message (part 3)

Our rocket hurtles through black space.  Perhaps slips better describes our cosmic passage.  Or tiptoes.  For there is not a sound.  No vibrating metal under duress.  Just the timpani of three racing hearts in the cockpit as we watch the universe unfold in the monitor.  Stars shimmer, wobble and wink out.

“Where are the white streaks?”  John’s voice squeaks.  “This is not how they do it on Star Trek.  There are supposed to be white streaks.”  

He is right.  This is not what we would have expected if we had had expectations.  If we had any expectation after getting on the rocket, it would be getting off the rocket.  Not taking off in it.     

We are swiftly taken out of our earthly context where nothing means the same as it did before our launch.  Words like yesterday and tomorrow seem different from what they were.  Home is a word long gone.  Help is irrelevant, this far out. 

I tap on the door to my side and press one palm against its window, keenly aware that the few layers of metal and glass in Dr. Hudson’s DIY rocket are the only thing standing between the three of us and instant annihilation.  It defines the in we brought with us from the out that surrounds us.

There is a collective deep breath as we take hand in hand in paw.  This is all we have left.  Each other.

And then there interposes a voice.

“If you are hearing this, you are still alive.”

“God?” we cry.

“I recorded this message in the event something goes terribly wrong.”  It is the voice of Dr. Hudson.  “Clearly something has.  Terribly sorry about that.  There should be enough oxygen onboard for about three days.  After that, you will have to do without.  My sincere apologies.”

“This is it.”  My voice is flat, without hope for tomorrow or longing for yesterday.  “Less than 24 hours ago, Telly was describing for us the meaningful life.  He didn’t say anything about a meaningful end or what to do if the end comes before there is meaning.” 

“What are you talking about?”  John’s eyes are fixed on the monitor and the wobbling and winking-out of stars.  “There is always meaning.  Telly said it just isn’t summed up until you die.  That’s for others to figure out.”

“But what if I haven’t achieved enough, or left enough, for others to figure that out about me?”

“Man, that is not your concern.  Again, according to Telly and his fedora, there is the meaning of your life which you can’t know, and there is the meaningfulness of your life that only you can know.  Don’t compare yourself to Telly.  The rest of us just do the best we can.”

“My best.”  I review the short list.  “I’ve held down a remote job, paid my bills each month, carried my covid shot record in my wallet, kept up on current events with a lot of NPR.  I’ve maintained.”

“You met me,” John’s voice is punctuated with his former pulpit passion.

Toby jabs me with a nail to remind me of another relationship in my life.

“Your relationships,” he pauses dramatically.  “Your relationships…are part of the meaningfulness of your life.”

I can’t dispute anything he says.  “I just wish I had known sooner that this rocket trip was in our future.  I would have done some things.”

“I would have skipped the rocket,” John says.  

There is a long pause.

“John?”  I look beside me.  “Before our three days are up, I just want to say your friendship this past year has meant the world to me.  It has made a dark time a little brighter.”

John nods tearfully.  “Before our ride is over, I want to come clean and tell you…I hid two of those mini cakes with pink frosting under my seat.”

When Toby’s tail sinuates its way under John’s seat, the former paster shouts, “EH!  I’m coming clean.  I’m not giving up.”

His words—Earth-words we brought with us—ring in my ears.

“You’re right,” I tell him.

“What.  You’re okay with me holding out on you?”

“No.  But neither am I prepared to give up.  We’ve got enough oxygen for three days, and as long as we have breath there is hope.”

Toby and I look around us for something to pin that hope on.  He points to what looks like a steering wheel, or bar, in the dash and pedals on the floor.  Perhaps not exactly things I know, but things that look like things I know. 

“Hey John, the controls on my side look at lot like the wheel and pedals on a straight-drive car.”

“But this is not a car.”

Toby nods.  Solid point.

“Yeah, but…”  I leave it right there and tell John to hold onto something.

“What…why..”

I hit the brake pedal I think I know and turn the steering wheel hard.  The universe in the monitor turns.  The metal in the walls groans unnervingly.  My vision momentarily furs-over as someone scampers over my face.

I bring the wheel back to its home position as the rocket completes a 180-degree turn.  The universe in our monitor now retreats.  Red dots pop into being.  Red lines become white lines become Star Trek streaks.  Then white stars.  We slide backwards through the field of celestial lights as the distance between them swells with more black space.

“Oh my God.  We’re slowing down,” John says.  “It’s working.”

Gradually, the black space before us becomes pink and magenta.  Clouds appear.  There are mountain peaks…

                       ______________

Then Toby is tapping my face, as he does each morning long before I need to be up.  I open my eyes and remember we are in a rocket, flying through the fatal vacuum of space.  And I notice the rocket’s driver’s door is missing.  At once, I hold my breath to preserve the last of the oxygen in my lungs.  Toby shakes his head and pants like someone with access to a whole planet’s-worth of oxygen.  Reluctantly, I inhale, and then I do it again. 

On the monitor, I see a vast stretch of sand and rocks and craggy mountains that would look right at home on a post card from the moon.  In the distance, I see several figures in what look like space suits approaching us. 

“Are you seeing this?” John says.

“I see it.  I see them.”  These creatures from this other world.  “Looks like they have two legs and two arms.  Like us.”

Like us, the aliens from planet Earth.

“And big guns, unlike us,” John says.  “Man, I hate monster movies set in outer space.”

When the outside actors in this real-life moment are less than a hundred feet away, they remove their helmets.   Their complexions are different shades of green.  One of them, I can tell, is female.  Her cheeks are high, her lips full.  At fifty feet, she lowers her weapon and pushes back the flowing green hair from her emerald eyes. 

At twenty feet, I’m in love.

“Where are you going?” John cries when I step out of the capsule.  “We don’t know what these people are capable of.  We don’t even know if they’re people.”

“I know enough,” I answer him, charting the next few minutes for myself.  “I know I’m not waiting until my air runs out to do something meaningful in my life.”

When Toby hops onto my shoulder, the green outsiders point and smile.  I hear what sounds like music coming from their mouths. 

“Hello.  We are Loch and Toby,” I say to give them a sample of our own language.  “That’s John back there in the rocket.  This is a lovely planet you have here.  Forgive me if I sound like a typical American with just a few hours before he has to get back to the cruise ship….but does anyone here speak English?"

The one green woman I can’t take my eyes off of, cants her head curiously and repeats after me, “Lovely.”

At least, I think that’s what she says.  There is no real V or L in her enunciation keeping her vowels straight.

“My God.  You speak English?”

“My God,” the woman says.

I sense a certain misunderstanding and go through my introductions again.  “Loch and Toby,” I say and I point.

“Ahh and O’hey.”  She smiles as though to suggest the only misunderstanding is mine.  She pushes back her hair again, and her fellow green people look at her as though to ask Girl, what do you think you’re doing?

“Uh, Mr. Loch and Toby,” John says at my side.  “We don’t know anything about these people.  What they want.  Last time they ate.  What they eat.  Seriously, if she pulls out a bottle of catsup, I’m outta here.”

The woman approaches me and removes the gloves from her perfectly green hands.  Because I don’t want to scare her off and ruin this uniquely meaningful moment, I offer no resistance when she cups my cheek and jaw with one hand and puts the other over my throat.  “Speak,” she says.    

“Better do what she says,” John says, stepping behind me.  “I got your back.” 

“We’re from a planet called Earth, which, oddly enough, is the same name we call our dirt.”

“Really?” says the guy at my back.  “The first thing you think to say about our home planet is that?”

“I have no idea,” I forge on, “how to tell you where in the sky that is.  The little guy on my shoulder is Toby.  He’s a cat.  Most of his words sound the same.  So you have to listen closely for the intonation and consider how close to feeding time it is.”

I feel the two green hands riding the swell and collapse of each word.

“How do you make the words?” she asks.  At least, I think that’s what she’s asking.  Her vowels are solid, but her hard consonants are non-existent.  Her questions and hands, however, suggest to me she might recognize this shortcoming and want to do something about it.

“John?” I ask, sandwiched between two green palms.  “How do we speak?”

“Heck, I don’t know.  How do we breathe?  Isn’t it kind of automatic?”

“Exactly.  That’s why babies always ask you to pass them the bottle of milk instead of cry about it.”

“I meant we don’t have to think about it.  Once we know how.”

I jerk when the woman puts two green fingers in my mouth. 

“Ma’an,” John says.  “That’s not right.”  But the unconcerned wingman on my shoulder cranes his furry neck to peer inside my mouth. 

The woman’s fingers press down gently on my tongue. 

“Speak more.”

Follow the opportunities, I recall Telly’s words. 

So I take this unprecedented opportunity to describe for this woman the attention we commanded on Earth when we were just two guys and a cat in our rocket poking out of someone’s back yard.  I tell her some of my goals for the future, like getting back to Earth and confirming I remembered to turn the oven off before I left.  I list some of my favorite movies and restaurants.  And I express my reluctance to get involved in a long-distance relationship but my willingness to travel if I meet the right person.

The fingers in my mouth restrict the consonants formed at the front of my tongue, leaving only the hard K sound in the back of my mouth to work with. 

The probing woman shakes her head and pulls out her fingers.  Whatever she had in mind, this isn’t working. 

However, the interest in her face grows.  Her eyes shimmer behind a veil of tears.  I can’t remember a time when a woman was this interested in hearing what I have to say.  She looks determined that we are going to have a meaningful conversation, and she puts both her hands behind my head and pulls my nose against her nose.  “Speak more.”

Nose to nose to nose…

I repeat exactly what I have just said.  Global attention, electric oven, dinner and a movie, long-distance relationship and willingness to travel.  When I get to the right person, she puts her lips lightly against my lips.  

At this point, I find myself strangely less interested in the meaningfulness this moment is adding to my life than the moment itself.  If high school Spanish had been half as hands-on, I might have paid more attention to those crazy verb conjugations.

My forward student smiles to feel the front end of my puttering P’s and bouncing B’s.  Her eyes melt with each murmuring M.  When I ask why, the opening wha on our lips breaks into laughter. 

“More,” she says with more emm at the front.  

“Don’t mind me,” John says beside me.  “I’m just the guy who traveled with you through time and space so you could kiss one of the locals.”

I tell her more.  I tell her about the planet we call home, the rising tempers among electorates and the growing divisions over self-interests.  I tell her about the beautiful similarities of people on either side of climate changes, vaccines, gas prices, and the Depp/Heard trial.  Commonalities too easily overlooked.  I tell her about the small town I call home and the specific house with screened porch that is my home.

As a green tongue enters my mouth to plumb the process of human speech, my mumbling monologue falters.

“Em’ore,” she asks.  

It is not clear that this woman’s interest in me is anything more than linguistic.  I know there is no better way to master a new language than to speak it with another for whom it is their native tongue.  But she has brazenly taken this heuristic approach to a new level by asking me to speak with both our tongues. 

I give her em’oer. 

Going back to the screened porch, I tell her about the meaningful visits with friends, how we take our coffee, what we say in conversation.  I reference the guy next to me pouting by himself.  I explain that we talk a lot about women…because we are men and that’s what men do.  And I tell her about my ninety-two-year-old friend who doesn’t talk much about women, unless it is to reminisce about his late wife Alexi.  I describe his unworldly conception of wealth, his character as his sole possession, and his pursuit of opportunities to help others.  Mumbling tangentially, I add that he fixes teeth and prepares taxes at the unbeatable price of zero.  And given our remarkable age difference, I tell her he should be anything to me but the best friend he has become.  He is a model person whose end of life will show the world that he was second to none. 

And then I say his name.

At once, the woman pulls away and takes back her tongue. 

“Telly?” she asks with perfect ta and la.  Her eyes are wide, her expression that of a person who has just heard confirmation that something she could only believe before is true.

“You know this Telly?” she asks with perfect enunciation.   

“You sure do learn fast.”

She looks behind at her people.  “He knows Telly,” she says to them like it should mean something.  When it clearly doesn’t ring any bells, she rephrases herself.  “Ee oh elly.” 

The others understand at once and bow their heads.  One kneels. 

“What’s going on?” John asks. 

“We are ambassadors,” the woman says.  “We are on a mission to seek out intelligent life and bridge communities by sharing a message of love and civility.  Interestingly, the language you speak is the same by which our message was revealed to us.  We just did not know how it sounds.”

“Your message?” I repeat after her.

John and I look at each other, further bonding in our mutual confusion.

“How do you know this language?” I ask.  “Our language.”  

“Look,” John steps forward to make a point.  “If you’ve been listening to our old TV shows and newscasts, please know we are better than that.” 

The woman signals to one of her fellow ambassadors,  who steps forward and holds up a box.  The woman puts her hand over the box and the lid springs open. 

“If that’s a bottle of catsup…” John stops himself when he sees what it is the woman has pulled out.  An old baseball cap with the letters N A S and A embossed on the side.  She handles the cap with reverential care.  She turns it over and extends her arms show me something written inside. 

I peer at a multitude of letters I know, covering the underside of the cloth dome like astrological signs in the heavens. 

“In your arms I want for nothing,” I read.

“More,” she says.

“Your words are a poem, you sing to me.” 

“More.”  Her voice trembles.

“If we can’t pay rent, my body will shelter you.

When the big bad boss is in your face, remember who will wash you with kisses that night.

You smile at me and the sun pales.

If you are lost, I will find you.”

When you doubt yourself, I still believe.”

My voice comes to an emotion stop.  There are tears on the woman’s green cheeks. 

“Now,” she says, “after all this time, we hear how these words are said.  Cap-of-Telly was discovered by accident, caught on the leg of a satellite brought back to our planet for study.  It was almost discarded as trash until the writing inside was discovered.  Linguists like myself studied it until we could reconstruct the language and understand the inspired sentiments of the writer.  You said her name is Alexi?”

“Was.  She was Telly’s wife.”

“At the time when this was discovered, our planet was nearing its own self-destruction.  Its people were fractured with disagreement, and there was war on every continent.  When my colleagues and I broke the cap’s code and understood its message, we asked ourselves if this could be an answer to our prayers.  It said everything we needed to hear.  We shared its message, broadcasting it to people in every part of the world.  And they listened.” 

She presses her lips and her eyes flutter.  “They stopped fighting.”

“Telly’s old cap did all that?” John asks. 

“This,” the woman takes back the cap.  “It saved us from ourselves.”

Unbelievable.  Cap-of-Telly has literally transcended space and time to spread the message of one marriage and its secret for longevity.  The meaning of their two lives continues grow from planet to planet like an interstellar gospel.

John has to sit down.

Toby grooms.

“Will you be going back to your porch on Earth?” she asks me.

I look behind me at the capsule separated from the rocket, and the door separated from the capsule. 

“We would like to.  But we might have a few repairs standing in the way.”

“We can help,” she says.  “I would like you to take this, to return it to the man who inspired the writer of these words.”  She hands me the cap. 

I give it to Toby for safekeeping. 

“You know,” I say confidentially, “our rocket does have a back seat…if you want to go with us and meet Telly for yourself.”

Her smile is poetry, to borrow a line.  It sings.

“It is tempting,” she says.  “But I cannot.  Now that I can speak the language of Cap-of-Telly, I must teach others how to say the words, to reinforce the message that brought peace to our troubled world.”   

“Well, I tried.  By the way, I never got your name.”

Just as she responds, I put my lips to hers, and a sweet melodic phrase with no hard consonants fills me. 

“Ma’an,” John continues to pout.

I can’t begin to say the name of this linguist from another world, but I will never forget.

Boy with cat meets girl from outer-space.