The Lonely Astronaut

“There you are! I was wondering when you were going to show up.”

Cal gaped at the strangely suited figure looming above him.

One moment he’d been alone in the middle of the hayloft, and the next he’d been scared to death by a girl in a spacesuit jumping out of the gloom. From his new position on the floor, he could clearly make out his freckled face in the reflective helmet, surprise still stamped across his features.

“Well come on,” the girl declared impatiently. “There’s no time to lose.”

He allowed her to help him to his feet, mostly because he was in shock, and partly because he’d been taught it was rude to not take a hand that was offered to you.

“What took you so long? I told you to meet me here at 0700, and it’s almost 1000 now, see?”

She extended her wrist, where a scuffed pink watch with a fancy glowing display read 0956 MDCT.

“Sorry,” He said, still in a daze. “My mom made me finish my chores.”

"Oh, I know how that can be. Well, did you at least bring what I asked?"

He removed his frayed backpack- to which he'd glued bits of junk, electrical wiring, and dirty intake hoses he'd scavenged from his dad's workshop- and tugged on the zipper. The food inside was a little smashed from his fall to the floor, but it was otherwise edible.

She examined the contents closely then nodded once, apparently satisfied. "Can’t take any chances with low blood sugar when we’re jumping around the multiverse.”

Cal tried to gather his thoughts as she pulled a small electronic device from her pocket and proceeded to ignore him.

Was this the girl he’d been dreaming about for the last two months? It was hard to tell behind the mask. The Marigold he knew usually had a jetpack, but today there was only a large rectangular box. He wasn't familiar with the suit she was wearing either, but it made his own well-worn, handmade costume look juvenile in comparison.

A jolt of unease coursed through him as he watched the girl continue to text on what looked like a fancy cell phone. He was almost afraid this was a cruel joke being played on him by one of the kids at school. It was no secret that he was obsessed with Star Trek and the idea of space travel- he wore his costume almost every day- and he used to talk freely about Marigold until he was informed that having imaginary friends was something you were supposed to grow out of before you reached ten years old.

He balled his hands into fists, steeling himself for a confrontation. “What are you doing?"

"I'm adjusting our flight plan. Jumping through the multiverse is no walk in the park. You wouldn't want to be torn in half, would you?"

He narrowed his eyes. That imperious tone sounded just like Tilly, a sly-faced girl in his grade who seemed to enjoy making fun of him whenever she found an opportunity. Which was often.

"This isn't funny Tilly. Who put you up to this? How'd you find my barn?”

“Your barn?” She said indignantly. “Don’t you mean, our barn Calgary?”

In one swift motion she removed her helmet. Cal gasped.

“It's you!”

Marigold laughed. “Of course it’s me, silly! Who else would have a Multi-dimensional Flight Path Computer at her disposal?”

Cal could have kicked himself for not recognizing her, but then again, her lisp had been muffled by the mask, and it was only now that it had been removed that her most defining features were on display.

Marigold's dark skin was dappled white around her mouth and eyes, and her hair, which usually flowed freely around her face like a fuzzy halo, was currently pulled back into a disheveled ponytail.

Her eyes sparkled with glee. “Now I know what you’re thinking. How did I manage to pass through the multiverse to get here? Well, it’s pretty simple if you remember the theory of eternal inflation and add into your calculations the law of relativity, which most people don’t....”

Cal stopped listening. He was too busy trying to figure out how the girl with the gap-toothed grin he'd been dreaming about for the last several months was finally here.

He’d first met Marigold the night after he’d wandered across the dilapidated barn on the edge of his parent’s farm. It was just visible from his upstairs bedroom, across the acres of corn fields, on the most western edge of the property.

The funny thing was, he’d never noticed the barn was there before, and he'd lived on the farm his whole life. Stranger still, nobody else seemed to have noticed it was there either.

“How come we don’t use the barn anymore?” He’d asked his parents about a week after its discovery.

“We don’t have a barn dear,” His mother had said, trying to smooth back his unruly curls.

“Yes we do,” He’d insisted. “The roof’s all broken in, and some of the wood’s missing from the front door.”

“You must be thinking of your grandparent’s place,” His father had grunted, his sun burnt face intent upon dessert.

“No, Grammy’s barn is red, and ours is just made of wood. You can see it from my window.”

But his father had simply taken another bite of pie as his mother sighed. “Maybe you saw it in one of your dreams, like the spaceship with the red wings. Or your imaginary friend Mary.”

“Her name’s Marigold.”

"Your life support tubes are coming undone from your oxygen tank again dear." His mother had fretted.

"Duct tape's in the workshop." His father had replied, and there was the end to the conversation.

Cal had spent the next few weeks casually asking neighbors and schoolmates about the barn, but nobody seemed to know what he was talking about. Or else they pretended not to. So he gave up asking and it became his own secret hide away. The only people allowed inside were him and Marigold, the girl nobody had believed existed.

“...it’s just basic quantum mechanics.”

“How did you get here?" He asked, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that she was standing before him in his reality, feet shifting restlessly on the creaking floor.

“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, have you?” She shrugged her rectangular pack off her shoulders and removed from it a rumpled white suit similar to her own. “Here, put this on. It’ll probably be too big for you ‘cuz it’s Jeremiah’s, but it was the only one I could get on short notice.”

As he started to strip down to his underclothes, he considered for a moment that he was still in a dream, but he wasn’t sure his imagination was capable of creating such vivid details. Sunlight streamed through cracks in the ceiling, gilding Marigold's hair with molten gold; The hot air was ripe with the smell of decay; The smooth material of the suit was cool against his bare skin as he shoved his foot into an over-large pant leg.

And the girl in front of him was more real than all of these things.

This, above all else, brought him the most comfort. For the last several months he'd considered Marigold to be his only friend, and it was a relief to know that she was not just a figment of his imagination as he'd often been led to believe.

“What’re you smiling about?” She demanded.

“Nobody believed you were real.”

“Oh I'm real all right. Could a figment of your imagination pass through an anomalous barn from one universe to another with nothing more than a hand-me-down Md-FPC? I don't think so. Now come on! We’ve spent enough time dilly-dallying.”

“Where are we going?”

“First, to my place," She pulled a helmet out of the backpack and shoved it into his arms, voice rising in excitement. "I couldn't get more than one jet pack, so I thought we'd take a much faster form of transport."

After a few seconds of fumbling he managed to attach his helmet. He gasped as his view screen came to life with blue grids and rows of statistics that he couldn’t even begin to understand.

She grabbed his hand, her voice loud in his ears as it came through the comm system. “Hold on tight!”

She pressed a button on his wrist, and then her own, and he felt his body twitch forward. The air was suddenly being squeezed out of his lungs, and he wasn’t sure he could have let her go even if he’d wanted to. The world brightened to a glaring white, then slowly began to fade to black.

At first he couldn’t see or hear anything, but after a few moments of blinking the world gradually began to take shape. They were still standing in the hayloft.

Before he could ask her if something had gone wrong, she ushered him down the stairs and motioned through the barn door with a flourish. He squinted into the harsh sunlight. A glinting spaceship with sleek red wings was resting neatly on dirt before them.

“Pretty cool huh?”

He knew his mouth was wide enough to catch flies, but he couldn’t help it. When he’d made the long trip to the barn only a few minutes ago, he’d had to hike through towering fields of corn. Now, instead of fields, there were rows of short colored silos, and in the distance he could just make out a fancy house that was at least three times as big as his.

“I know it's not much to look at, but it’s home.”

He tried to recall what he’d learned about Terra 2 during their many conversations. It had sounded like Earth, except much more technologically advanced. They had flying cars, faster than light-speed engines, and machines that could make you any food you could possibly imagine.

Well, almost any food.

He turned to her, feeling suddenly shy. “If we're back before 7, do you wanna come to my house for dinner? We’re having apple pie for dessert.”

“You mean real apple pie? Oh boy, would I!”

He grinned at her, then remembered she couldn't see. It didn't matter anyway because at that moment she whirled at the sound of a shrill voice echoing from the depths of the silos.

“Marigold Flowers! I better not find you in the rocket again, or I swear you’ll be grounded for a hundred sols!”

“Hurry!” She hissed, practically shoving him towards the open bubble canopy.

“But your mom said-"

“Oh don't worry about that. She’s always threatening to ground me, but she only means half of what she says.”

He felt relieved. Her mom sounded just like his, which meant they had absolutely nothing to worry about.

He struggled with his harness as Marigold vaulted into the seat in front of him. The canopy closed, and in almost no time at all they were rising into the air.

“Onward, ho!” Marigold cried as the engines began to whine.

Butterflies erupted in the pit of his stomach, but a smile stretched across his face as he watched the barn, and the waving figure of Marigold's mother, shrink rapidly into the distance.

He had no idea where he was going, but quite frankly he didn’t care. He was with his best friend in a ship bound for another universe.

And absolutely nothing could bring him down now.