“Have you ever dreamed of touching stars?” Mom whispered from across the kitchen table, its surface crosshatched in shadow, Dad standing by her side.

I blinked at her, not understanding.

From the tone of her voice, I knew this wasn’t just more star talk. Even in the dim light I could see that her expression was mixed, excited and contemplative, as well as resolute. Something was up. Something was different.

Our dark kitchen stank of pepperoni pizza and stale coffee. The sink was full of dishes, and I could see that one of my toys had gotten kicked under the stove. The clock over the microwave ticked over, 12:45 AM. It was way past my bedtime.

I considered her words. It was such a small question, innocuous, common for her, yet I had a feeling it would change my life forever. I had no idea what to say, how to respond. In all honesty, my biggest concerns at the moment were if I had enough markers and crayons in my art box. If I would be allowed to play at the park when I came home from school tomorrow. I was highly concerned that the box of snacks in the kitchen was getting low, and that my Aunt Carol restricted internet access when I stayed at her place in the afternoons. I can bet minha avó wouldn’t care, grandmothers and all, but she lived too far away for me to see her every day, so that meant I spent my afternoons with Dad’s sister, which was fine.

I sat there for a moment in silence, telling myself Mom had to be messing with me. It was just another game she and Dad had come up with to teach me a science lesson. At a time when kids at kindergarten were talking to my parents about distant relatives setting foot on the Martian plains beneath Olympus Mons, I just wanted to dig in the dirt for worms. Space was too big for me to wrap my little head around.

Maybe we were about to go stargazing? Take the telescope out into a field on a clear night? Hot cocoa and a big furry blanket. That was fun, right?

“Touching stars?” I asked. “Is that like going to the moon?”

Mom smiled down at me, dark eyes gleaming. She was tired, withdrawn, and yet…

“Far beyond the moon, Milo,” she said. “So very far, meu lindinho filho.”

And with that I knew to take her seriously. Mom only spoke Portuguese, her family’s language, when the matter at hand was near and dear to her heart. She was a second-generation immigrant; her mom’s mom having left the favelas in Rio in the 2040s to live in the Nevada sticks, then Colorado. Every syllable she had uttered was like spell work. I didn’t understand half of it, most days.

Ferdie, our orange tabby, rubbed against my leg. I stroked her soft back and took a small comfort in her presence.

“That’s right!” Dad added, a widening smile on his round face. He put a hand on his hips and swung an outstretched finger through the air. “The moon is but a breath away… But us, yes… us… We will live far beyond. The chance of a lifetime.”

The great unknown was no new topic in the Hughes house. My parents both worked in fields that involved space exploration. Mom in a lab as a biologist, studying the effects of micro-gravity and cosmic radiation upon the human body, while Dad pored over data from half a dozen telescopes ranging from the Hubbell to the James Webb, to the Star Reach Constellation. Space exploration was their life, their passion. They lived and breathed all that involved the final frontier.

Yet none of this helped me understand why Dad was setting Ferdie on the back porch wishing her a good life, while Mom tossed our clothes into suitcases and set them by the door.

We were not going stargazing.

“Pick one toy, sweetie,” Mom said, pointing to a pile on the living room couch. “Be quick about it.”

My options were limited; the choice, hard. Did I take a die-cast motorcycle? A set of playing cards? A classic Buzz Lightyear action figure? No. All these were left behind. What I wanted in that moment, all the toys in my room, and what I needed, to feel secure in my uncertainty—were not the same. Only one thing would do in that frail moment, a plush anchor for my emotions. I squeezed Jasper in my arms, the ears of the soft doggy nuzzling against my neck.

I had made my choice, and it was a good one, but like any choice, this one was terminal for its counterparts. I mourned the loss of other possibilities, anxious sniffles held under my breath, but was not given long to remain in this place of sorrow.

Mom belted me into the back seat of our Tesla, our neighbors’ houses dark, a pale half-moon hanging overhead. I couldn’t see much from my car seat, but I saw enough.

The front door of the house beside us burst open, casting a pillar of light onto freshly cut grass. My Aunt Carol came bolting after us in a nightgown, waving her arms, screams issuing from her throat. I’d spent most days of recent months at her house, playing while Mom and Dad were absorbed by their work, our kitchen table covered in papers and laptops, counter covered in frozen meal boxes, crumbs and bits of food on the floor. Carol and I had fun most of the time. We did puzzles and watched classic television. She made me grilled cheese sandwiches and let me have as much chocolate as I wanted, so long as I took a break from my tablet.

Mom and Dad glanced at one another from the front seats, and a silent decision was committed to. The motors of our Tesla whined as we sped out of the driveway. My Aunt shrunk in the rearview. Everything in that moment went hazy as we thundered off into places unknown, rushing headlong into a void as complete as space itself.

But why?

Dad’s phone rang. He held the button on the side and turned it off. Moms did the same an instant later. She tossed hers out the window and watched in the sideview mirror as it shattered on the highway, her raven corkscrews blowing back into her face before she could close the window. My heart found a seat in my throat. I clutched Jasper and kept my mouth shut.

Riding in the backseat at night was like falling into an abyss. I had little sense of true direction, no concept of where we were going. There wasn’t much to see out the windows, not that it mattered. All that shot past were the occasional broken streetlamps or gas stations, abandoned buildings and empty lots, none of which told me where we were.

Mom and Dad cycled through unusual phases of utter quiet and manic conversation as they chugged can after can of energy drinks. One moment they would laugh, then engage in an intense discussion, then fall into anger, then apologize. I did my best to follow their exchanges, but after a while the exertion of decoding their rapid-fire debates exhausted me. I hadn’t gone to first grade yet. I was in way over my head. The only snippets I was able to understand involved what they said was a journey into deep space aboard a starship, the Vasco Da Gama of the UEI, some fixy mission to follow a signal of greeting from something calling itself the Foundry. More space stuff.

I’d heard them discuss the UEI before, though I was too young to truly understand. The United Exploration Initiative was some sort of multi-national organization whose mission was to help humans settle on other worlds. Most talk of it had come in the form of Dad complaining about paying more in taxes to fund stupid projects, and Mom saying there was no other way to save humanity. Two distinct groups of people had emerged on our world, and they were each determined to save humanity from the other; those who lived in a world of automated decadence, and those who suffered and starved. It was just more babble that gave me stress.

Jasper nuzzled against me, and I closed my eyes, his velvety fur brushing against my neck.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, our car screaming into the darkest depths of night.

I dreamed throughout our entire trip but couldn’t make total sense of the story that played out in my mind. Comprehension came and went, understanding beyond my years, then ignorance. In truth, I think it was a defense, a means to keep myself from thinking about the fact that my parents had snatched me up in the middle of the night, stuffed the car full of all our things, and took off without much more than a few cryptic words of explanation.

Endless fields of dead land appeared in that half-conscious state, the result of conversational snippets. What had once been fertile soil flanking the highway, capable of feeding millions, was now cracked dirt and desert, a dusty expanse of wasteland devoid of life. People had moved on to survive, left this place once filled with opportunity and piled themselves into cities, one on top of the next till all the work and resources had run out. Jobs had been sparse to nonexistent, leaving those in exodus to scratch by, to fight over scraps.

“The Earth was not meant for eleven billion people,” Mom whispered. “Cascade failure is near. We have to stop it.”

“The Foundry will help us,” Dad replied. “It will help us.”

Soldiers marched over a black hill, rifles in hand, bombs going off in the distance. Without abundance in their own country, these people had rallied together and went into battle. The world did not need their oil any longer, this energy source replaced by another, and so they opted to take what they needed from the world.

The shallow reaches of the ocean, once colorful and full of life, were now bleached and dead. People in rags stood along its shores, stabbing at the water with spears hoping to catch something to eat, but nothing lived beneath its surface that would qualify as dinner.

A pile of fried insects lay at the center of a table in a cramped apartment, the room smelling of onions and spices, nine sets of eyes fixed on it. It was all that was left, all that was available. Better to be bizarre than hungry. No veggies this time, son.

None of this was right. This was not how it was supposed to be.

Despite the madness, a few had found a way into luxury, living in their remote homes off of long-acquired wealth, precious food delivered by drone as they sat in their castles of homes. Had that been us? Was my neighborhood, Whispering Pines, a suburban bastion against this disparity? I’d never missed a meal in my life. I’d always had what I wanted. What was this feeling?

People streamed in from the countryside. The cities swelled like water balloons, filling and filling and filling with sweaty, hungry bodies, their faces locked onto screens, single-minded, afraid, forcing a thin membrane of sanity to the cusp of bursting. More and more and more. The flow did not cease even if it had no place to go. It made me want to scream, I knew what would happen if it burst. All the pain, the fighting. How much more could it take?

The car hit a bump and Jasper tumbled from my arms. Distressed, I started to cry, grasping for him wildly, unable to move for the harness of the car seat. The dog was within sight but out of reach on the floorboard.

My heart pounded. Dreams. Just dreams.

“Are we lost?” Mom demanded of Dad, and out of instinct reached around and handed Jasper back to me. “I think we might have missed our exit.”

“No, no.” Dad shook his head. “According to the map they gave me it’s up ahead. You see, right here. Service road, five miles down. They know their stuff. We’re almost there.”

The horizon brightened as night drew to a close, giving way to dawn. I scrubbed the rheum from my eyes and yawned.

“Filho da mãe. If we miss our window…” Mom let the words hang.

“I know, Adriana. I know. We’ll make it in time, don’t worry.”

Jasper glared at me with his oversized eyes and we both gave a sigh. He was thinking what I was thinking. Morning or not, I was sleepy. About the time I drifted off again the car came to a halt. Mom unbuckled me from my car seat and helped me get out.

We were parked in a field of sand and dirt, a distant mesa the color of rust silhouetted by the rising sun on our right. I shivered in the brisk air. Dad handed me my jacket and I shrugged it on.

“Desert can be chilly at night and in the morning,” he said, hugging himself with his arms, elbows rested on the tip top of his round belly. “Come on. This way.”

We dragged our luggage through hard packed sand and powdery dirt, leaving the Tesla behind. For as much as Dad complained that “the damn thing” cost, it felt weird leaving it in the middle of a field unattended, not a parking lot in sight.

“Won’t somebody steal it?” I asked.

“Where we’re going, we won’t need it,” Dad replied. “I doubt they can collect on me, either. Like to see them try.”

Mom glanced over her shoulder and sighed. “Are you sure this will work, Jackson? If it doesn’t, we’re going away for a long time.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will work. We hired the right team. You know it’s the only option, and the regrets… they far outweigh the punishment. Desenmerda-te.” Dad’s accent was terrible when he tried to speak Portuguese, always had been.

“Did you just tell me to get my shit together? Right… It’s just...” She paused for a moment and sucked in a breath of cold air, collecting her will. The raw excitement in Mom’s expression had been replaced with resignation, determination, the focused look of a woman with an immovable goal, a true mission, a just cause. “Okay. You’re right. We’re still an effective team.”

Dad let out a nervous chuckle. “Damn right we are.”

We rounded a set of rocks, eased around some prickly scrub, some cacti, and stepped past a cluster of shoulder-high succulents, before coming upon a chain-link fence. Dad peeled back a roll of severed links and Mom and I squeezed through. The sleeve of my jacket caught on one of its sharp ends and the fabric ripped. I snatched my hand back before it could cut me.

“Toma cuidado, viu?” Mom asked, turning my palm over to inspect the skin. “You okay? The end didn’t catch you, did it?”

I shook my head and drew Jasper tight against my chest. “No.”

“Good.”

“Look at it, Adriana.” Dad raised a hand to shield his eyes from the coming dawn. “Just look at it. It’s magnificent.”

There are a few moments in life that no matter what happens after them, good or bad, no matter how much time passes, you never forget the way they made you feel. For me, one such moment was when I looked upon the launch craft for the first time, the vehicle that would cement my fate and steal all choice from my future. The explosive spear stood before us in the deserts of Arizona, a white and black rocket tall as a skyscraper with the words SpaceX written down its length, its scale imposing upon my five-year-old existence like a timeless monolith. Thick plumes of white vapor billowed from the dozens of connections and umbilicals along its length, cryogenic fuel relief valves hissing as they regulated pressure.

I set foot onto the platform and could feel the ground beneath us vibrating, machines eagerly awaiting takeoff. The soles of my red Chuck Taylors slipped on a section of clear fluid, and I fell forward, my right knee catching on the pavement. Cool, ozone-scented air prickled at the back of my neck and my skinned knee. We were so close to this rocket, so close I could hardly see the tip of the explosive spear set to hurl my family and I out of the planet’s gravity well.

Jasper and I were so small, so insignificant compared to this towering creation. This craft had swelled to encompass all comprehension. It was my entire world, my reality. My fate.  

My heart gave a start and my feet locked into place. Standing became impossible, my legs having turned to jelly. I put a hand on my skinned knee and winced. Mom hurried over and scooped me up in her arms.

“Mommy?” I whispered in her ear.

“Yes, baby.”

“Is that how we are going to touch stars?”

She gave a smile that crinkled her whole face. Even the tired lines at the corners of her eyes, hidden away most days beneath thick layers of mahogany foundation, were clear in that unfiltered expression. “Yes, Milo. We are going to touch stars.”

Dad waved at us from up ahead. “Come on. This way. We have to hurry. Only a few minutes before they do a sweep of the area.”

He led us down a series of paths hemmed by stacks of tubing and concrete walls. We rushed up several flights of stairs down to a tunnel with a locked door at its end. Dad punched a series of numbers into a box and the door opened.

At the end of a wide hall I could see the entrance to an elevator that led up the platform tower to the peak of the launch craft. A white box was traveling upward, pausing, and traveling back down. To the left and right of the access door, two uniformed guards stood conversing with another family, machine guns held loose in their hands.

Dad fumbled in his bag to produce a set of plastic, iridescent badges, one for each of us. He placed them over our necks and took a deep breath.

“Let me do the talking,” he said.

Mom gave a swallow and set me down. “Will it work?”

“I’m tired of being asked this every two seconds.”

“Fine.”

“Sure paid enough.”

We did as we were instructed and worked our way towards the queue. I watched as a mother and father, about the age of my parents, boarded the elevator with a little girl in red pigtails. The girl stared at me and gave a wave, her expression as serious as a funeral. She wasn’t the only one feeling as if she’d been dragged to the slaughterhouse.

I lost sight of her as the elevator doors closed.

“ID badges, please,” the guard on the right called, shouldering his rifle and holding out his hand.

“Right here, right here!” Dad held his up. “All here. All official.”

“Name?”

“Yes, of course.” Dad gave a mock bow, the gesture meant to hide the tremors of his nervous hands. “I am Jackson Hughes, astrophysicist. This is my wife Adriana, biologist, and our son, Milo, age five. We are bound for the Vasco Da Gama. This is the correct launch is it not? I would hate to have stumbled onto the wrong pad. Happens to me all the time, you know, absent-minded professor and whatnot.”

The guard glared at Dad and inspected the badge. My lip quivered and I withdrew behind Mom’s legs, Jasper held in front of my eyes.

I can’t say how, but in that moment, I knew I had a choice. Mom had been tempted by the last-minute option to run, yet she had renewed her resolve. Even though I was only five, I knew I had one as well. If I screamed loud enough, hard enough, I could convince these uniformed men I wasn’t supposed to be here. I could convince them my parents were doing something wrong and we could leave this rocket and go home. By that afternoon I’d be at my Aunt’s house, playing on my tablet and eating chocolate, having fled uncertainty for safety. Then again, I knew my parents would be in big trouble if I spoke up. The choice was easy.

All I wanted was to be a good son.

“Nervous, little guy?” the other guard bent down and asked me. “First time on a rocket?”

I nodded, keeping my lips sealed.

“You’ll be okay. There’s a lot of noise and shaking but it’s fun. Promise. It’s like a roller coaster ride. I’ve been up a few times. But you, man you’re lucky. By the time you turn my age you’ll be an old hat when it comes to space. This is first contact, little guy. First contact! Your name will go down in history.”

The first guard shook his head and scanned our badges with a handheld box. The box chirped and turned green.

“Alright, you guys check out.” He pointed ahead. “Proceed to the elevator. You’ll change into jumpsuits and give your luggage to the cargo technician. Have a safe liftoff. Good luck at the Foundry.”

We followed the guard’s instructions, and before I knew it, we were sitting in a capsule at the apex of the massive rocket. A middle-aged technician in a white jumpsuit buckled me into my seat. He could see my apprehension and gave both a smile and a nod that said, ’You got this, buddy.”

“Just hang on to that doggo of yours.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder and went to help the next person.

We were not alone on the launch craft. A dozen seats were filled with other families. Two parents, one kid, never more. All were now in white jumpsuits, a look of apprehension on everyone’s face but for Dad. The space was dim and small. Almost every surface was covered in a dazzling array of lights and switches, displays crammed full of data and views from outside the craft. At the head of our seated rows sat three people, what could only be legitimate astronauts, our pilots.

“Oh baby, this is gonna be great,” Dad growled in excitement. “Come on. Big money, big money, no whammies.”

Mom took a clarifying breath and reached out to squeeze my hand before returning it to her side.

The girl in pigtails locked eyes with me. She raised her stuffed octopus and its tentacles jiggled. Jasper waved back.

“Attention, everyone aboard Launch Craft Zed Four Nine,” a deep, baritone voice called over the intercom. “This is your pilot, Henry Brittan of NASA and the United Exploration Initiative, our vehicle is done fueling and the skies over Arizona are free from commercial traffic. We are clear for takeoff. Support crew, please make your final check and vacate the capsule. We’re ready to light this puppy up.”

The final crew member stepped through the external hatch and closed it behind him. A digital clock appeared on the wall above and to the right of me.

The voice on the intercom returned. “Falcon 15D transfer to internal power complete. M1D fuel bleed complete. Prop GSE securing. Self-align verification. Final engine chill down. Cryo helium loading.” I gave a swallow and took a deep breath. Jasper did the same. He was nervous. I could tell. “Pad deck water deluge system activation. Merlin engine ignition…”

My seat began to vibrate, the intensity redoubling by the second. Everyone in the capsule went silent in anticipation of liftoff but for my Dad. He mumbled excited words under his breath in rapid succession.

I clutched Jasper against my chest and felt my stomach bottom out as the vibrations soon transferred into upward motion. I was slammed into the back of my seat as if someone had shoved their foot down on the gas pedal. My plush toy remain fixed to my chest. He might as well have been glued in place. Every part of my body had become as heavy as a neutron star, as if Earth was waving goodbye, showing me triple fold what its gravity was like before leaving its bonds forever.

I watched a video on my right that showed the base of the rocket as it distanced itself from the platform. Numbers at the bottom increased, giving feedback as to our current relative velocity. We were moving upward, screaming into the fading blue sky on a pillar of light hot as the sun’s chromosphere.

Dad began to hoot. “Hell yeah! I’m goin’ to space. Wooooohoo!”

From the front of the capsule one of the pilots shouted back at him over the noise. “Sir, please be quiet.”

“How can I? This is the most exciting day of my life!”

“Try your best or I’ll have to seal your lips with epoxy.”

There was no going back. Whatever this was I’d been forced into was my life from here on out. I only wished I’d been given a choice in the matter. A real choice.

We hit orbit and the vacuum engines engaged for one last burn, jostling me in my seat, putting our capsule on a trajectory to intercept with a starship. Gravity vanished and I felt weight flee my body.

The blip grew larger on the tracking display, becoming a graphic of a slender cylinder with massive engine nozzles at one end, a great sphere at the other. Around its middle rotated a flat ring, half a dozen spokes connecting it to the main body of the ship like the hub of a bicycle wheel. Though the picture was small, as I let my eyes adjust, I could see fine details, the clusters of geodesic tanks along the cylinder, the spurs of instrumentation, the expandable docking areas for capsules just like ours.

I looked to Jasper for advice. He stared back with his shiny plastic eyes and kept silent. Typical.

Mom reached over and squeezed my hand again. “Welcome home, son.”

“Home?” The word felt foreign on my lips, incongruous with what I could see and feel in that moment.

“Bem vindo àto Vasco Da Gama. Your home for the next forty years.”