Have you ever been in a situation where you and a few close peers were the only chance humanity had for survival? Have you ever been in a situation where you were the only thing in between an island-sized alien spacecraft and your home planet? Have you ever been in a situation where the only thing that could save humanity was your left thumb?
No, you probably haven’t. But that’s okay, because nobody has.
Nobody, that is, but Alderman, who at present was in the past.
There was a slide… yes, a blue one, and next to it was a fire pole. That was where Alderman first noticed the endless expanse of blue over his head. The game of tag on the elementary playground was brought to an abrupt halt with the earth-shattering discovery of the sky.
“Look!” Alderman babbled – although he wasn’t Alderman yet, he was still Jake – “Look, look up! Look out! Look!” His friends followed his curiosity, but quickly were bored of the cerulean curtain and returned to their game.
Alderman stood in that spot for days, months, even years. There, yes, there, he realized he was a man – a man destined to fly – a man destined to pull back the curtain of blue and reach the window to infinity, to the stars. Year after year, he returned to that spot, that slide, and gazed into the heavens, anticipating the day he could join the stars.
But there were other spots, too.
An ivy-covered wall. Gray, a pair of sunglasses. Torn shorts, copper taste of blood. Alderman’s altercation with his brother ended in broken fingers and bunches of bruises. Jeffrey wasn’t as invincible as he thought he was. Not worth it, the younger Alderman thought, wiping blood from his brow. The sunglasses returned to their perch on his face; a truce was declared and signed in fraternal sanguinity.
A spotlight. Thousands of faces. Faces of faces on faces within faces. Spinning, spinning faces. A slightly older Alderman vomited and passed out.
There was an apple tree, but the memory faded with a sinister hiss.
In its place came high school prom. Sweat, flailing arms, deep synth bass. Laughter. Calm waters. He asked the person he crushed on since his freshman year to be his date there, by the pond near his house. She said yes. It was autumn when he asked – a crisp, brown leaf fell upon the waters and watched curiously.
“Gen,” he pondered, “reach your hand as high as you can, and then higher still.” The girl he was with slowly raised her hand above her head. After a moment of silence, he corrected her with a quiet, “No, no… really lift it.” And so she did, her vertebrae forming a straight line, her feet on point, her fingers desperately trying to free themselves from their mortal cages. A sharp puff of breath; she bent forward.
“Why did you make me do that?” she questioned with a giggle. She was into him – very into him – but Alderman was gone. His gray eyes fixated on the beyond.
“Didn’t you feel it?” he asked as his response. Her slightly furrowed frown was all the explanation he needed. Like the crisp leaf in the wind, he danced over to his date and took her hand in his before stretching them up into the sky. He ruminated.
“There… now do you feel it?” he breathed, smiling. She couldn’t. He could. Like the leaf, he made a ripple in the sky.
In the cockpit of his fighter jet, a drop of sweat dangled precariously off the edge of Alderman’s nose. It fell, but his head was too filled with blood to hear it drop. Swallow. Blink.
First flight simulation. More vomiting. Apologies, vomiting, and a little more of both. Bed rest. Alderman opened the skylight of his apartment to calm down. It was a cloudy day. Nothing made Alderman sadder – he couldn’t see a single twinkle in the sky.
Apartment. His girlfriend’s apartment. The brightest, happiest shade of orange. So many stairs. Stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs there was better technology than stairs at this point, but Alderman and his girlfriend couldn’t afford a quality home-assistant bot. So stairs, until Alderman bumped his head against the wall and dropped the couch on his fingers. Sharp pain within broken fingers was met with a desire to punch the wall. Not worth it, the older Alderman thought, sucking on his fingers to ease the pain. He hadn’t talked to his brother in years. The sight of the muscular man sucking his three middle fingers like a little boy made the girl helping him move the couch giggle.
Alderman had left his high-school sweetheart and exchanged her for his college sweetheart. They happened to be the same woman, who now shared an apartment with him.
“You know, this couch is hideous,” Alderman coyly sighed, a smile creeping on his face despite the pain. “They don’t teach you how to move couches in flight school, Gen.”
“Deal with it. It’s our couch, now,” she retorted before dragging the couch up the last two steps herself. If nothing, she was determined. And attractive. But she was so much more.
The last memory was silent. Calm waters. He asked the woman he crushed on since his freshman year to be his wife there, by the pond near his parents’ house. She said yes. The sky had never been bluer, nor the lifeless vacuum beyond the blue more full of possibility. At this point, he had already flown several missions outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, testing various engines and transporting materials to NASA’s old base on the far side of the moon. He had been with the stars. But not a single moment compared to this.
As they kissed, Alderman flashed back to first grade. The short girl in his class held him a flower. He spit a raspberry in her face before continuing his game of tag, by the slide… yes, a blue one. Back to reality, he picked up a dandelion from the shore and gave it to the same girl, now his fiancé. He told her that on the day they met, as immature as he was, he became a man. A seven-year-old man, nonetheless, but he knew where his future would be: right among the stars.
“-CKING LAUNCH THE NUKE, ALDERMAN!” sounded in his earpiece, back in the cockpit. He looked forward at the leviathan of a space ship, its design straight out of a twentieth century sci-fi video game. Having been the highest-ranking pilot on NASA’s base at the time the alien ship suddenly appeared between Mars and Luna, Earth’s Moon, Alderman was tasked with deploying a hydrogen bomb to destroy the vanguard of destruction.
The spacecraft moved into a position where the targeting AI of Alderman’s ship achieved a steady lock. Nobody knew what the spacecraft was, except for that it had a diameter of Manhattan, was twice as high as it was long, appeared out of thin air, and that it moved fast, toward Earth. The AI confirmed a lock. Alderman’s left thumb was all that could stop it now.
Yet as he pressed the button, the giant ship disappeared in a flash of light, never to return. The thermonuclear weapon disappeared with it – not a trace of its energy signatures remained where the behemoth had been. In the flash of light before it disappeared, though, a queer thought entered Alderman’s mind: that this was His second coming.
Alderman – no, after the encounter, he was just Jake – returned home and called his brother for the first time in over ten years. He spent the rest of his life with his wife, Gen, and their two children. He never flew again – having seen the face of God, he realized his place was in the light of a star, but not in the way that he had thought since first grade. It was with Gen, the love of his life, the brightest star of all.