embark (part 2)

Before leaving Telly’s backyard Drill & Fill dental practice, John and I ask the philosophical dentist a final question about the meaningful life, something he has mentioned more than once today.

“How do you chart a meaningful life?” he repeats back to me.  “Excellent question.  Impossible answer.  There is too much stumbling in life’s dark places and bumping your head on the unexpected to chart in advance what could become a meaningful life.  That said, without pain and darkness, I don’t know that any life would be meaningful.  And as there are different destinations any one life could take, there are many routes to get there.  One’s values can serve as a general compass.”  Telly taps his fedora, wherein we have seen with our own eyes the guiding words penned by his late Alexi.  “But the best direction doesn’t mean squat without the willingness to leave port and embark on the course.”

Got it. 

Or maybe not.

John, Toby and I dawdle on the street in front of Telly’s house, trying to work up the effort to will something or other. 

“What do you want to do the rest of the day?” I ask John.

“I dunno.  What do you want to do?”

Some conversations you never outgrow.

Toby, my feline mini-me, removes from his coat the business card on which Telly wrote the name and address of the one man he says can lay to rest any doubt we have regarding his former identity as a bonafide rocket scientist.  Just one of many jobs our friend has had in his meaningful life.

“Dr. Archibald Hudson,” I read the name out loud.  “What do you think?  It might be fun to check out Telly’s claim that he worked for NASA in the 70’s.”

“You don’t think he did,” John says accusingly.

“I don’t think he was ever a dentist.”

John rubs his cheek behind which a tooth was drilled on less than thirty minutes ago.  “But I can see him mowing medians for the DOT.”  Yet another job in Telly’s long list.   

“But NASA?”

Our rising curiosity fuels the will.

“How close does this Dr. Hudson live?”

I point ten minutes north-west.  

We estimate our tanks are filled with sufficient will to walk at least ten minutes.  And we embark.

The day is hot, and the effort to find Dr. Hudson is soon less rewarding than dawdling and speculating.  About the time our wills are coasting on fumes, we spot a kid mowing his parents’ yard, wearing a Waldo-striped toboggan to keep out the July heat.  Presumably.  He looks up at us, shakes his head and points across the street to the likely address that two men and a cat would be looking for.  We heed his direction and go to the front door of a ranch style house and knock. 

An older gentleman in a white housecoat opens the door and tells the cat on my shoulder he is a very busy man.

“Excuse me.”  I gently redirect the man’s attention.  “Dr. Hudson?  A mutual friend suggested we pay you a visit.”

“Mutual friend?” he blusters.  “I have no mutual friends.”

I show him the funeral home business card. 

“Blasted it all.  Look, if you’re here to sell me another burial policy…” 

“Other side,” I redirect him, and he turns the card over where he finds his name and address handprinted.  “The mutual friend is Telly Bishop,” I tell him.  “Old guy.  Like you.  He says the two of you used to play together with rockets.”

“Telly?”  His tone changes to one of disbelief and wonderment.  “You know Telly?”

“Yeah, we know Telly,” John says, strangely injecting a little pride into his claim. 

“We didn’t believe him when he said he used to work for NASA,” I tell him.  “He said he would show us his old work cap to prove it, but someone shot it into space.  He said you would be the next best thing.”

“The next best thing,” Dr. Hudson repeats after me and smiles cryptically.  “It is one of life’s ironies that we see others come into possession of exquisite treasures without actually doing anything to earn or deserve them, while I invest myself two-hundred percent and get nothing.”

John and I step back from the conversation’s sudden and pouty change of direction.  I have no idea what set the off the doctor, until Toby whispers in my ear with an idea.  

“It just occurred to me,” I tell him, “NASA probably had a whole cache of NASA caps in a closet, or in a box under someone’s desk.  Probably still do.”

“I’m not talking about caps.” 

“Cache-a-NASA caps,” John says and rocks his head. 

“Cache-a…” Dr. Hudson stops himself and strains with face and hands to take back the last two seconds.  “Unfortunately, our mutual employer frowned on launching co-workers into space without their written consent.”  He shrugs at the powers that be.  “So, at the time, sending Telly’s cap into space seemed like the next…best…thing.”  He slows down when he repeats my words back to me, like a car slowing to highlight the lift and drop of each despicable speed bump in the road.

Toby and I can tell something about placing second to Telly’s cap doesn’t sit well with the old guy.  “Technically, you are only next-best if we have the cap in-hand.  Without the cap, you are literally second-to-none.”

John stops chanting cache-a-NASA and looks at me as though to ask what the heck I think I’m doing.

But the guy in the white coat?  He smiles and asks, “Would you like to see what second-to-none looks like?”

“Sure,” we answer. 

We enter a wide foyer outfitted with a Lazy-Boy chair and a flat screen TV.  Off the foyer to the left, we enter a more spacious living-room with a second Lazy-Boy chair in front of a TV.  At the far end is the dining room with yet another big chair and big TV. 

“Nice,” John says, clearly prescribing to the single man’s essentials-only furnishing code.

The walls, however, clash with the minimalist furnishings, hosting a collection of awards, framed letters, ribbons, continuing education certificates, and glossy 8 X 10 pictures of the doctor at various stages of hair loss shaking hands with important looking people.  Curiously, there are at least a dozen pristine cache-a-NASA caps hanging from hooks.

“The kitchen?” I ask of the next room in which we find an overstuffed recliner, a big TV, refrigerator, and stove. 

Our guide says not a word.

In fact, he doesn’t open his mouth again until we pause in front of an elevator door, opposite the fifth recliner/TV ensemble on our tour.

“You are no doubt asking yourself why there is an elevator in a one-floor building,” he says. 

“To access an otherwise hidden route to leave port?” John proposes.

All Toby and I can do is stare at our friend.

“Interesting,” Dr. Hudson says with mystery as he pushes the button on the wall.  The door retracts into the wall and a magnanimous smile opens our host’s mouth. “Please,” he says and waves his arm for us to enter.

“Wait!” I stop everything.  Something about the elevator is all wrong.  “There’s no big chair and TV.”

“Seriously?” John says and boards the elevator with the doctor.  The cat on my shoulders tells me to just go with it.

“I want to point out—” I point out, “that this IS a one-story building.  And we are standing in an elevator on the house’s one and only floor.”

“And your point?” the doctor asks.

“Elevators go places.”

“Yes?” he encourages me to continue with my thought.

“Now, I’m just thinking out loud here.  But if our intention is to go somewhere, and we are in an elevator on the building’s only floor, we’re kind’a already there.  Aren’t we?”

“In time,” the doctor muses, “the place where you are becomes another place.”

Before we can puzzle over the statement, the doors slide shut and our stomachs drop.

“I feel something,” John says.

“I feel it too,” I say.

“Gentleman,” Dr. Hudson says to us.  “Relax.  We are going down.”

“Down where?  The crawlspace with a two-foot clearance?”

The man shakes his head.  “My laboratory.”

At once, the man’s white housecoat is transformed into a white lab coat.

“I am going to show you, friends of our mutual friend, what I have been working on for the last forty years.”  In the man’s eyes, I recognize a certain twinkle I have seen before in Telly’s eyes when he is speaking of his late wife.   

“A girl,” he announces with a certain flair.

“In the basement?” John asks.

“No!” the doctor says.  “The inspiration for my project.  The inspiration is a girl.”

“A girl?” John again questions the man who must be in his eighties by now.

“Okay, a woman,” he concedes.  “But she was much younger when I met her.”

“Now she would be what?”  John tries to add up numbers he can only guess at.  “Seventy years old.  Seventy-five.”

“If you take away the forty years,” the doctor says, “she hasn’t aged a day.”

If there is a response to this self-evident statement better than duh, we don’t know it.

Our ride stops and the doors open unto a dark and unspecified floor in the earth.  Dr. Hudson steps bravely into that dark and waves his arms frantically like a castaway on an island who has spotted a plane. 

Lights flicker on at either side and upward several hundred feet above us. 

“Wow, this is some basement,” John says.  “Was all this here when you bought the place?”  As he talks, we approach a giant cylindrical object that reaches into the flickering heights.  “Say, how much value does a below-ground missile silo add to a house anyhow?”

“Wait a minute.”  It hits me.  “You’re a rocket scientist.”

“I am.”  Dr. Hudson seems utterly delighted to recognize the trajectory of my thinking process. 

“That’s not a missile.”

“Go on,” he urges me. 

“Did you build your own rocket?”

“I did.” 

I am more than impressed.  “But you were already at NASA.  Why didn’t you stay with their rocket program and save yourself a few dollars?”

He sighs for all the years since.  “They were interested in going places.   The moon.  Mars.  I was interested in going back.”

“Back,” the three of us repeat after him.

“Back to point A.”

“Sure,” John says agreeably.  Behind the doctor’s white coat, he winds his finger in crazy circles around one ear.

“Would you like some cake?” Dr. Hudson asks, apropos of nothing that has been said so far.  But John and I don’t need apropos where food is involved.   

He shows us to a table set with bite-size cakes under an upturned punch bowl.  He removes the glass cover and John and I help ourselves. 

“There now.  Let us have a closer look at the rocket.  Shall we?”  Dr. Hudson leads us to a platform with mesh sides and an open gate.  He closes the gate and the platform begins to rise.

John takes a first bite of cake and stops the moment it hits his tongue.  “Oh Sweet Jesus, this is good.”  This is the first time I have heard the former paster call on the lord to help describe anything.  But when I put one of the cakes in my mouth, I hear an angelic chorus singing in perfect C.  I grab the rail and hang on. 

The good scientist pauses to let our bodies and minds catch up with him. 

“You like?” he asks. 

“Second to none,” John says and holds my shoulder for support.

The platform stops and the doctor shows us across a metal plank to the side of the rocket.  I’ve seen pictures of the old capsules that brought our astronauts back to Earth.  The interior is typically cramped with small bucket seats that look about as comfortable as wooden bleachers at a high school pep rally.  So, you know, I’m kind’a expecting real old school discomfort.

But.         

“Behold.”  Dr. Hudson opens the capsule’s door, and we discover inside the day’s sixth overstuffed-recliner-with-big-TV ensemble.  With no less than a second recliner.

“Nice” I say.

“You like it?” Dr. Hudson asks.

“Second to none,” we answer in unison.

“I know,” he says humbly.

“What’s that up there on the nose of the rocket?”

“It looks like a giant hula hoop,” I say.

“No’oh,” Dr. Hudson says.  “That is the method of travel.”

John and I exchange blank looks.

“Wouldn’t one travel inside the rocket?” I ask.  “Rather than shaking it on the nose of the rocket?”

“What I mean to say is, the hoop, or field generator, is what enables the rocket to move through space.  There is only a modicum of gas in the tank, for directing the rocket once it is out of Earth’s atmosphere.  The real fuel is Time.”

Toby joins us in looking blank.

“The field generator—the hoop—propels the rocket into the next second.”

“Doesn’t the rocket already travel into the next second just by being there?”

“I’m trying to simply the physics for you.”  The doctor frowns.  “The rocket travels through the hoop into the next second of space-time, instantaneously arriving there a second before it would have otherwise.”

Those blanks looks just won’t stop.

“The motion is accomplished by giving the rocket a little kick in the beginning and pushing it through the hoop.  Once it is in motion, the field generator keeps it in motion by preserving the initial kick.”

“And where does the initial kick come from?”

“The ship is resting on a giant magnet that requires only a small jolt of electricity to give the rocket a little repulsive lift.”

“And you have tested this?”

“On paper.”

“And how high off the paper did it lift?” 

The doctor smiles sadly.  “Alas, I lack the funding for proper test subjects.”

“Yeah,” John agrees.  “That’s too bad.”   

“But I do have more treats,” he says with a smile as big as grandma pulling a fresh baking sheet of cookies out of the oven.

“Where?”  Our stomachs growl with the will to eat.

“In the glove compartment.”  When we are slow to respond, he adds, “In the rocket.”

I leap into the capsule first, seizing the driver’s seat.  John hits the passenger seat and pops open the glove compartment. 

“Jackpot.”

While John and I are doing our darnedest not to waste any crumbs on the folds of our shirts, Toby stands in the doorway, unwilling to commit himself to in or out.

“These are so good,” I say.

“You should taste the ones with the pink frosting,” John tells me. 

When it is clear to Toby that John and I are not going anywhere soon, he saunters in and climbs into my lap.  At once the door shuts.

“Hey,” John says.  “Why’d you shut the door.”

“I didn’t shut it.”

On the front dash monitor, we can see past the nose of the rocket where a disc of blue light begins to glow within the hoop. 

“Maybe we should get out,” I say.

“But there are more cakes in the back seat,” the doctor’s voice speaks through the dash speakers.  Our stomachs act with a will of their own.  We find the second cache-a-cakes and settle again into our seats.  I watch on the monitor as the light within the hoop grows brighter and more intense.  

“The ones with the pink frosting are the best,” John says. 

The only pink frosting I see is on John’s mouth and chin.

“Did you eat all the ones with pink frosting?” I ask him. 

“There are all kinds,” he quickly points out.  “Some with nuts.”

“But you said the cakes with pink frosting are the best.”

“Were.”

“I can’t believe you did that.  You ate them all.”  The earlier lessons of the day are called to mind.  “And after Telly just gave us his spiel about following opportunities and creating a meaningful life.”

“Man….”  John scoffs and laughs at the same time, scoff-laughing pink frosting right up his nose.  “I saw an opportunity, and I followed it.”   

Toby is unwilling to let himself be drawn into an argument.  He purposefully kneads my lap and curls himself into a tight cat-ball.

I try to recall more of the words of wisdom from Telly’s fedora, but nothing his wife Alexi wrote back in the day could have anticipated the gustatory joy of Dr. Hudson’s sweet cakes and the disappointment now of forgoing this second-to-none.

“I hope you’re satisfied with yourself.”  I get in one last dig.

“Meaningfully.”  His voice is deeper, slower.

“I think you’re misusing that word.”  I wait, but John doesn’t respond.  He begins to snore.

Once I talk myself out of stewing over such a petty matter, a heavy calm comes over me.  My body and head sink deeper into the plush cushioning of the recliner.  I’m used to feeling a little groggy after a big meal, but right now I feel poised to hibernate.  As I continue to watch the blue light in the monitor, I can see Toby’s reflection in the glass.  His chin settles and his furry eyelids close.  The heaviness weighs on my stomach and eyes like a drug. 

And then there is a thump. 

“WHA….” John cries.

I open my eyes and remember where I am: a big recliner in a capsule on top of a rocket.  A small light illuminates a dash panel and a spray of pink frosting covering the controls.  Beside me, John is pointing. 

Beyond the tip of his shaking finger is the monitor.

On the monitor is a field of stars.

to be continued…

While traveling with my cat through space in an armchair, I saw a few things of interest.