See You in the Cosmos

NEW RECORDING 2

6M 41S

Hi again, guys! I promised I’d tell you more about SHARF and I’m a man of my word. SHARF is a rocket festival that’s happening in the desert near Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’m launching my rocket there in three days!

The official name is the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival but everyone on Rocketforum.org just calls it SHARF. It’s an acronym. Acronyms are words made using the first letter of other words, like how NASA is National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In fourth grade we made acronyms from our own names and I used my full first name even though Mrs. Thompson said I could just use Alex. I wanted to challenge myself. The acronym for my name was:

Astronomer

Launches rockets

Earthling

Xplorer

Afraid of spiders

Nice person

Dedicated

Enthusiastic

Rocket enthusiast

I made one for my hero too. It was:

Cosmic

All-time hero

Really smart

Likes science

Everyone on Rocketforum is really REALLY excited about SHARF. There’s a post at the top that says OFFICIAL SHARF THREAD and it has SO many replies already. Frances19 said she’s dyeing her hair a special color for SHARF and Ganymede and Europa were talking about how much fun last year’s was, and Calexico posted a bunch of cool tips about camping, like if you leave your shoes outside your tent at night make sure you turn them upside down in the morning because there might be scorpions. He said they show up in pairs too, so if you find one scorpion you’ll usually find another. They’re very romantic creatures.

I already packed my rocket and toothbrush and Ronnie’s old tent, and a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner because it’ll save me some room. I packed Carl Sagan’s special kibble also—they’re going to have barbecue food at SHARF but Carl Sagan can’t eat it because he has a sensitive digestive system.

I still have more to pack but I needed a break, so I came up to the roof of my house. I love lying down on the hood of a car like Dr. Arroway in the movie Contact but my mom doesn’t drive anymore, so I just come up on our ladder to the roof. I usually come up here at night so that way I’m closer to the stars, even though it’s only one story closer.

I like coming up here during the day too though. Our subdivision is on a hill, and when I’m up here I can see really far. I can see the train tracks and Burger King and I can see Mr. Bashir’s gas station which has a flagpole outside with the biggest American flag in Rockview, it’s SO huge. Way in the distance I can see Mount Sam and the big white letter R for Rockview on the side near the bottom. One time before Ronnie’s homecoming game against our town’s rivals, Belmar, some kids from Belmar High came in the middle of the night and changed the R to a B, and the next day Ronnie was so mad that he ran for five touchdowns and our team kicked their team’s butts. I guess their plan backfired.

Sometimes after my mom has one of her quiet days she’ll need fresh air so she’ll go for a walk, and when I’m up here I can see where she walks. Like right now she’s walking toward Justin Mendoza’s house, which is down our street toward the bottom of the hill, and when she gets to Justin’s house she’ll either turn left toward Mill Road or turn right toward Benji’s subdivision. I can’t see that as good because it’s surrounded by trees.

Justin’s the one who gave me this iPod, actually! He was a grade lower than Ronnie in high school and he used to come over and play with Ronnie all the time, but he didn’t move away after college like Ronnie did. I went over there yesterday to buy the iPod from him for twenty dollars like we agreed, but then he said I could just have it for free because the battery sucks. He went inside his house to get it and I waited in his garage, and I was looking at the Honda motorcycle he’s always working on and I squeezed one of the handles, but when I did a screw fell out, so I put it on a blue rag with a bunch of other parts.

Justin came back with the iPod and charger and I said, Hey Justin, your job is a mechanic, shouldn’t you be done working on your motorcycle already? He said his problem is he’ll think he’s done but then he’ll ride around on it for a while and think of something better to do, so he’ll take it apart and start over again. I told him he should just download a simulator for his motorcycle like the one I found for my rocket called OpenRocket. It lets me put in different motors and change the nose cone and fins and everything, and it tells me exactly how high the rocket’s going to go so that way I don’t even have to buy any parts until I’m ready to launch. I told him that’s how I designed Voyager 3, my rocket that’s going to carry his iPod into space.

Justin said, So it’s going to be your first launch ever? And I said that’s right, and he said, Shouldn’t you do some test launches? And I said, That’s the whole point of the simulator, it’s so I don’t have to, DUH!

Justin laughed and he asked me how’s Ronnie doing, and I told him Ronnie’s busy like usual with his prospective clients. A prospective client is someone who Ronnie wants to want Ronnie to be their agent, so he takes them out to lunch and he pays for their lunch. Justin said he really looks up to Ronnie, he’s always thought of him like an older brother, and I said that’s funny because I’ve always thought of him like an older brother too, and Justin laughed again. He told me to let him know how my launch goes and I said I will, and I told him he might want to check the handle on his motorcycle to make sure there aren’t any parts missing.

NEW RECORDING 3

6M 16S

What do you guys do when you can’t fall asleep?

Maybe you don’t need sleep at all, maybe you’re just awake all the time because your planet spins so slowly that you’re always facing the sun. It’s always day.

Or maybe you guys do the opposite, you pretty much sleep whenever you’re not eating, like koalas or Carl Sagan. He just curls into a doughnut on the bed or sofa or my lap and he starts falling asleep, easy.

Are you sleeping right now?

I guess not, because how would you be listening to this if you were sleeping?

I guess that means we’re both awake . . .

I finished packing last night. And today I spent the whole day making food for my mom for when I’m gone. My mom knows how to cook and she’s a great cook, but I’ve been making food for us so much this year that I’d feel bad if I didn’t do something.

Plus she was having another one of her quiet days where she stays in bed and stares at all the little bumps on the ceiling. I think she likes counting them. And I brought water to her room and I told her, I made you food for the next three days when I’m at SHARF, all you have to do is take out the GladWare from the refrigerator and heat it up in the microwave and I love you.

I thought I’d be really tired after making all that food but I wasn’t. I tried listening to Beethoven and Chuck Berry and watching my Blu-ray of Contact, but they only made me more awake. I tried sleeping in Ronnie’s bed too. I keep everything on his side of our room exactly how it was when he moved out, so that way when he comes home to visit he’ll see all his sexy lady posters on the wall and his sports trophies on the shelf and he’ll feel like he never left. Sometimes I sleep in his bed though, because maybe if you sleep where another person sleeps and do what that person does, then eventually you’ll start turning into that person. You’ll think like they think and remember what they remember, and after a while you’ll have big muscles and make a lot of money to buy groceries for your mom.

My Amtrak train to Albuquerque, New Mexico, leaves pretty early tomorrow. Calexico and some other Rocketforum members are meeting at Blake’s Lottaburger which is a restaurant near the train station in Albuquerque, and they’re going to carpool to the SHARF site and I’m going to get a ride. I hope I can figure out who’s who because for most people I only know their usernames and not what they look like.

Also, I only have two days until my launch, so I’ll have to find some real important sounds from Earth for you guys really fast. Maybe . . . maybe since you can already hear the heartbeats and brainwaves of a woman in love on the Golden Record, I can record the sounds of a MAN in love on this Golden iPod!

I would record myself but I’m not in love with anyone yet. I don’t love any of the girls at school because they’re mostly just excited about buying clothes and Snapchatting and Skyler Beltran. We have different interests. I’m not worried though, I bet I’ll meet someone at SHARF who’s in love because I know a lot of guys like that. Ronnie’s in love with his girlfriend Lauren, for example, and Benji’s in love with Ms. Shannon, who teaches advanced math. He said she leaned over to help him with a math problem once and she smelled like peach Jolly Ranchers. He made me promise not to tell a soul on Earth, so I think it’s OK if I tell you guys.

Too bad Benji couldn’t come to SHARF . . .

He’s on vacation in Chicago with his mom and sister and his mom’s new boyfriend.

One time Benji asked me do I feel bad about not having a dad and I asked him, Do you feel bad about not having a dinosaur? Benji said he’s not sure because he’s never had one, and I said I feel the same way about a dad. Benji said it’d be so cool to have a triceratops though, you could ride around on it and crash through the walls at our school and if a hall monitor tries to write you up for being late you can say, Take it up with my triceratops. I told him it was a great idea.

Sometimes I do think it’d be cool to have a dad. In Contact, Dr. Arroway’s dad died when she was a kid also, but at least she was older than I was. She could remember looking through the telescope with him on their porch and using their old radio to talk to people in Florida. But my dad died when I was three, so everything I remember is what other people told me. My mom told me that on the day I was born my dad was supposed to be home from a work trip but he missed his flight, so she had to drive to the hospital all by herself because Ronnie wasn’t old enough to drive yet. But then my dad finally got there and ten minutes later I got there.

It’s almost like my dad’s a jigsaw puzzle, and my mom has some of the pieces and Ronnie has some of the pieces, but a bunch of other pieces are missing so I can’t finish the puzzle. This year in Mrs. Campos’s social studies class we learned about genealogy, which is the study of who you come from, and we had a lab day where we went on computers in the library to a site called Ancestry.com. When you put in your name and your parents’ and grandparents’ names on Ancestry.com, it builds a family tree for you automatically using government records and old newspaper articles and things like that. It said that my lolo and lola and my mom’s side of the family are from the Philippines, which I already knew, and it said that my dad’s side of the family came from Europe on a ship in 1870. Ancestry also sends me an e-mail whenever they find out something new about my family—it’s like having my own CSI, which is an acronym for Crime Scene Investigator. Except instead of solving crimes it’s solving stuff about my dad, it’s my DSI—Dad Scene Investigator.

Aye yai yai, I’m never falling asleep at this rate . . .

I’m going to try going to bed again. Carl Sagan and I have a big day tomorrow.

Good night guys.

NEW RECORDING 4

[RECORDING NOT AVAILABLE]

NEW RECORDING 5

8M 52S

OK, let me try this again. I wanted to tell you what happened at the train station before but I was crying and I wasn’t making sense, so I deleted it.

Ronnie used to tell me to man up whenever he saw me cry. He’d tell me to stop crying, nobody likes a crybaby, and I try but I can’t help it sometimes. Sometimes the clouds inside my head get big and gray and swirly and then I hurricane through my eyes. Except I don’t literally hurricane through my eyes—I don’t actually have a weather system in my head.

This morning just when Carl Sagan and I were about to leave, I realized that I packed too much stuff, even with my 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner. I tried carrying it all and it was SO heavy, I could barely even make it five steps before I got tired. It didn’t look that heavy last night and everything by itself wasn’t heavy, but it really adds up. I said to Carl Sagan, What do we do now? and he looked at me like, Why are you asking me? And then I tried putting my duffel bag on his back and he squirmed away and he was like, What do you think I am, a donkey?

I told him I know he’s not a donkey, but then I had a great idea.

My idea was to go in our garage and get the wagon that I use for buying groceries, and I put everything in the wagon and it fit, problem solved! Then I knocked softly on my mom’s door to see if she was awake yet but she wasn’t, so I went up to her bed and I whispered in her ear, We’re leaving now, we’ll be back on Sunday like I said and I love you, just in case she could hear me in her dreams.

Carl Sagan and I walked down our street and we turned left at Justin Mendoza’s house. We walked along Mill Road, and I was pulling my wagon with one hand and I had Carl Sagan’s leash in my other hand, and we went past Mr. Bashir’s gas station and the Super 8 Motel right next to it. I wanted to say hello and good-bye to Mr. Bashir but I didn’t want to be late, and also I was worried that the Amtrak people might not let me bring my wagon on the train. But I wasn’t crying yet, that didn’t happen until later.

We got to the Amtrak station fifteen minutes before the train was supposed to get there. I showed the ticket guy my e-ticket and he asked me where are my parents, and I said it’s just me and Carl Sagan. He asked me where’s Carl Sagan and I moved to the right because Carl Sagan was hiding behind my legs. The ticket guy looked at me and he said, This is an adult ticket, and I said, Yeah, because the website only let me buy an adult ticket. He said that I need a children’s ticket and I asked him how can I get one, and he said I need to buy it with an adult ticket and I was really confused. He said I can’t get on the train by myself, I need to have an adult with me if I’m younger than thirteen. Then he asked to see my ID and I showed him my Planetary Society membership card, and he said he needs an ID with my birthday on it so I showed him my school ID, and that’s how he found out I’m not thirteen yet.

I told him I’m more responsible than a lot of thirteen-year-olds I know. I said I’m more responsible than even a lot of fourteen-year-olds. But he said it doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is your real age, and I said that’s really stupid because kids are different. They should give everyone a test to see how responsible they are and then give them a responsibility age. I know I’d be at least thirteen then because I can already cook and take care of a dog.

I didn’t say anything about the responsibility test to the ticket guy, though. I just thought about how I had all of my stuff and Carl Sagan’s stuff and Carl Sagan too, and I really didn’t want to miss SHARF, so I sat down on one of the chairs in the station and I started crying.

Carl Sagan started crying too because he cries whenever I cry, and then I thought maybe it’s better if I don’t go to SHARF. Maybe it’s better if I just stay in Rockview because I’ve never been away from home without my mom or Ronnie before, and if I stay here that means I’ll have more time to make recordings for you guys, and then when I have enough sounds from Earth I can launch Voyager 3 on my own, I don’t have to do it at SHARF, even though I spent all that money on my train ticket and on registration and now I won’t get to meet Europa or Calexico or anyone else from Rocketforum.

And that’s when I got out my Golden iPod and tried telling you guys what happened, but it just came out as a bunch of crying. And I heard the horn from the train coming and I cried even harder, I didn’t think I was ever going to stop.

But then I heard someone say, What’s the matter? and I looked up and it was this older kid and he was wearing a blue bandanna on his head and he had a backpack that was even bigger than I was. It was SO huge.

The older kid sat down next to me and it took me a while to tell him everything. I had to stop hurricaning before I made any sense. I calmed down finally to just scattered showers, and I told him I’m supposed to go to SHARF to launch my Golden iPod into space and all my friends from Rocketforum.org are going to be there, and I spent a fortune on the train ticket and I made food for my mom and put the GladWare in the refrigerator and now there’s no way I can go because I’m not thirteen even though I’m at least thirteen in responsibility years.

He said, This sounds like it’s really important to you, and I said, Of course it’s important, if it wasn’t important I wouldn’t be crying, DUH! Except I didn’t say that last part, I just nodded. I’m complicated.

He asked to see my ticket and I showed it to him, and I showed him my duffel bag with my rocket and my registration e-mail and my Google Maps printout of the SHARF site and even my 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner, I don’t know why I showed him that. He asked me where are my parents and I told him my dad died when I was really little and my mom’s at home, and she doesn’t really care what I do as long as I don’t bother her too much. He said, Man, you’re starting this early, aren’t you? and I said, Huh? Starting what early? And then he gave me back my folder and he told me that no matter what, just follow his lead and nod along to whatever he says, and I