"It smells bad," Clint whined.
"No it doesn't, now come on. You wanna see the sky, don't you? Looking out into space. This is the best spot to see."
The sky dazzled Amonika with infinite lights, pricks of white which continued revealing themselves the longer she looked at them. Threatening to go on infinitesimally. She held on to the car, looked down at the dark horizon. It was hopeless. By some weak force the rock she stood on had held her there for years, it had strapped her in beneath a thin layer of warmth, of air, of life. She walked the edge of the abyss. Now she felt light. Light enough that she tried to brace herself on the car, from being sucked off, out into the infinity. But the car was no less a speck than her.
"What's that one?"
"The bright one? That must be… Tribute, or maybe Beta Gabriel."
"They're planets? Not stars?"
"Yeah. Crazy, it looks so tiny from here. Oh! That one is definitely Beta Gabriel, meaning this one, has gotta be Tribute."
"Wow. I didn't know they were planets, not stars. I didn't know that until you told me."
"Most of the… things in the sky are stars, but we can see planets like Beta Gabriel and Tribute, and Tantalus, and Circumstance, because they're close, they're orbiting our same star."
"Yeah, I learned about those planets, and I didn't know that some of them are planets, not stars until now."
"Yeah, the Saxmans live up there. You remember them? What do you think, you wanna go there some day?"
"No! No, I don't wanna go there."
"No, why not?"
"I just… I don't wanna. It's really far away. And, and I know that once you leave our, the atmosphere, you can't survive, umm-"
"It's totally safe. You know we make ships that carry us through space, they're double, triple, quadruple reinforced to keep people alive inside. They're safer than driving a car."
"I just don't. That would be the scariest thing, because you're just stuck, in- in… space! And it just goes on waaayyyy farther than a planet, and if you'll die if just- there's one hole in the ship!"
"Well, it's not the scariest thing. So what? You just wanna stay on Reach forever?"
"Yes!"
Dad laughed. "You know we had to use space travel to get here, right? A lot further away than Tribute."
"From Earth? Where is Earth?"
"Ooh, that's a good question. Can we see it?" He consulted his pad. "Alright, alright, yeah." He pointed to the opposite direction. "Alright. See that bright star there? Where I'm pointing?"
"That's Earth?"
"No, that's a star called, I believe Psi Serpentis."
"Alpha Serpentis," Mom corrected.
"Yeah, yeah. Now look a little bit below, and to the right. Now there's- hmm. There's a couple dimmer stars there, but… I think that's the one. That is Sol. The star that Earth orbits. Now, it's too small to see, but Earth is where we came from. One little blue planet, we grew up on for millions of years. A tiny speck. But hey, look at us now! We've come a crazy long distance to get here. We've colonized hundreds of star systems, we're traveling the Universe. It's unbelievable how far we Humans have gotten. I mean, that's why they call it 'Reach.'"
"Wow. Did you come from Earth?"
"Not me, personally. It was my parents, who came here from Earth. And Mommy moved here from Arcadia. As a boy, you know, I would take opportunities to go out of town on my own. I had this telescope that could account for clouds and air in the way, and I would just sit for hours and point it at different stars. And this thing was powerful, I was able to zoom in to random buildings on Tribute; oh, and it would account for the rotation of Reach too, it would lock on to a point in the sky. And I was able to see Jupiter, and Saturn, and… umm, the blue gas giant. And first few times I saw the blue one, I mistook it for Earth. Really my telescope wasn't powerful enough to make it out. But it didn't matter. I saw pictures of Earth, what the continents and such look like, and I zoomed in trying to see anything on the planet. But it was just a blue blur. But I wanted so badly to go there, and see the origin of humans, and our empire. I mean, there were amazing places on Reach, but the way I saw it, if this was just an outpost I could only imagine how amazing Earth must be. It seemed right to go back, don't you think so?"
"Yeah," said Amonika.
"I don't wanna go," said Clint.
"Oh come on. Don't be silly. If we take the trip one day, you'll love it. Right, Joni?"
"Oh yeah, Earth is beautiful. They put you to sleep too, so it's just like going to sleep, and when you wake up, you're there."
"Earth may seem far to you, but even that, in the scale of the galaxy, and of the whole Universe, it's practically right next to us. Ten light years. Look over there. Alpha Cygni, two and a half thousand light years."
"Whaaaaat?"
"Over there! Andromeda. A whole different galaxy, with a whole different sky full of different stars. I zoomed in on a few stars there, and I got fixated on one, I called it my own. It's so unbelievably far away. We've never even gotten close. But one day, I thought. Hopefully I live to see it, when we become a species that can cross that gap. I wanted to be the first one making it through an even farther darkness. Don't remember which star it was now."
Travis looked down, took his hand off the boy's head. "Hey, what's the matter?"
Clint was crying. "I wanna go home."
"O-okay. Yeah, man. It looks like bedtime is in order. Let's get going."
Joni was quick to hold Clint in her arms, taking him back to his seat. "Okay. Let's go, Amonika."
Travis stared at his wife. "Don't forget, honey."