We had to grab him before he got wind and went underground," Daddy explained. "But we can only hold him a couple of hours without more evidence."

"So?"

"So I've got to interview him now, before they cut him loose."

"There's no one else in the entire 56th precinct detective bureau that can interview a goddam suspect?"

"Carol, it's my case," he told her, dropping his hands from her shoulders. "I gotta go."

"Go then," she sniffed, turning her face away as he bent to give her a kiss.

He straightened up, looked at her with regret, then turned and walked over to Alex, who was pretending to still blow up the balloons.

"Sorry to miss your party, kiddo," he said, ruffling the boy's hair.

"S'okay, Dad... I had a great time today."

"Me too, son," Dad said. "Save me a piece of cake, okay?"

* * *

In the living room, Alex and his cousins, with some kibitzing from the neighbor kids, were assembling the tracks for his new hot wheels racing set.

The mothers sat on the sectional sofa nearby, drinking beer and bitching; their husbands had wisely retreated into the den to watch a basketball game on the big screen TV. From their conversation, "children", thought Alex, apparently were believed to be deaf or 'tards.

"I don't know how you put up with it," Aunt Margie sneered. "The hours are terrible, he's never home...."

"You sure he hasn't got somethin' goin' on the side, sweetie?" Grandma interjected, pretending to care.

"No, Mother," Alex's mama told her, "I know he isn't fooling around. He really loves me and baby Alex...believe it or not."

Good goin', Mom, Alex said in his mind, giving her a quick glance. Only I could do without the 'baby Alex' thing.

"Whatever," Grandma sniffed, reaching for another piece of spinach dip sourdough, even though she'd already consumed a huge plate of spaghetti and two slices of chocolate cake.

Guess she saved some room by passing on the salad, Alex snickered, as he fit the last two pieces of flexible plastic track together.

"I don't care if he's the sweetest guy on Earth," Aunt Karla interjected, "I still think you need to put your foot down. It's just too dangerous on the streets these days. Doesn't he ever think about you and Alex...I mean, what would you do if—God forbid—something happened?"

"It gets worse," Mama sighed, finishing off her beer in a long swallow and getting up. "I need another. Anyone?"

"Yeah, I could use a fresh one."

"Me too."

"Not me, I'm driving."

"What do you mean 'It gets worse'?" Grandma demanded.

"He's volunteered to join the drug task force," Mama shouted from the kitchen. "It's an undercover assignment."

"You're not going to let him do it, are you?" Aunt Margie shouted back over her shoulder.

"That's just too dangerous!"

" What if there's Mexican mafia involved; they could come after you and the boy!" Aunt Karla

added.

"She wouldn't even be able to go out with him in public anymore, if he's undercover," the neighbor added. "Or, at least, that's what I heard."

Alex, still eavesdropping, wondered what undercover meant if everyone on the block knew about it.

"I doubt it would get to that," Mama said as she returned with the beers.

"You probably wouldn't want to be seen in public with him anyway," Aunt Karla sniggered, "not if his hair's long and straggly and he grows a beard or something."

"Jeez, you make him sound like Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July," Mama laughed, handing a beer to Margie, another to the neighbor.

"Well, isn't that how they have to look to fit in with the drug culture?" Karla defended.

"I...I don't know, I hadn't really thought about that part of it," Mama admitted.

"Well, you better just tell him to forget about it," Grandma ordered.

"I will, Mom, I will," Alex's mama said, patting her mother on the knee as she sat back down on the sofa with her beer.

"So," Grandma said, turning to her girls, "is everyone coming to Easter dinner at my house next Sunday, or what?"

* * *

It was nearly bedtime. The promise of spring had been kept, summer had held onto her sultry reign as long as she could, but finally the nights had begun to cool, and Halloween costumes to appear in all the drug and department stores in town.

Alex was cuddled under a fleece throw with his mom, watching a rerun of The Simpsons, when Daddy came home at last.

At first they both jumped, clinging to each other in startled confusion, Mama and he; partly because they hadn't heard him come in and weren't expecting him—suddenly he was just there, flopping down in the easy chair across from them with a beer in his hand—and partly because of his appearance.

Unbelievably, Aunt Karla had been right: he looked like a bum, barely recognizable under the mop of unkempt, shoulder-length brown hair and straggly beard. Even his eyebrows looked thicker. Then Alex saw the blue eyes that still sparkled when he looked over at his son from beneath the mass of facial hair.

"Hi, son," his dad said softly.

"Daddy!" Alex cried, jumping out of his mom's grasp to run to his dad, giving him a hug which was returned long and hard, as if his dad would never let him go.

"Sorry I haven't been home in a while," he murmured into his son's hair, his eyes on his wife.

"Almost seven weeks, this time. We thought you might be dead."

"You'd get a call," he reminded her.

"That's not good enough, Ronnie."

"It won't be much longer, I promise. We're closing in on the big fish...I'm going deep, real deep. That's what I came home to tell you."

"Well I've got something to tell you, Ronald McCormick," she said, standing up. She licked her lips, determined after all the nagging from her family to see it through. "You quit. You quit right now, or I'm filing for divorce."

"You're not serious," he said, looking at her levelly. He put Alex away from him.

Alex stood there, looking from one to the other.

"Listen, Carol, I love you guys, but—"

"But nothing, Ronald. Prove it. Quit."

He took a deep breath, as if the air itself was painful. "Carol. Baby. Listen."

"No!"

"Listen! I leave now, men die. Good men, men in as deep as I am. They've got families too, Carol. I can't just desert them."

"Them or us. Choose."

"You bitch!" Dad said, getting up. "You cold, selfish bitch."

"Fuck you, Ronald," Mama cried, the tears overflowing as Daddy turned and walked toward the door.

"Fuck you!!" she screamed as he slammed it behind him.

She had the divorce papers sent to the precinct three days later, determined to call his bluff. It didn't work. He didn't call, but he didn't sign them either.

Alex hated her for it. But, he told himself, it would all be okay again, once Daddy came back home. Daddy'd make it okay.

Two months later, they got a knock on the door. It was about 9 p.m. The Christmas tree was already up and decorated, a few early presents under the tree. Alex just knew Daddy would come home for Christmas. So when the knock came, he flew to answer it, sure it was his dad at last...so sure he yelled,

"Daddy!" as he flung open the door.

Only it wasn't Daddy. Two men stood there in overcoats, hunched up against the cold. He vaguely recognized one of them from his visit to the police station six months earlier.

"Is your mother home, son?" the other one said.

Carol appeared behind him in the doorway. Alex looked up at her over his shoulder, and when he saw the fear in her eyes, he got cold.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news, ma'am," the first man said. "Can we come in?"

* * *

30. It's About Time

ALEX SQUATTED ON the frozen ground beneath the violet and orange sky; the tears pouring from his eyes onto a crust of ice, stained in places with rusty colored mineral deposits. His shoulders shook, his voice cracked as the sobs tore from his throat like ravenous harpies. He hated the sound of them, dining on his soul, making him weak.

Somehow, he'd forgotten all about his dad over the years.

At that moment, out of the corner of his eye he saw the white-robed aide appear from one of the hospital doorways, look over at him, and just as quickly disappear back inside. Alex made himself get up; he began to walk slowly out into the compound on the icy ground. It gave a little underfoot with each tentative step, cracking and groaning.

Above him, Io was moving slowly away from Europa, already on the right side of Jupiter, its multicolored, pockmarked surface still smoking in several places from the recent rain of meteorites. He lowered his gaze to the long smooth hill of ice that sloped steeply upward on the northwest side of the compound, tilting his head as he contemplated some unseen possibilities there.

He remembered another snow-covered hill, a wooden sled; Flexi-Flyer painted in red letters down its center. His dad was pulling it by a rope attached to the front. His other hand held tight to Alex's mittened one, helping to pull the boy up the steep, icy slope. They paused to catch their breaths at the top, making puffs of fog in the cold mountain air. Then Dad put him on the sled, made him grab the steering bar tight, and pushed him off.

He was flying, breathless, the bits of snow whipped up by wind and runners making his eyes water. He held tight, alternately screaming and laughing, as Dad ran alongside him shouting encouragement all the way to the bottom of the hill.

Alex looked around him, once more under Jupiter's glow. He turned slowly about, executing a full circle, to take in the entire compound, empty but for him. He stopped turning, caught on a thought. I can't be the only dead guy here. Where's everybody else? Again the white-robed aide appeared in the distance. Alex called out to him, waving.

"Hey! Hey, you there, wait a minute!" The aide didn't acknowledge him, but once more hurriedly re-entered the hospital through a secret doorway, which immediately closed behind him into a seamless invisible joint.

"Wait!" Alex called, running toward the place where the aide had disappeared. "I only want to ask you something!"

Just as he got to that invisible doorway, a second aide—or perhaps the first again—came out of another door immediately behind him, barely missing a collision. Startled, he turned to go back inside but Alex stepped in front of the door to block his way.

"Hold it! I want to know..."

"We are not allowed," the aide interrupted.

"Allowed what? All I wanted was..."

"Please, I must go," the aide said nervously, trying to slip past. Alex made a grab for the aide's arm, but his hand went right through the appendage, closing on itself into a fist. The aide turned in dismay, looking up into Alex's eyes.

"You shouldn't have done that," he admonished.

"What the...! You're not real either?"

The aide shook his head and disappeared through the wall. A moment later Uriel came out the same way into the compound.

"The aide tells me you wanted to ask him something. What is it, Alex? What do you want?"

"A sled."

"A...sled?!"

"Yeah, you know, one of those old-fashioned wooden ones with the metal runners?" Alex said.

"A Flexi-Flyer," Uriel nodded. "Fine. Done."

The tall man clicked a button on the communication device hanging from his belt, and a split second later the mysterious aide reappeared, dragging a brand-new Flexi-Flyer behind him.

Alex took it from him without acknowledgement, pretty certain that from Uriel's point of view he would be talking to himself. He raised an eyebrow at the robed man in acknowledgment of this fact, then turned and began to pull the sled by its rope up the long icy hill on the left side of the compound. When he got to the top end farthest from the hospital, he stood there a moment—a black silhouette against the orange blob of Jupiter, surrounded by the glowing wisps of vaporizing water coming off the ice around him. Then he flopped belly first on the little sled and began to glide forward, slowly at first, until the sled topped the crest of the ice ridge, then suddenly into an explosion of speed, hurtling down the slippery slope of ice at hair-raising velocity. Alex held on to the steering bars with the same look of dogged determination he'd worn when he'd brought his first sail plane under control, tested his first supersonic aircraft, rode his first rocket into space.

When he got to the bottom, gliding to a stop near the feet of the silently observing Uriel and his aide, Alex turned without a word and trudged back up the hill with his sled again. Once more he flew down the steep ice incline, this time his expression loosening into a tight-lipped grin as he went. At the bottom he gave Uriel a quick look, raising his eyebrow playfully, before turning and hurrying back up the long slope again.

The third time down the hill, he took a running jump onto the sled to pick up speed, and as he went airborne over the crest he yelled out in exhilaration. His laughter echoed down the hill like a happy avalanche, bouncing off the compound walls and making bubbles in the night. Alex jumped off the sled at the bottom one more time, running past Uriel and the aide without so much as a glance in their direction. Up towards the hill he ran, dragging the sled behind. They watched him go past, eyeing him oddly, then glancing at each other.

This time, at the top of the hill, he sat on the sled and put his feet against the crossbar so he could push off with his hands. As he went over the crest and down the steep incline he put his arms over his head, yelling and hooting in pure joy as he soared.

When he got to the bottom of the hill this time he stood up and handed the sled back to Uriel, a little out of breath.

"Done?" Uriel inquired.

"Yeah. Thanks. I needed that."

"I know," Uriel said.

"So, who are you guys anyway? A pair of walking talking holograms?" Alex panted. He made a playful swipe at the aide's face as he said this, fully believing his hand would go right through it. To his surprise it didn't, and he delivered the aide a smarting blow to the cheek, leaving a red mark on his face.

"Oh! Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I thought...What happened?"

"You simply caught him unaware the first time, Alex. As to what we are, I already told you. We're helpers, we remain in this place to guide you through the transition."

"To guide me. Yeah, well that's what I wanted to talk to you about. To guide me, you say... But what about guiding all the others who died today? Who does that? And where are they, by the way?"

Uriel hesitated, then began to answer. "It's not—"

"No, wait, let me finish," Alex interrupted. "See, I've been thinking about it, and I figure there must be millions of people dying on Earth every single day; so by my reasoning this place should be teeming with souls 'in transition,' right? Yet I haven't seen a single person other than you and a couple of these 'helpers."

"That can be explained," Uriel assured him.

"And another thing that bothers me," Alex went on as if the other man hadn't spoken. "The world population increases by several million a year; every day more new people are born than die."

"So?"

"So how do all these new babies get...souls, I guess you'd call them, if those of us already here are playing the same old roles over and over. It seems like...like you'd run out."

"Let me answer your last question first, Alex," Uriel said. "No matter how many new babies are created in our holographic world, it is still a finite number; and we have an infinite number of years to play all the roles, new and old. That's time enough for each and every newly created identity to be occupied by an eternal spirit, for each life game to be played again and again...and again. Besides, they're all just holograms, these 'new babies' remember?"

"Okay, I see that, I guess," said Alex. "But my other question?"

"Which was?"

"Where are all the dead people...pardon me, the other souls in transition...right now?"

"Here. They're here."

"Where?" Alex said, looking around. "I've seen no one."

"Well, they are not so numerous as you might imagine."

"What do you mean? How numerous?"

"Let me see, how can I explain this," Uriel mulled. "There is a slight degree of separation in Time-Space. It allows for—"

"Make sense, dammit!"

"Okay, I'll cut to the chase. A body dies, game ends. Soul arrives, chooses new game, and is gone again. Simple. How long do you think that takes?"

"I don't know. I've been here at least a day, haven't I?"

"Have you? And how did you determine that 'day'? Was it one rotation of the Earth? But you're not on Earth anymore."

"No, I know that," Alex acceded. "It was more...intrinsic, a feeling..."

"Perhaps some minute degree of aging, some metabolic cycle in your body that keys an internal clock?"

Alex almost nodded, then caught himself just as Uriel said, "But you're dead. There's no metabolism, no aging in a dead man. You're not really in a body anymore at all, remember? That's just a sensory hologram around you, a kind of security blanket during transition."

"So, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying—again—that time has no meaning here. A million million souls could pass through this place on any given 'day' and never meet. Eternity allows this."

"Did...did my dad pass through here?" Alex asked.

Uriel put his hand on the astronaut's shoulder. "Maybe we should go back inside, son. I think you need a little more time to review and reflect on some other issues in your life before we go farther with this, don't you?"

"I guess...if you say so."

* * *

31. Past Choices

AT ONCE THEY were back inside the auditorium again, sitting side by side in plush chairs near the control console at the center of the room. With the push of a button by Uriel, the movie screen in front of the stage came down, another button and the lights dimmed, as a scene from Alex's childhood appeared on the screen.

It was the interior of a nicely furnished, middle-class home.

A pretty woman in her late thirties, Alex's mother, grabbed her purse from the sofa in the family room, then paused a moment to look over at Alex. Nearly 17 already, he was big boned and thin, the framework of the handsome man he soon would become, just waiting for the artist's final touches. Yet her mother's eyes reflected the image of the little boy who'd once sat on her lap watching The Simpsons, back when they still laughed together.

At the moment he was immersed in a computer game, oblivious to her presence.

"You sure you don't want to go?" she said.

When he didn't answer, she thought he was just being rude again. Then she noticed the headphones, and tapped him gently on the shoulder to get his attention. He put the game on pause, pulled down the headphones and waited.

"You sure you don't want to come along with us, honey? Dad's meeting us there."

"He's not my dad. Anyway, I've got homework."

"So I see," she said, nodding at the computer, the action game paused mid-kill stroke on the screen.

"I'm going to start it in a couple of minutes, Mom," he said, looking up at her. As he did so, a worried frown suddenly creased his brow, a cloud shadow racing across his face.

She looked at him more closely. "You feeling okay, kiddo? You're not getting sick, are you?" She put the back of her hand against his brow, and for a moment he closed his eyes, allowing the touch.

"I'm okay, Mom. I just thought for a minute...."

A towheaded little boy of about four popped his head around the door from the kitchen just then.

"Mo-om! Come on!" he yelled.

Alex's mother slid her hand down to Alex's cheek, giving it a fond little pat. The younger boy ran up and grabbed her arm, pulling her away impatiently.

"Come on! The show going to staht withou' us!"

Alex leaned around his mom to give his little half-brother the finger. "I hope you choke on a popcorn kernel and when the fat, bald usher gives you mouth to mouth, he slips you the tongue."

"He's mean, Mommy!"

"Okay, okay, we're going," Mom laughed, allowing herself to be pulled all the way to the door by the rambunctious preschooler.

Alex stared after her, looking as if there was something on his mind he was reluctant to voice. As she opened the door he called after her.

"Hey, Mom?"

She paused, holding onto the doorjamb as the younger boy continued to tug at her.

"Yes, Alex?"

"Ah, nothing...just, have a good time, okay?"

She looked at him fondly, then her grip on the doorjamb was yanked free and she disappeared from view.

"Love you!" she called, as the door slammed closed behind her.

"Love you back," Alex said quietly to the door.

Alex, in the auditorium, leaned forward tensely, gripping the empty seat in front of him as he concentrated on the movie screen below.

The scene was now a four-lane business street, just about sunset. A small red economy car raced down the street, zipping in and out of the rush hour traffic. Within the car Alex saw his mother, so intent on getting to the theater on time she was driving a little faster than the speed limit and common sense might dictate. The little towheaded boy was strapped into his car seat right beside the driver, tapping on the yellow horn in the center of his plastic steering wheel. Music blared at top volume from the car radio.

The movie suddenly switched to an aerial shot of the intersection, wide angle.

A police car pursued a fleeing pickup truck, both heading for the intersection Mom was about to cross. Its lights were flashing, sirens screaming; but the loud rock music from the car was louder still, drowning out the sound of the sirens completely.

"No," Alex breathed.

The little red car entered the intersection just as the pickup truck came in from its left at 90 mph. There was a tremendous impact which smashed in the driver's side of the red car and sent it spinning across the intersection. On the third revolution the braking police car slammed into the passenger side, folding the little car like a pocketbook. The rock music abruptly stopped. Then the movie screen went black.

* * *

Alex sat as if frozen in time, staring at the black screen and shaking.

"You had a premonition," Uriel prodded.

"Yeah, yeah, I did. But I didn't tell her, 'cause I didn't want to sound stupid."

"Would it have made a difference, if you'd told her? Do you think she would have stayed home, just because you had a bad feeling?"

"Maybe. Maybe if I'd really tried, really insisted," Alex said, "she might have stayed home just to humor me. And if I'd really believed that accident was going to happen, I suppose I would have."

"But you weren't that sure..."

He shrugged wistfully. "It was too vague, you know? I wasn't sure."

"And if you had kept her from going, and thus there'd been no crash, then you'd never have known if that inner voice was worth listening to, would you? Nor where it was coming from?"

Alex turned in his seat to look at Uriel, a small light bulb going off. "That was my memory warning me? From having lived through it before?"

"Let's go on," Uriel said. "Remember this?"

* * *

On the movie screen in front of the stage, the scene which now appeared was the outside of a modest white wood frame home, at night. The city neighborhood in which it was located was a combination of older apartment buildings and small homes, sandwiched between mom-and-pop shops and larger businesses, their hand-painted and neon signs all bilingual: Japanese script and English.

Alex, now about a year older, walked through the white wrought iron gate that fenced off the home from the riff-raff of the world, and up the cracked cement path. He appeared stiff and self-conscious in the light blue tuxedo, trying hard not to look at the curtained windows ahead, as if sure he was being watched and evaluated. He carried a corsage box in one hand and a gift bag full of small brightly wrapped presents in the other. He glanced down at them, now that he was on the porch, hoping he'd done the right thing. Well, Gena had advised it.

He took a deep breath, then knocked on the door and took a quick step back, waiting. He was just about to knock again when the door was opened by an unsmiling Japanese American man in his mid-fifties. Standing behind him in the entry hall was a pleasant-looking little woman a few years younger, with a face of perpetual sadness and unquenchable hope. Alex gave a formal little bow, just as Gena had coached him, then grinned nervously. The father returned the bow without smiling and stepped aside, comically lifting his eyebrow and making a face for his wife's amusement behind Alex's back as he passed. The mother stifled a giggle.

Watching this from the auditorium, Alex looked surprised.

"I thought Gena said he was really strict, that he hated the idea of her dating, but...he doesn't seem so bad."

"Maybe he learned by his estrangement from his first daughter," Uriel suggested. "Or maybe he just got old."

Alex paused in the entry hall, fumbling in the gift bag he carried while Gena's father and mother watched patiently. He pulled out a small wrapped gift, which he handed to the father with a tiny bow of his head. The father accepted the gift with a similar nod. Alex glanced upward, to where Gena had just appeared at the top of the stairs. She wore a beautiful embroidered silk, full-length gown, and his mouth literally dropped open. Gena smiled, then signaled him with eye movements and little head gestures that he should give a present to her mother now.

He quickly dug in the bag and produced another wrapped gift, which he handed to the mother, his eyes still fixated on Gena. The sweet-faced little woman smiled graciously and bowed more deeply, a gesture which Alex returned in full measure. Gena now pointed toward the living room, where her tiny, frail, parchment skinned grandmother sat in an overstuffed chair, looking as small as a child and as royal as her many years allowed. By this time Gena's parents had caught on to the action between Gena and Alex, and they too nodded, signaling him to follow them into the living room. There he bowed deeply and formally to the ancient matriarch, and offered her his last gift, which she accepted with a confused little smile at her son and daughter-in-law.

"Who is this?" she asked, squinting at Alex, then turning back to her son. "Who is it?"

They all sat in awkward silence, Alex at the very edge of his chair as if he might bolt at any second, until Gena made her formal entrance a moment later. They rose as she entered the room, all but the grandmother, and Alex went up to her, shy and awkward and agog at her beauty.

"I got this corsage," he said, holding out the clear plastic box.

"Okay..." said Gena with a wry little grin.

She tilted her head back so he could pin it to her dress, but he got so embarrassed, trying to affix it to her bosom under the father's chary scrutiny, that he dropped it twice. Finally the mother came forward to take the corsage from Alex and attach it to the bodice of the evening gown. Alex, relieved of the responsibility, mimicked wiping sweat from his brow, which elicited a giggle from Gena and even a reluctant smile from her stern-faced father.

As Alex and Gena walked away from the house, they were careful to maintain six inches of separation between them, what with the father, mother and grandmother all watching from the doorway. The mother waved, the father scowled and shook his head, and the grandmother kept asking, "Who was that boy? Who was that?"

On the screen, close up Gena whispered out of the side of her mouth to Alex, "Don't worry, you did fine."

And Alex, in a pitch perfect imitation of Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride, whispered back, "'Have fun storming the castle, kids!"

Gena threw a hand over her mouth, caution to the winds, to stifle the eruption of laughter.

The scene on the movie screen did a slow dissolve to the decorated high school gymnasium where the senior prom was being held. Swirling lights from a multifaceted glass globe turning slowly in the center of the room played across the faces and gowns of the dancers. The drama stage crew had done a good job with the lighting, hitting the globe from all four corners of the gymnasium rafters with spots of blue, green, red and white.

Glow-in-the dark cut out stars hung down on invisible wires, giving the dancers the feeling they were floating in space. The young rock band had finally settled down to playing a slow number, the old George Harrison favorite "Something;" and Alex and Gena were dancing cheek to cheek in the middle of all this atmosphere. After a minute, Gena pulled back her head to look up into Alex's face as they danced—young enough to trust an unflinching gaze into the eyes of her beloved, her own eyes alight with love, her face radiant and beautiful.

The angle reversed to young Alex. His eyes filled with emotion looking down at her.

Uriel glanced over at Alex as he watched this scene, and he smiled to see the desired result on the astronaut's face.

* * *

The scene on the movie screen down in front had subtly changed. The close up on Alex, who was still looking down, his eyes full of emotion, moved back to reveal that he no longer wore the blue tuxedo but a white surgical gown instead. In his arms, he no longer held Gena but his newborn son. And the emotion that filled his eyes as he gazed on the infant was subtly different as well, a wonderful complex of awe, amazement, tenderness, protectiveness and love. He looked over at Gena with the same complex of emotions. She was laid out, spread legged, on the delivery table, being tended by the doctor and nurse as they cleaned and stitched her up. But she seemed oblivious to their ministrations, with eyes only for Alex and their newborn son. And she'd never looked more beautiful.

"Look at him, Gen!" Alex whispered, his voice raw with emotion. "Look what you made! This is the greatest thing in the world...this is the very best thing anyone could ever do in their entire life!"

Tears ran unashamed down Alex's cheeks, and Gena's eyes too were overflowing. She looked at Alex with surprise and affection, to see this unexpected new side of him. Then he bent over and oh-so-carefully laid the infant in her arms, kissing her on the forehead as he did so.

"Thank you," he told her, "oh, thank you so much, Gena. I'm sorry it hurt you, I really am, but I...I love him! I love him and I love you with every ounce of my being."

* * *

In the auditorium, as Alex watched this tender moment, tears once again overran his eyes. He wiped at his face with his hands.

"I miss them," he said hoarsely, "I miss them both so much. I messed up..."

The scene on the movie screen faded, the auditorium lights came up.

"So, does this mean you're ready to go back, do it all again?" Uriel asked.

Alex turned to him. "You said that going back I could change things, right the wrongs, avoid mistakes?"

"That's correct. You could keep your mom from going on that drive, do things a little differently with Gena and Andy...."

Alex contemplated this a moment. "What about now?" he asked finally.

"I'm not sure I get your meaning," Uriel replied.

"I mean, I'd like to see how they're doing now without me."

"Why? It's the same moment you saw last time, Alex. They're in Mission Control, they've just witnessed your crash, just realized you died. Up there..."

"But what about later, when they go on? I want to see that."

"It hasn't occurred yet."

"Of course it has," Alex insisted. "You say I've lived this life before, right? That's why I had that premonition about Mom. So, I died, they coped, they went on.... I want to see it."

"That aspect, the future, changes every time you play the role, Alex. Right now everything's on hold, waiting for you to decide what you're going to do. Time has essentially stopped. And this ending won't turn out exactly the same as the last one regardless."

Alex sighed, mulling this over. Then he looked up at Uriel, his expression calculating. "Okay then," he said, "let me take one last look at their reactions to my death before I decide."

"Oh, all right! Fine," Uriel conceded, growing a little exasperated. "Let's put them on stage, though, and do it right."

He pushed a button on the control panel, and the movie screen at the front of the auditorium once more rose, exposing the stage behind, set with the holographic 3D portrayal of Mission Control during the final moment before the crash. Flight personnel and reporters were in a cacophony of excitement and horror. In the large visual monitor on the front wall Alex was seen frantically trying to bring the space vehicle out of its spin, as Jupiter tumbled in and out of view on the other large monitor, and Europa's surface grew ever closer and more distinct on the small viewing screen above Alex's head in the space vehicle itself.

"It's working, Ray!" Alex shouted. "I think I got it...."

A huge fireball filled both viewing screens on the front wall of Mission Control.

Alex got up from his seat in the auditorium and walked toward the stage, as Andy and Gena, up in the viewing area reacted to his crash. He'd reached the stage just as Andy jumped up and pressed his hands against the glass partition, yelling "Dad!"

Then Alex stepped into the hologram of Mission Control.

Ray Petersen, staring up at the big screen in shock, said quietly, "Oh my God! We've lost him!" as Alex entered the stage.

Others in the room reacted in various ways, swearing, crying, pounding their fists on monitors, or simply staring open-mouthed, frozen in disbelief. A moment later Gena and Andy raced onto the Mission Control floor from a side door.

"Ray, no! Oh no!" she cried out forlornly. "It isn't, it can't be...."

Ray grabbed her by the shoulders, then pulled her close to him, wrapping his arms around her tightly as she sobbed. He reached out another arm to draw in and comfort Andy, almost as an afterthought.

Alex walked around the pair curiously, looking at them from different angles. He noticed Ray's lips brush Gena's hair in a secretive little kiss, then noticed how the man's hips were pressed up against Gena more tightly than required for mere comforting.

"Be brave, Gena; it's gonna be okay, trust me," the flight director murmured.

Alex stared carefully at Ray's eyes: they didn't look all that distraught. Reporters were shouting questions, but somehow they didn't reach Alex, remaining just a muffled backdrop against which the real drama played out.

After a moment Gena pulled away from Ray, as if a little embarrassed by his embrace . She reached out for Andy, who'd stepped back from the two of them to stand alone and uncomforted in his shock and grief.

"Oh, Andy, oh baby...I'm so sorry," Gena cried.

With his wife removed from the man's embrace, Alex was able get a visual on Ray's crotch, where he discovered there was a small but noticeable bulge. His eyes narrowed with growing comprehension. Just then Andy began to lash out in anger as he'd done before. This time, however, Alex heard his words a little differently, as his understanding of the situation grew.

"He got exactly what he wanted, didn't he? It's all he ever wanted!" the boy screamed.

...At Ray, Alex now realized.

And as Andy looked up angrily at Ray; mimicking him in a mocking voice partly choked by tears, the light dawned on Alex at last.

"Don't worry, son," Andy parodied the commander, "you haven't really lost a father, you've gained a national hero! Well, you're right..."

"It's not me he's angry at," Alex said aloud, more to himself than to Uriel, "it's Ray! He blames Ray and..."

Andy turned back in fury on his mother. "...except I lost my father a long time ago, didn't I, Mom? Didn't I!!"

"...and his mother for what happened to me," Alex finished.

"Partly," Uriel conceded.

Andy stormed out, disappearing as he left the rear of the Mission Control room. Alex watched him go, saddened by the boy's pain. Gena followed her son out a moment later, escorted by a uniformed soldier.

Alex turned to Uriel, outraged. "She's been fucking Petersen, hasn't she! That old asshole, no wonder he picked me for this mission!"

"That's only partly true," Uriel corrected, coming down to the stage.

But Alex wasn't hearing him. "Andy must have known about it," he continued to fume, "poor little guy."

Uriel sighed, looking past the stage, through the holographic images of Alex's life props—the scene being played for the audience of One—to the holographic universe that filled the reaches of imagination beyond. He stared at the panoply of stars without thought or emotion, as empty as the space that lay between all those minute particles of mattergy which create the appearance of time within that infinite realm. He was almost, but not quite, bored.

* * *

32. Just Dinner

GENA STOOD UNDER the shower for longer than was environmentally correct, savoring the caress of warm water that drummed against her skin, the lingering fragrance of her bath oils and shampoo.

She felt oddly exhilarated.

"Silly," she chastised herself, abruptly turning off the water and grabbing a towel. "It's just dinner."

She dried herself roughly, then relented and used the expensive perfumed lotion she'd just bought, running her slick hands over feet and thighs, belly and breasts, and on up around her neck. She used the blow dryer to style her hair, then applied makeup carefully, just enough to enhance the exotic tilt of her eyes, the high cheekbones and perfectly shaped mouth.

She dressed her body in a soft blue cashmere sweater that clung against her small breasts like touch; tight jeans that showed off her flat stomach and rounded butt. Gena turned back and forth to admire the effect in the full length mirrored closet doors, then shook her head.

"Just dinner," she reminded herself again, and hurried into the kitchen to prepare it.

Andy was spending the night at Bobby Austin's house, three miles away. She'd dropped him off an hour earlier, brushing aside his concerns.

"Andy, I'm just repaying Colonel Petersen for taking us out for steaks last month...the night your dad took off from the space station for Europa?"

"So, why not just send him a thank-you card?"

"Because this is the way it's done among adults," she'd chided, pulling up in front of Bobby's house. "Now, give me a kiss." She'd put out her cheek, and he'd dutifully pecked it. "I'll pick you up tomorrow afternoon, okay? And wear your helmet skateboarding!"

He'd simply waved in acknowledgement and turned away. Biting her lip, she'd watched him trudge up the walk, skateboard and helmet under one arm, backpack slung over the

opposite shoulder; then she'd returned to the house to shower and change.

At precisely seven-thirty p.m. the doorbell rang.

Gena smiled at the military training behind such promptness and opened the door. Ray looked at once strong and masculine, and tenderly boyish, as he stood there taking her in. He held a bottle of wine in one hand, a bouquet of spring flowers in the other.

"Am I early?" he asked.

"Right on time," she laughed, taking his arm and drawing him inside.

Dinner was a mixture of small talk and subtle sexual innuendo, of indirect mutual flirtation coupled with the careful avoidance of any mention of Alex or his mission. They'd finished the wine Ray brought with their dinner, so Gena produced an excellent brandy for dessert, and they went into the living room to enjoy it. Ray wandered over to the CD collection while Gena made herself comfortable on the couch.

"You mind if I put some of these on?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Sure, anything you like," she smiled, relaxing back onto the sofa and crossing her legs.

A moment later the sultry voice of a female jazz singer filled the room. Ray walked over to where Gena sat and reached for her hand.

"Dance?" he suggested.

This was almost too close for fantasy. Her heart scurried into a nervous palpitation, her palms felt suddenly clammy, and she wiped them surreptitiously on the couch as she got up. "Oh, okay," she said, looking doubtful.

"Don't worry," he laughed, "it's just a dance." He held her out from him in an old-fashioned posture. "Look right here," he ordered, pointing to his eyes.

"W-what?"

"Just keep your eyes on mine; our feet will do the rest."

It was magical, that dance. Joined at the eye, they were perfectly in tune with every step, more connected than if they'd been body-pressed together. And it was intoxicatingly sensual. The next dance he did pull her close, reaching around her waist and drawing her into him, so that she nestled against his chest and, after a moment, closed her eyes, sighing.

As the CD played on, one romantic bluesy song after the other, she could feel the heat of their bodies growing. Not stopping the movements of the dance, he let go of her back, and reached around with that hand to tilt her lovely face up to his. Bending forward, he kissed her long and deep as they swayed back and forth in time to the music, swaying in the darkened living room. She could feel his hardness press up against her, a tantalizing nudge from the distance between them. He kept his mouth on hers as his hand returned to her back and then slid slowly down to her buttocks, pushing her into his erection a little harder.

Somewhere in all of this a little voice from the left side of her brain sniped, "You know he's just like Alex, don't you?"

But the primal part told it to shut the fuck up and just keep kissing.

All of a sudden the front door opened, and Andy stood in the entry hall looking at them with disgust.

Gena jumped back from Ray, out of the fire. "Andy! I thought you were spending the night?!"

"Bobby got sick. I walked home," he said, then went to his room and slammed the door.

"I, I think I'd better be going," Ray said.

"Uh, yeah," Gena agreed, flustered and embarrassed. She walked him to the front door, where he paused, his brow creased in concern.

"You, you'll talk to the boy about this, won't you? Make sure he—"

"Don't worry, Ray; I'll make sure he doesn't tell anyone," she nodded. "Good night."

She closed the door behind him, leaning her head against it for a minute. Then she went to talk to Andy.

* * *

33. So, Now What?

URIEL USED HIS hand device to erase the images on the stage, one by one. It looked oddly unidimensional with nothing on it, a void without light or form.

"So, now what?" Uriel asked Alex.

"Shit, I don't know. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that I decide not to relive my old life. Let's say I want a different role this time. What then?"

Uriel shrugged. "You pick a new one."

"But how do I go about selecting? How do I get to see my choices?"

"Your choices?" Uriel smiled. "You want a demonstration?"

"A free demo? You mean, try one out, no strings?"

"A vignette," Uriel nodded.

"Sure, hell yeah. I mean, if it's going to be my life...maybe I ought to take it for a little spin first."

"Fine," Uriel said. "Pick a country."

On the movie screen at the front of the auditorium, a geopolitical map of the world appeared.

"This doesn't count, right? It's just a demo?"

"Just a demo."

"So, I'm not going to get stuck into something I don't want?"

"I'm not a used car salesman, Alex...and I don't work on commission," Uriel said. "Pick...please."

"Okay, then, how about...France?"

"Great," said Uriel, pushing a button.

The map on the screen zoomed in on France.

"City?" Uriel asked.

"Paris, I guess...I don't really know France."

The image on the movie screen zoomed in closer, becoming a video aerial view of the city of lights at night. It was stunningly beautiful, a treasure chest overflowing with sparkling multicolored jewels strung like necklaces along the boulevards, the photography so clear it was almost three dimensional.

"Date?" Uriel asked.

"What about in the future? Can I pick something in the future?"

"By definition, the future hasn't happened yet. It is being created moment to moment. You would have to create it before you could enter it, and once created – even in your imagination – it becomes the past."

"So no future I guess."

"Only if you choose to go into a total unknown role and create it as you go, but it's nothing you can revisit now."

"Oh okay, so let's say early 1940's; that was an interesting time in Paris, I understand."

The lights suddenly go out on the video map. Air raid sirens split the air and quell the soft laughter of romance; muffled explosions and flares of light can be seen in the distant countryside beyond the city's perimeter.

"Sex?" Uriel asked.

"Not just yet," Alex responded.

"I meant, do you want to be a male or a female?"

"Oh. Well, I've always thought being a hermaphrodite would be fun. But," he amended, seeing Uriel's expression, "let's go with the male."

"Occupation?"

"Pilot... No, wait, then I should be British, shouldn't I? RAF and all that. Besides, that's too much like what I am now... How about a French whore?" he grinned. "Female."

The darkened city on the movie screen at the front of the auditorium winked out altogether, the screen itself rolled up and the stage lights behind it came on, revealing a large, sparsely furnished room.

It was night, and the barren, dingy room was lit only by a single dim light bulb suspended from the ceiling. The two windows in the room were both covered by dark cloth. There were five women and eight men in the room, all but one in various states of repose, either leaning against the wall, sitting on the floor, or straddling one of the wooden chairs that, along with a table on which maps and various blueprints were strewn, and a solitary dirty mattress in the corner, were the room's only furnishings.

A tall, unkempt man in his late thirties, apparently the leader, paced with primal energy as he gave out the night's assignments to the women. The other men looked on and occasionally looked out, peeking through window coverings and cracked doors for any signs of incipient trouble.

Alex leaned forward in his seat, intrigued.

"Francine, you'll act as lookout for Claude and Etienne while they place the bombs, oui?" the leader said.

Francine, a gaunt and unattractive woman in her late thirties nodded soberly. "Oui. Louis."

The leader now turned to a serious-looking young woman in her mid-twenties. There was a certain fondness in his eyes when he spoke to her, his voice just a little gentler.

"Monique, you majored in chemistry in college before the war, right? So you must work with Alexandre and Paul to make the bombs. And don't blow off any pretty little fingers, okay?"

Monique pursed her lips, nodded, then looked over at Alexandre and Paul, raising a brow.

Louis now turned to a plump, homely girl in her late teens, sighing as he contemplated her usefulness.

"Okay," he said finally, "Marie, you're to go out into the community and try to scrounge us the supplies we need, not for making the bombs, but food, water...a little wine would be nice."

Marie immediately objected, her voice a nasal whine. "I don't know what to get, and everything is rationed!"

The leader shot an exasperated look to one of the other men, who shrugged. He had plans for Marie on the mattress, later.

Louis took a deep breath, opting for patience over scorn

.

"Use your ingenuity, Marie. Steal. We'll give you a list. And I'll put Eduoard on it as well. Between the two of you, you should manage. You know how to use a gun?"

She shook her head. He tossed her one from the table.

"Well, you'd better learn," he advised. "When we set off the bombs in front of the embassy, you're going to join Eduoard, Eugene, and Henri in providing cover fire for our escape."

"This is the French resistance, isn't it?" Alex whispered excitedly to Uriel, as if the holograms on the stage could hear him.

The leader had now turned his attention to the remaining two women in the room. Reclining casually in a chair was Millicent, a sexy-looking woman in her early thirties. Standing near her was Emilie, a very attractive girl of around twenty, who'd just pulled a revolver from the waistband of her skirt and was waving it excitedly at the leader.

"I can shoot, Louis! I have expert marksman rating. My father taught me."

"And I'm sure he taught you well," Louis smiled, "but the resistance movement needs your special talents elsewhere."

"Where?" the girl asked.

"Ask Millicent, she knows."

Millicent smiled, crossing her legs to expose an expanse of luscious thigh.

"In the Embassies, the Chateaux, the hotel ballrooms...on the arms of German Generals and statesmen, of course."

"Doing what?" Emilie asked suspiciously.

"Don't be naive, Cherie," Millicent laughed. "What do you think? Dancing, charming...seducing."

Emilie whirled toward the leader, her hazel eyes aflame.

"Damn it, Louis; I'm a soldier, not a whore!"

"Well, we happen to need a whore, sweet Emilie," he told her, coming over to put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. "No, that's not quite true, either. What we need is information. Intelligence. And if it takes a whore to get it, then a whore is what we need."

"But Louis!"

"Look, sweetheart, it's my duty to assign my soldiers appropriately, to make the best use of their assets. Now, obviously no one of any consequence would want to fuck Marie here—sorry, Marie, no offense—"

Marie glanced up coldly, nodded, and went back to examining her new revolver with

increased interest—

"or Francine, for that matter," he continued.

Francine licked her two fingers and made a pass at her crotch, unsmiling. "But you and Milli, you two could unzip the flies—and loosen the lips—of half the German army with just a wink."

By now he'd moved up very close to Emilie: pressing the sexual tension between them.

"Then I'll wink," she told him, looking up into his face.

He reached under her short black skirt and grabbed what he found there.

"This pussy could free France, you know that? Be thankful God gave you such a nice one."

Emilie raised her own pistol and put it against his temple with a little smile.

"Can I blow their heads off afterward?" she asked sweetly.

Louis stepped back, taking his hands off her crotch and shoulder, and raising them in the air, laughing.

"But of course, Cherie. Their heads, their balls..."

* * *

Alex turned to Uriel, grinning, "I like her, she's...interesting."

"Good, great! So you want this role, then?"

"Hold on, now," Alex protested. "I didn't say that! I'd have to go in as an infant, right?"

"Zygote, actually..."

"So, there's a whole boring childhood to go through before I'd get to this part," Alex pointed out.

"You didn't enjoy your childhood?! Odd, most people look back on that period as the best time of their life!"

"Selective memory," said Alex. "Can I see a small portion of it, the girl Emilie's childhood?"

"Sure, why not," Uriel agreed, pushing a few buttons on his control device.

The images on the stage flicked off and new images replaced them. The shabby apartment was now the enormous back yard of a large private estate. It was a warm spring day, fresh after recent rains which had left the grass moist with clinging droplets of water, the tree leaves shimmering in the sun. There was an elaborate children's birthday party going on, complete with clown, pony and a small musical carousel.

Little Emilie, who now was about 8 years old, was standing in a long line for the pony, waiting her turn for a ride around the garden. She shifted from foot to foot impatiently, looking out of sorts and uncomfortable in her white cotton dress with its shirred bodice and lace-embroidered collar. She'd finally reached the front of the line, and was about to climb up into the sidesaddle when the birthday girl came running up in a frothy pink cloud of organdy and self-importance.

"My turn, my turn!" the little girl cried, trying to pull Emilie away.

"No it's not," said Emilie, straight-arming her. "I've been waiting in line half an hour for this!"

She climbed up into the saddle, staring down at the birthday girl defiantly.

"Well it's my party, so I get to ride whenever I please," the birthday girl informed her, hands on her hips. "Now you get down from there!"

Alex, watching this exchange from his seat in the auditorium, mouthed the word "No" at the same time as Little Emilie down on the stage said it.

"No!"

"You get down or I'll make you get down!" the birthday girl ordered, her French braids flying back in anger. She grabbed Emilie's feet and began pulling on her. As Emilie kicked outward, trying to free her feet from the other girl's grip, her hard-soled shoe accidentally struck the pony in the flanks. This was too much for the pretty little Welsh mare, which began to spin in circles, bucking and kicking, with Emilie hanging on for dear life. She quickly lost her grip and flew off into a pile of mud and fresh manure at the outskirts of the flower garden, where she sat crying in rage, her white dress ruined, as the pony ran off across the lawn with its handler giving chase.

"Now see what you've done!" the birthday girl complained, looking down at her. "I'll just have to ride my carousel instead."

As she stomped off in the direction of the carousel, Emilie got to her feet, looking after the girl in sputtering fury.

"Watch!" Alex whispered to Uriel. "The carousel's going to break down."

Uriel said nothing, but looked over at him with mild surprise.

A moment later, just after the birthday girl had displaced another guest to take the favored steed, there was a terrible grinding noise, and the carousel came to a shuddering stop. This was followed almost immediately by a loud cracking sound, whereupon the carousel listed sharply to one side, dumping the birthday girl in her pink organdy dress face first onto the muddy ground. Its organ music slowly faded, supplanted by the birthday girl's shrieks of outrage, the sound of Emilie's distant laughter.

Up in the auditorium, Alex turned to Uriel, puzzled.

"How did I know that was going to happen? This whole scene seems vaguely familiar. Have I played this role before?"

"It's possible."

"Well have I or haven't I? You must know."

"There's billions of roles," Uriel hedged. "I can't remember them all. I'd have to go look in your file."

"I want to see my last life again," Alex said suddenly.

"What for? We've played it to death...no pun intended."

"I need to check something. Go to Mission Control, a little before the trouble started." He looked at Uriel, adding, "Please."

"As you wish."

Down on the stage the operations room at Mission Control once more reappeared Gena and Andy could be seen through the glass wall of the visitors' gallery, along with numerous other people and a bank of reporters and news cameras.

Colonel Petersen stood in front of this viewing area on the Mission Ops floor. He was giving the reporters a rundown of what was going on in the space flight at that moment. As he talked Alex left his seat in the auditorium and went down onto the stage.

"The Europa One is now on its final approach," Petersen told the news crews. "Commander McCormick will begin firing the retrorockets in just about sixty seconds. This is necessary to slow his approach velocity from approximately 32 thousand miles per hour to less than 300. He will then use his right and left thrusters to guide him gently to the Jovian moon's surface."

Alex walked up into the visitors' gallery, and took a place near his wife and son. He glanced over at a reporter standing nearby, and found himself hearing this reporter's question before it was even spoken.

"Approximately how long should that take, General?" Alex said aloud, just before the reporter spoke.

"Approximately how long should that take, General?" the reporter asked.

"That's Colonel Petersen," Alex said softly, "and we expect a soft landing on Europa in approximately fifteen minutes."

"That's Colonel Petersen," the flight director echoed, "and we expect a soft landing on Europa in approximately fifteen minutes."

Alex stared up into the darkened auditorium directly at Uriel, as he said the next lines in exact synch with the flight director's words.

"...provided there are no unforeseen circumstances."

"...provided there are no unforeseen circumstances."

Alex then gave the reporter's next question not only at the same time as the newsman, but mimicking as well his exact tone of voice and inflection.

"What kind of unforeseen circumstances, Colonel?"

"What kind of unforeseen circumstances, Colonel?"

Once more, smiling eerily, he gave a perfect simulcast of the colonel's sardonic response.

"We don't know, son...that's why they're called unforeseen."

"We don't know, son....that's why they're called unforeseen."

"Now, if you'll excuse me," the flight director went on, "I've got a spaceship to land."

"But sir, hasn't it already landed?"

"But sir, hasn't it already landed?"

Alex turned away from the scene and stepped forward to the edge of the stage, calling up to Uriel. "If I wasn't there, how did I know exactly what they were going to say?"

Uriel hesitated, looking a little uncomfortable.

"Well?" Alex challenged.

"Well, you're very familiar with all aspects of the mission. And you've served as public relations liaison for Colonel Petersen on several previous space flights, so perhaps you just

anticipated—"

"Word for word?" Alex interrupted. "I don't think so."

At that moment, on the stage behind him, red lights began to flash, alarms to whoop.

Alex turned.

Up in the visitors' gallery, Gena and Andy sat forward on the edges of their seats. Andy started to rise, but Gena pulled him back down, conscious of the reporters' scrutiny. Alex walked back onto the stage, as he approached saying exactly what Andy said next.

"What is it, Mom? What's happening to Dad?!"

"What is it, Mom? What's happening to Dad?!"

And he responded synchronously with Gena, his voice an exact copy of her voice.

"Shhh, sit...getting hysterical won't help!"

"Shhh, sit...getting hysterical won't help."

Now again with Andy.

"But...he's my dad!"

"But...he's my dad!"

As tears streamed down Andy's face, Alex reached up to touch his own, surprised to find it wet with tears as well. He turned toward Uriel in sudden agitation.

"Turn it off, God damn it! Turn it off!"

Uriel complied; the stage went instantly black and quiet.

Alex stormed back up the aisle towards him.

"What the hell is this?!" he raged.

"Perhaps you need a little more time?"

"Fuck time! Perhaps I need a little more information... I want to see more lives. Down here. Now!"

"Whose?" Uriel inquired placidly.

"I don't know; it doesn't matter! Hitler, show me a little Hitler."

The stage instantly brightened. On it was the complete hologram of a Nazi war office, its walls covered with large maps, photos of Hitler and several of his generals, and posters bearing the infamous crooked cross.

Alex stood beside Uriel, looking down on the stage with a strange expression on his face, both distant and intense, uncertain and strangely knowing.

Hitler himself sat behind a desk covered with war maps and reports. Two of his war ministers stood before the desk. They were speaking in German, yet Alex found he was able to translate everything the men said, even though he'd never spoken the language in his life.

"Es kostet uns einen Tag 12 Millionen Deustchmarks, um sie nur am Leben zu erhalten," the first minister said to Hitler.

"It costs us 12 million Deustchmarks a day just to keep them alive," Alex translated, looking at Uriel.

"Was über der freien Arbeit, die sie bereitstellen?" Hitler responded. "Dies sollte uns über die Kosten für ihr Essen und Schutz Gewinn bringen."

"What about the free labor they provide?" Alex repeated in English. "This was supposed to bring us profit above the cost of their food and shelter."

Now Alex began to speak simultaneously with the German speakers, he in English, the ministers and Hitler in German.

" _Die meisten sind zu schwach, um ihre Eingeweide geschweige denn Maschinerie, zu kontrollieren,"_ said the second minister.

"Most are too weak to control their bowels, let alone machinery," Alex said at the same moment.

" _Schlagen Sie vor?"_ asked Hitler.

"You suggest?" echoed Alex with a shudder, his throat beginning to tighten.

" _Deutschland kann sie, Fuhrer, sich nicht mehr leisten. In der Krieg wird verloren werden ihr verträgt,"_ the first minister said coldly.

"Germany cannot afford them anymore, Fuhrer. The war will be lost in their stomachs," said Alex, tears welling in his eyes.

" _Und damit der Reichland,"_ added the second minister.

"And with it the Reichland."

" _Machen Sie das, was Sie müssen, dann_ ," said Hitler, turning away.

"Then do what you must," mimicked Alex, the tears now overflowing.

Alex looked up towards Uriel, wiping at his face.

"We seemed to have just solved the 'Jewish Problem,'" he said, "and no, I never studied German...not in this life. Give me a scene from Joan of Arc."

He walked away from Uriel, heading down to the stage. As he approached, the stage changed to the stark bedroom of a simple peasant hut. It was night outside. A small candle provided the only light, flickering its pale warmth gently upon the face of a young girl, who knelt on the dirt floor praying quietly in French. Alex walked onto the stage and over to stand directly in front of the girl.

"Oh mon Dieu," the girl prayed in French, "s'il vous plait montrez-moi les thy veulent, s'il vous plaît donnez-moi un oh de la vision Jésus miséricordieux. Qu'est-ce que je ferai?"

She raised her eyes to where Alex stood before her, and reacted as if she was able to see him, or perhaps what she thought was a Divine Vision.

"Oh mon seigneur et sauveur! Merci," she cried.

Alex now began to speak to her in French, his voice strangely resonant.

"Vous partirez le matin, mener l'armée française contre les Anglais à Paris."

He then responded word for word in synchronicity with Joan:

"Oui mon seigneur, je ferai comme vous instruisez, et conduisez l'anglais détesté de Paris. Merci pour me laisser vous servir."

"Oui mon seigneur, je ferai comme vous instruisez, et conduisez l'anglais détesté de Paris. Merci pour me laisser vous servir."

He turned to Uriel, speaking once more in English: "She just thanked me for sending her to fight the English, and ultimately for her death...in pretty good French, huh? How about JFK? In the car, Dallas?"

This time Uriel pushed a button to make the movie screen roll back down. On it now played the familiar film of John Fitzgerald Kennedy riding in the open limousine through the streets of Dallas that fateful day in November of '63.

"No," Alex protested, "I want the hologram; I want to be able to go inside the scene."

"You can," Uriel told him. "Go... Closer."

Alex walked up to the screen, and as he did it became three dimensional. He looked back over his shoulder at Uriel, and then stepped right through the screen and into the film itself. He was now in the limousine, seated between the driver and the secret service agent in the front seat. Alex turned to look over his shoulder.

JFK sat on the right side of the rear seat, Jackie on the left; and Governor Connally and his wife occupied the middle seats in the limousine.

Jackie wore her famous fuzzy pink wool suit and matching pillbox hat, which she clutched to her head while waving at the crowd. She was also chewing Jack out between her smilingly clenched teeth and Alex inherently knew and matched her every word, in perfect synch and with chilling mimicry.

"Damn it, Jack, the wind is destroying my coif!" Alex/Jackie said. "Why the hell did you insist on an open convertible anyway, you're giving the secret service fits!"

Alex looked at John, opening his mouth to respond in time with the president, his accent, pitch and intonation perfect.

"That's why we have personal hairdressers on staff for you. Now please just shut up and wave."

She rolled her eyes, then turned to wave at the crowd on her left.

A moment later, something that sounded like a pair of firecrackers went off near Jackie's ear, and she was just about to complain to Jack about the rudeness of these Texans when she heard a terrible sound. She turned, and screamed.

Alex screamed.

Jack was bent over slightly, clutching his throat. Governor Connally had pitched forward, grabbing at his back.

A confusion of noise erupted in Alex's head, and came out of his mouth as a babble of voices.

"Oh my God!" Jackie/Alex shrieked.

"My throat," John/Alex moaned.

"My back, what the hell," the Texas Governor/Alex drawled.

A second later a third shot hit JFK in a splinter of bone and gurgle of flesh, jerking his head back and sending a hunk of it flying outward. Alex felt himself sucked inside of Kennedy's mind, speaking aloud in JFK's voice as the President slumped helplessly to one side.

"What the hell! What the hell! Oh no...no, not this, not now!" Jack's internal voice came out of Alex's mouth.

Now a cacophony exploded inside Alex's mind: four different voices were screaming and babbling, barking orders and pleading for help. And Alex's own voice mimicked all these speakers at the same time, or as near to simultaneous as was humanly possible, the eight conflicting voices speaking almost at the same moment, their voices overlaying in a chaos of confusion and cross emotions that somehow achieved a horrible pattern and harmony.

"Oh my God. Oh my God, they've shot him, they've shot Jack.... That's a piece of his head back there," the Alex and Jackie voices screamed together.

"Get down, Mrs. Kennedy! Get down!" the Alex and secret service agent yelled at her.

"My God, I've been hit! I'm shot... Somebody, help me over here! The Governor of Texas has been shot!" the Alex and Connally voices demanded.

"I have to get that piece of his head so the doctors can put it back on," the Alex and Jackie voices shrieked hysterically, the latter speaker climbing over the back seat and down the trunk. "No, stop the car he needs his head... Let go of my arm, you idiot, his head's back there!" she and Alex screamed at the driver and secret service agent.

"Get us the hell outta here!" Alex and the secret service agent yelled at the driver. "Where's the nearest hospital!"

Suddenly the chaos of speaking in all these voices at once, of hearing all the thoughts and feeling all the disparate emotions at the same time, was too much for Alex. He snapped,

"SHUT IT OFF!!"

* * *

34. Awakening 2

The limousine disappeared, leaving Alex standing in front of the blank innocuous-looking movie screen. He buried his face in his hands, and stood like that in silence for several minutes. Uriel came down to stand close beside him, wearing a look of concern. Finally Alex raised his gaze to Uriel, his expression one of horror and dawning realization.

"Why did I know everything everyone was saying?"

"This can be explained," Uriel answered nervously.

"And feel everything everyone was feeling?" Alex continued.

"It's, uh..." Uriel stammered.

"They were all me! They were, weren't they?!"

"Now don't jump to conclusions..."

Alex looked down, licking his lips. "I was playing every single role simultaneously."

"Well, almost simultaneously...that doesn't usually happen."

"Why weren't there any other players in these roles?"

"There...just...weren't," Uriel admitted.

"So, I played everyone?"

"Yes."

Alex stood there a moment, trying to take this in. He couldn't.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" he said, looking back up at Uriel. "Where was everybody else in all these roles I've been seeing, and playing?"

"Who do you mean?"

"Everyone! All the other souls, the beings, the spiritual entities...the dead guys, you know!? Whatever you want to call us. Those that keep playing all these life roles again and again, like you said."

"Don't...don't ask this, please."

"Why not? Where are they!"

"Just pick a role, Alex," Uriel pleaded. "Play the game...you want to be the French whore?"

"Where - are - all - the - others?! Answer me!"

Uriel hesitated, looking very sad, very uncertain. Then he answered in a low voice, barely above a whisper. "There are no others."

"What? What did you say?"

"I said there are no others," Uriel repeated a little more firmly.

"No others," Alex said. "What do you mean, 'no others'?"

Uriel looked at him levelly. "There's only you."

"What?!"

"Only you," Uriel said again.

"Me." Alex stared at him. "What do you mean, only me?"

"There is just one being, one...eternal entity. You."

"No." Alex said, shaking his head.

"You," Uriel affirmed. "You play all the roles, all the time."

"I can't. I won't!" He was looking at Uriel, but he spoke as if the argument was with himself. "How can that be? It's not possible, it goes against all natural laws. You can't be in two places at the same time, let alone six billion—"

"Infinity..." Uriel reminded him gently.

"Fuck infinity!" Alex yelled, turning on the robed man in rage. "Two things can't occupy the same place at the same time! Period."

" Remember Pi?" Uriel suggested.

"Off subject, Uriel," Alex said, trying to compose himself, to regain self-control. "Just answer this one question: If I am the only player, how do I keep any degree of separation between the different identities I'm playing, so they don't all just collapse into one?"

"Like almost happened with the JFK incident?" Uriel smiled gently. "To prevent that very thing, pi was invented. The _number_ pi. Think, Alex, think back to the academy. You had an inkling of the truth even then."

Alex thought.

* * *

35. The Pi Factor

An Air Force officer with a doctorate in astrophysics stood at a podium in the front of a small auditorium, lecturing to a full audience of academy cadets. The portable blackboard nearby was filled with a scribble of almost indecipherable equations, today's subject the conflicting theories of a linear versus a circular universe. In one hand he held a thin, flexible fiberglass rod which he was using to demonstrate his points.

"So, if the theories of a closed universe prevail, then—in contrast to a linear plane of infinite distance—"

He held the rod in front of him in one hand, running his other hand along it from one end to the other to illustrate the concept of a linear plane.

"...space may be viewed instead as a curved space/time continuum..."

He bent the flexible rod into a circle as he said this, fastening its ends together with a plastic clasp.

"...wherein, though light energy and other objects may travel along the surface of this curve in the usual continuous ongoing sequence of events we call time..."

He ran his hand along the outside of a section of the arc.

"...it may also be possible for things to leap across the arcs of this curved continuum."

He demonstrated this concept with his hand, jumping from one point on the circle straight across to another.

"Such 'jumps' might thus shorten the time needed to travel between two distant points in space along this circle significantly. As a matter of fact, if this area inside the circular universe is considered to be a void of non-time and non-space, then it's theoretically possible to bend our space in a way to make two distant points meet..."

He demonstrated this last idea by pinching together two parts of the flexible circular rod.

"...and make the journey nearly instantaneous."

Alex, who was seated three or four rows up from the front of the room, slowly raised his hand.

"Professor?"

The professor nodded at him and, a little self-consciously, he rose.

"What about the pi factor?" Alex said.

"What about it, cadet? You have the floor."

"Well, if pi is integral to the measurement of all circular objects, where pi times the diameter gives you the circumference, pi times the radius squared gives you the area, and four-thirds pi radius to the third—"

"Equals the volume of a sphere," the professor interrupted impatiently. "Yes, yes, we've all taken elementary geometry. Get on with it please, what is your point?"

Some of the other cadets snickered, a few whispered to each other behind the shield of their hands.

"My point is," Alex licked his lips, "that pi is an infinite number: it never ends, it never closes, it just gets smaller and smaller."

"So?"

"So, doesn't that prove - mathematically at least - that a circle never truly closes either, that it just spirals infinitesimally closer and closer? And wouldn't your circular universe actually be as infinite as a linear one in that case? Think about it: even though this pseudo circular universe can encompass great areas outside of time and space across which instantaneous travel, possibly even time travel, might occur, it still just goes on and on and on without a beginning or end!

The professor hesitated for a moment, taken aback by the depth of this observation; then opted for an attitude of cynical authority.

"This is astrophysics, Cadet, not metaphysics. I suggest you take that issue up with the chaplain."

Everyone laughed, as Alex blushed furiously and sunk back down into his seat.

* * *

"Pi," Alex said to Uriel, remembering.

"An infinite, unending number...and it's used to determine..."

"The dimensions of anything circular, like the orbit of a moon around a planet, or an electron around its atomic nucleus. The shape and movement of virtually everything in this universe is built on a circular pattern, isn't it?"

Uriel nodded. "As is the universe itself. But, as you intuited back in college, a circle never truly closes, it just approximates closure."

"So you have an approximately circular universe that goes on for infinity with no closure... And thus no overlaps in time," Alex realized. "That's what makes it possible for me to play any number of roles at the same time without overlap?"

"Had a linear universe been conceived, such leaps back and forth across time wouldn't be possible," Uriel explained. "Even though finite lifetimes might still be meaningless against infinity, time itself would always be moving forward. But in a circular universe time perpetually repeats itself."

"So past, present and future are equally accessible," Alex finished the thought. "But if you played different life roles in the same exact segment of time, you might get an overlap of their sensory perceptions..."

"Like feedback from a mike," Uriel nodded. "Pi is the little glitch in our circular universe, the imperfect infinity which creates this tiny degree of separation—infinitely small, growing ever smaller, and yet able to hold everything in its place and keep it from becoming unity again."

"Again?" Alex grabbed at the meaning. "So there was a beginning?"

"There was to this particular game, this holographic universe...not to you."

"And when will it end?"

"When pi ends."

"But it's an infinite number, it goes on forever."

"If you say so."

Alex sat down in one of the chairs of the auditorium, resting his chin in his hands. He stared at the floor a long time, before asking, "And you, who exactly are you?"

"You. A part of you... but separate too."

It wasn't the answer he wanted. Maybe he'd misunderstood.

"A part of me?" he questioned. "But separate? Then you mean there's us, you and me?"

"No, just you, ultimately," Uriel responded. " I'm the one running the projector."

"So you're me? I'm playing you right now? As well as playing me Alex? Or, am I you playing you playing me?"

Alex laid his head back in the chair, and began to laugh. "That means I'm talking to myself? I'm talking to myself! That's absolutely fuckin' psycho!!"

Suddenly laughter filled him like a nuclear explosion, every cell, every pore, every atom upended and turned inside out before disappearing into the brilliance of realization. His face opened in a howl of laughter, ecstatic in some unnamed, indescribable and senseless sense of pure joy that mushroomed out to fill a vast infinity that was only as large as he.

He stopped laughing after a while, his face slowly becoming grave again. He turned to look up at Uriel with an expression of inestimable sadness.

"Then I'm really...alone? I'm all alone?"

"Well, technically, as far as the game goes. Alone...yes."

"I'm totally alone," Alex said in bewilderment. "There's just me, just me in this whole damn universe, only me. Alone."

"In this holographic universe. It's not that big, really. But it is all there is. You're all there is."

"So, I'm...God?"

"In a manner of speaking," Uriel said. "Do you feel like God?"

"Not particularly. But maybe this is how God feels."

There was a long silence.

Alex looked over at Uriel doubtfully. "So, you're me? You're sure?"

Uriel nodded.

"Then that means you're God too? And Andy? My little Andy is God? Wait a minute, that means I was little Andy?!"

"Yes. And Gena as well," Uriel allowed.

"So, let me get this straight," Alex said. "I, as Alex, made myself, as Andy, miss my own Little League playoffs?!"

"Yes," Uriel nodded.

"And I, as Andy, resented my Alex self for that?" He began to smile. "Then I, as Gena, betrayed myself as Alex, by fucking myself as Ray Petersen!!"

"Uh, yes. Almost, anyway," Uriel agreed.

"And I as James Earl Ray shot myself as Reverend Martin Luther King, simultaneously making myself into one of the most beloved national martyrs and most despised racial bigots in U.S. history!"

Alex had begun to laugh again, edging toward hysteria. Then he caught himself on a nail of hope and stopped abruptly, to ask, "What about my dad?"

"Your dad?" Uriel responded. "What do you think?"

* * *

Instantly Alex found himself sitting in a straight-backed chair, flanked on either side by small but brutal men whose muscle—all they needed—was size forty-four magnum, worn just below their small dead hearts. At the moment one of these weapons was pressed up against the base of Alex's skull, getting his full attention.

The man he faced behind the desk looked a little softer than his bodyguards; he was smiling at Alex, but his eyes were snake-cold. There was another man standing on his right side that Alex recognized from an earlier briefing, an FBI agent in even deeper than he.

"What makes you think—" Alex protested, his palms wet against his blue-jeaned knees.

"Cayate!" the man at the desk ordered. "Lemme give you some advice, cabron. When you're swimming in a cesspool, up to your neck in shit, keep your mouth shut. Now, one last time,

who else?"

"I don't know what—"

The jefe pulled out a photograph of Ronnie in his police cadet uniform, taken on graduation day fifteen years earlier.

"You're a fucking cop, cabron...and I know you're not working alone. Give him up, maybe we'll let you go back to that wife and kid of yours...last chance, fucker."

Ronnie looked down at his hands, at the pale band of skin where his wedding ring had been. He could smell the other agent's sweat, feel the cold sick rush of his adrenalin, the acceleration of his heart. He didn't want to see the man's face when he spoke, so he kept his head down.

Slowly, deliberately he said, "There - is - no - other - agent."

The shot exploded through his head. Time slowed. A great fireworks show was being performed in back of his eyes, startling beautiful, despite the sense of dread that accompanied it, the black cloud that rolled through like silent thunder to extinguish the last remnants of light.

* * *

"Oh, Dad," Alex sighed, "even you were just me?"

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"They are all me, aren't they?" he said at last to Uriel.

"Everywhere I look, there I am." He shook his head. "What am going to do?"

"What else is there?" Uriel asked quietly.

Alex broke down at that point, sobbing like a child. "I'm alone. I'm truly all alone. There's only me..." His certainty of this was like an ancient memory, something he'd known all along.

He reached his hand out to touch Uriel's face, but it went right through. The man seemed to be disappearing.

"Don't leave," he begged it. "I'm so lonely. There's no one here, no one else at all."

He spoke urgently to the fading image of Uriel, even though he now realized he was simply talking to himself. "I feel like I miss Gena and Andy, but then I realize I'm simply missing myself." He shook his head, tormented. "What am I to do? What can I do?"

"Nothing," The translucent image of Uriel advised softly, "or anything. You can quit, you know."

"Can I?"

"You figured out the game," Uriel shrugged. "So by your own rules you can now end it. But then it would be as before: Endless, timeless, bored out of our mind, with nothing to do and no one to do it with."

"So I have to go on with this game."

"What else is there, really?" Uriel asked gently

"If...if I go back into my former life right now, will I remember this?"

"Usually you've chosen not to."

"So this has happened before."

"From time to time, so to speak."

There was a long pause, while Alex considered something. "But. This can't be...all. I can't be..."

"What?" Uriel prodded gently fading back in, his features as he did so morphing into a mirror image of Alex. Alex appeared not to notice, his mind elsewhere.

"God. I can't be all there is to God! How fucking disappointing."

Uriel/Alex just raised a brow, waited.

"I always thought He would be so much more."

"Omnipotent?"

"Well, yeah."

"Omnipresent and omniscient?"

"Yeah, yeah." Alex paced and nodded. "All knowing, all powerful..."

"You are...taken all together."

Alex stopped his pacing and looked at the other man sharply. His brows raised in sudden recognition of his mirror image. Then he smiled and shook his head, accepting.

"What do you mean 'taken all together' ?" he asked.

Uriel/Alex shrugged. "It's like you said once, ''The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.'"

"So you're saying, right now I'm just a part?"

"No. Well, yes and no. You are all there is. Just one being. But let's just say you're kind of...scattered."

"All these parts I'm playing..."

"So many parts, so little time." Uriel/Alex managed a wry grin. The expression that might have looked out of place on the old Uriel looked right at home on him now.

"So even now I'm like, not altogether here."

"Right. You are, and you aren't. It's that small degree of separation. Pi?"

"So, like I was saying, what if I go back to my former life...and what if this time I choose to remember all this?"

"Well," Uriel/Alex said, "it would definitely give you the advantage in any game."

"Yes, but then, what if I choose to tell?"

"Tell...what?"

"Tell myself—tell all my selves, all the different roles I'm playing —the Truth."

"The truth?"

"That we're all just one being. That there is only 'I,' and it's the same 'I' in every one of us: the same Self, the same eternal being. The Truth that 'I' am everyone, and that I am thus no one in particular. That no matter which role I think I'm playing, everyone in that game is also 'I' , playing a different role in a slightly altered moment of time, and that I-you-we are still ultimately all alone."

Alex paused a minute thinking, then went on: " And what if I tell my various selves that this is only an imaginary universe of our own creation, a hologram where we—I—can play an endless

game of life against myself in an infinite number of guises, and none of it is real and none of it really matters in the end...that Truth."

"Oh, that Truth."

"And what if I tell this Truth in such a way that all my different life roles, all my different 'I's' suddenly realize we really are the same being? What would happen then?"

"I don't know," Uriel/Alex admitted.

"Have I done it before? Told?"

"No, not really," The other said. "You've talked around it many times, given hints in allegory—as holy prophets, various poets, Stanley Kubrick. But you've never stated it outright, in black and white like this."

"And if I do? What will be the results?"

"I'm not sure, probably some good will come, probably some bad...if either of those terms truly has meaning anymore. You tell me."

Alex contemplated this for a moment before answering. "I think people might stop fighting, stop killing, stop stealing from and betraying each other," he said, "if they realized they were just doing it to themselves."

"You mean you'd stop? That's who this is about. Do you feel like you—all those different yous being played—would suddenly begin to treat everyone else fairly and kindly, give all their alternate views and desires the same respect as your own, since you now realize that they actually are your own? You'd realize that since everyone is, in essence, you, their opinions and desires, hopes and dreams are as important and valid as your own, right?"

Alex looked at him a moment, rubbing his jaw. His lips pursed into a quirky little smirk.

"On the other hand," he mused, "I might just figure that it didn't matter what I did to others, since ultimately I was only doing it to myself...no hurt, no foul."

There was a long thoughtful pause while both considered this.

"It could end up in chaos, couldn't it?" Alex said after a moment. "A horrible reign of selfishness, crime and betrayal...."

"In which case," Uriel/Alex smiled, "you'd simply re-invent organized religion to get yourself back in control."

There was another long pause for contemplation. Then Alex smiled, looking up at his mirror image again "Or maybe I'd start to get some of that old omnipotent omniscience thing going again."

"Anything's possible," the other grinned.

"Might be interesting to find out."

"This was getting a little tedious," Uriel/Alex admitted.

"Hmmm," said Alex.

"If it doesn't work out, you could always put it back the way it was by replaying this moment, and reversing your decision...."

"I could?"

"Well, actually I'm not totally sure about that.... You are God," Uriel/Alex said. "But then again, maybe the way you've set up the rules it would change things irrevocably."

"How is it you've known the truth all this time and never told me about it before?" Alex asked.

"I didn't tell you this time...you figured it out for yourself."

"But why didn't you? Before."

"I'm the Guardian of the game... I run the projector, the lights, the sound; I keep it all there for you. Besides, you told me not to."

He stood in front of Alex, looking directly in his eyes. "It's time to make your decision."

"I know," Alex sighed.

"So, it all comes down to this: Pick a role, go back and play the game, and do your best to forget all this...or find a way to tell all your identities what you now know to be the Truth, and see what happens. Good or bad."

"Yes."

"So? Choose."

"I..." Alex said, then hesitated.

He turned and looked down on the empty canvas of the stage, on the unidimensional void where all his lives had been played out, as if he could see them still.

"I think..." he said, still hesitant, uncertain. "I'll go back as Alex, yes."

Then He began to smile, just a little bending at the corners of his mouth at first.

"And I think I will...."

His smile broadened into a great good-humored grin, bright as the sun and as oblivious of the shadows it threw.

"...tell," he decided. "This should be fun."

THE END

* * *

Epilogue

Uriel/Alex looked on, running the projector while Alex returned into the womb of his virtual mother as she stood at her bathroom mirror putting on lipstick. Only a slight flinch, a little pause in the application process, as if she had a sudden thought that disappeared as quickly as it came, marked the moment.

He then walked outside the compound, looking up from the icy plain of Europa towards the great banded orb of Jupiter. It was beautiful, majestic in its austerity and simplicity, this world. Perfect for its purpose, now served.

With a playful smile the Uriel/Alex lifted his arms, and Jupiter suddenly glowed bright green; another gesture and it turned a blazing yellow.

"Aaah, that's better."

Magically, under the warmth of the new sun, Europa transformed before his eyes into a verdant planet of tropical warmth and life. Where frozen wasteland had been there was now a quiet blue sea resting against a rocky shore, fringed by tall trees and thick green brush. But it was totally silent and motionless.

Uriel/Alex whistled happily and a pulse of golden energy shot forth from his breath, filling and enlivening the scene, readying it for the new game. Waves began to crash on the shore, turning rocks to sand: Birds flew up to fill the air with the sound of their wings and voices, chasing fat buzzing insects. Great whales and fish leapt upward from the ocean's skin and fell back again beneath it in joyous thunderous splashes of white. The trees burst into fragrant bloom, filling the air with their perfume.

In the virtual mother's womb, the new life that was Alex quickened, as cells began to vibrate and divide again and again.

And beyond this magical Europa, beyond the smoke and mirrors where Alex had begun to live out yet another game, encompassing it all the singular Source looked on. He within whom all the rest exist, yet whose viewpoint rests outside them all; He who sees simultaneously all the games played by the One throughout this eternity of endless nows, and who knows and tracks them all without confusion or conflict, dispassionately detached from all outcomes, ever the interested observer; He, the Whole who is so much more than all the parts, He in whom pi finally closes; He the Watcher, simply watched.

# # #
