My next slide was a bit of theater: a best-guess digital simulation of what that planet would look like through the occulted eyes of the Seeker. The room gasped, as if Congress said Let There be Light and the universe obliged. I pointed out that a picture that good, with all its data, could reveal whether the planet was inhabited. I finished by showing Robbie’s painting while quoting Sagan: We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Then I braced for less-than-courageous questions. The rep from West Texas came out shooting. “Can your atmospheric models tell the difference between a world with interesting life and a world that’s nothing but germs?”
I said that a distant planet filled with bacteria would rival the most interesting thing ever discovered.
“Could you tell if a planet had intelligent life?”
I tried, in twenty seconds, to say how that might be done.
“And what are the odds of that?”
I wanted to hedge, but it wouldn’t have helped. “No one thinks that is especially likely.”
Disappointment everywhere. Another congressman asked, “Can you do your work with the NextGen, if it ever launches?”
I explained why even that magnificent instrument wasn’t enough to peer directly at atmospheres. A superannuated congressman from Montana lumped the two telescopes together. “What if all these pricey toys tell us that the most interesting beings in the entire universe could have put their billions of dollars to better use right here, on the most interesting planet anywhere?”
I knew then why these men wanted to kill this project. The cost overruns were just an excuse. The country’s ruling party would have opposed the Seeker even if it were free. Finding other Earths was a globalist plot deserving the Tower of Babel treatment. If we academic elites found that life arose all over, it wouldn’t say much for humanity’s Special Relationship with God.
I stepped down from the podium feeling like shit. Weaving my way back to my seat through a narrowing iris of light-headedness, I heard my son exclaim, Dad! That was great! I hid my face from him.
Afterward, we lingered in the hall outside the hearing room. I postmortemed the battlefield with my colleagues. Some were still sanguine. Others had abandoned hope. A terse alpha from Berkeley suggested I might have done better with more statistics and less child art. But one of this world’s great planet hunters fussed over Robbie until he reddened. “You’re so beautiful!” she told him. And to me: “You’re lucky. I can’t understand why my boys love Star Wars more than they love the stars.”
WE WALKED DOWN INDEPENDENCE. Robbie took my hand. I thought you did great, Dad. What do you think?
My thoughts weren’t fit for young ears. “Humans, Robbie.”
Humans, he agreed. He smiled to himself, then lifted his gaze to the bronze Statue of Freedom at the top of the Capitol dome. Do you think any aliens have found a better system than democracy?
“Well, better probably looks different on different planets.”
He nodded, forwarding the memory to us in the future. Everything looks different on different planets. That’s why we need to find them.
“I wish I’d said that, back there.”
He held his arms out to embrace the Capitol. Look at this place. The mother ship!
We followed one of the winding footpaths through the green. Robin nudged us toward the steps. My heart sank when I realized what he had in mind. The butcher-paper banner stuck out of his backpack like a space suit antenna.
Here’s a good spot, right?
The difference between fear and excitement must be only a few neurons wide. Just then, one of the NASA engineers from the morning session came down the path. I waved to the man and said, “Let’s do this, Robbie!” We’d be finished in a minute or two, and at least one of us would have a victory to take back home.
While Robbie retrieved the banner, the engineer and I exchanged a guarded postmortem of the day’s hearing. “It’s just theater,” he said. “Of course they’ll fund us. They’re not cavemen.”
I asked if he’d mind taking a picture or two of me and my son. Robin and I unfurled his masterpiece. A slight breeze wanted to take the banner from our hands. Dad! Careful! We tugged, and the banner stretched to full length. It billowed like the jib of a space probe filled with solar wind. In the full afternoon light, I saw details in his creatures that I’d failed to see in the hotel room.
The engineer was all enthusiasm and crooked teeth. “Hey! You made that? That’s just great. If I’d been able to draw like that, I’d never have started with the ham radio.”
I gave him my cell phone, and he took several shots from different angles and distances in the changing light. A boy, his father, the dying birds and beasts, the insect apocalypse along the banner’s bottom, the background mosaic of sandstone, limestone, and marble dedicated to freedom and built by slaves: the engineer wanted to get it exactly right. Another pair of astronomers from the day’s meeting saw us from a distance. They came over to admire the banner and instruct the engineer on how to take a photo. The engineer flipped my phone over to show Robbie the lenses. “We came up with digital cameras at NASA. I helped build the billion-dollar camera that we lost in orbit around Mars.”
One of the astronomers held his head. “We’re the ones who forced you NASA goons to put a camera on that thing in the first place!”
Ordinary civilians and civics tourists stopped, attracted by Robbie’s scroll and the three old men happily shouting at each other. A woman my mother’s age fussed over Robbie. “You made this? You did all this all by yourself?”
Nobody does anything by themselves. Something Aly used to tell him, back when Robin was little. I don’t know how he remembered it.
We spun the banner around. The onlookers cheered the other side. They hemmed in to see the lush details. The aerospace engineer buzzed around, backing people off so he could take a fresh round of pictures. A shout came from a few yards down the pavement. “I knew it!” Somewhere in the billion revolving worlds of social media, a girl in her late teens must have seen posts of a weird little boy chirping his odd little birdsong. Now the teen milled about in this ad-hoc camp meeting, thumbing her phone through a trail of bread crumb bits back to the Ova Nova videocast. “That’s Jay! That’s the boy they wired up to his dead mom!”
Robin didn’t hear. He was busy talking to two middle-aged women about how we could re-inhabit planet Earth. He was joking and telling stories. The girl who recognized him must have started a text chain, because minutes later other teens drifted in from the east end of the Mall. Somebody pulled a ukulele out of his backpack. They sang “Big Yellow Taxi.” They sang “What a Wonderful World.” People were snapping and posting things with their phones. They shared snacks and improvised a picnic. Robin was in heaven. He and I stood holding the banner, occasionally handing it off to four teens who wanted a turn. It was like something his mother might have tried to organize. It may have been the happiest moment of his life.
I was so caught up in the festivities that I didn’t notice two officers of the U.S. Capitol Police pull up on First Street Northwest and get out of their squad car. The teens began to heckle them. We’re just enjoying ourselves. Go arrest the real criminals!
Robin and I lowered the banner to the pavement so I could talk to the officers. Two teens picked it up and began swirling it around like they were kite surfing. That didn’t lower the temperature of the situation. Robin threaded the gap, trying to make peace between his supporters and the officers. His chest came up to their gun belts.
The senior officer’s nameplate read SERGEANT JUFFERS. His badge number was a palindromic prime. “You don’t have a permit for this,” he said.
I shrugged. I probably shouldn’t have. “We’re not demonstrating. We just wanted to take a picture of ourselves in front of the Capitol, with the banner my son made.”
Sergeant Juffers looked at Robin. His eyes narrowed at the complication to law and order. No doubt it had been as
long a day for him as it had for me. Things weren’t good in Washington; I should have remembered that. Bullying was trickling down. “It’s unlawful to crowd, obstruct, or incommode the entrance of any public building.”
I glanced over to the entrance of the Capitol. I would have been hard-pressed to throw a baseball that far. I should have let it go. But he was being stupid about a thing that had given my son such hope. “That’s not really what we’re doing.”
“Or to crowd, obstruct, or incommode the use of any street or sidewalk. Or to continue or resume the crowding, obstructing, or incommoding after being instructed by a law enforcement officer to cease.”
I gave him my Wisconsin driver’s license. He and his partner, whose plate read PFC FAGIN, retreated to their vehicle. The last time I was caught breaking the law was in high school, shoplifting wine from a convenience store. Since then, not even a speeding ticket. But here I was, encouraging a small boy to take issue with the destruction of life on Earth. It was not socially acceptable behavior.
In five minutes, the two of them had all the information about me and Robin anyone could use. All facts, instantly available, to anyone. In fact, they didn’t need a single bit of additional data to know which side of the civil war Robin and I were on. The banner told them that.
It was not in my son’s lesson about the separation of powers, but the Capitol Police fall under the responsibility of Congress and not the President. But all such distinctions had been disappearing over the last four years. Congress itself now took orders from the White House, and the appointed judges had fallen in line. A steady destruction of norms—favored by less than half the country—had united the branches of government under the President’s vision. The laws did not say so, but these two policemen now answered to him.
The officers left their vehicle and waded back toward our cluster of people. As they approached, the two teens holding the banner began spinning rings around the officers. Juffers spun in place. “We’re going to ask you to disperse now.”
“This problem won’t disperse,” one of the banner-holders said.
But most of the gatherers had maxed out their political will and were drifting away. Juffers and Fagin came at the banner-holders, who let go of Robin’s artwork and fled. The banner blew limp across the pavement. Robin and I chased it. There’s still a crease and footprint where I stepped on it to keep it from blowing away. It’s right over the painting of what must be a pangolin.
The officers watched as we smoothed, dusted off, and rolled the banner in the stiff wind. You’re probably sad right now, Robin said to Juffers. It’s kind of a sad time to be alive.
“Keep rolling,” Sergeant Juffers said. “Let’s go.”
Robin stopped. I stopped with him. If the insects die, we won’t be able to grow food.
Officer Fagin tried to take the banner, to finish rolling and wrap up the show. The move startled Robin. He clutched his artwork to his chest. Fagin, defied by something so small, grappled Robin’s wrist. I dropped my end of the banner and screamed, “Do not touch my son!” Both men squared off against me, and I got myself arrested.
THEY CUFFED ME IN FRONT OF HIM. Then they tucked us into the sealed backseat of their cruiser for the four-block ride to USCP headquarters. Robin looked on as I got fingerprinted. His face glowed with a mix of horror and wonder. They charged me with violating D.C. Criminal Code Section 22-1307. My options weren’t great. I could get a court date and make another trip all the way back to Washington. Or I could admit to the obstructing and incommoding, pay the three hundred and forty dollars plus all administrative costs, and be done with it. Nolo contendere, really. After all, I’d broken the law.
We walked back to the hotel in the dark. Robin was all over me. He couldn’t stop smirking. Dad. I can’t believe you did that. You stood up for the ol’ Life Force! I showed him my blackened fingertips. He loved it. You’ve got a record now. Criminal!
“And that’s funny . . . how?”
He took my wrist the way Fagin had tried to take his. He tugged me to a halt on the sidewalk alongside Constitution Avenue. Your wife loves you. I know it for a fact.
THE NEXT MORNING GOT US as far as Chicago. ORD was in a state of heightened security not safe enough to communicate to the public. Armed guards with Kevlar breastplates and canine sniffers worked their way up the concourse as we made our way to our gate. I had to keep Robin from petting the dogs.
The gate was a cocktail of jet fuel and stress pheromones. What we used to call freak weather was creating a cascade of delays and cancellations. Our connector to Madison was running late. We sat in front of a suite of four TVs, each tuned to a different band of the ideological spectrum. The moderate-liberal screen reported more drone-delivered poisonings in the Upper Plains states. The conservative-centrist one covered a private mercenary force deployed on the southern border. I pulled out my phone and attacked the two-day backlog of work. Robin sat people-watching, his face a study in wonder.
Every time I glanced up at the gate board, our flight slipped another fifteen minutes. Someone on the gate crew was ripping the Band-Aid off as slowly as possible.
Alerts rippled through every phone in the gate area. A text from the new National Notification Service flashed across everyone’s screens. The message was from the President, emboldened these last two months by a series of unopposed executive orders.
America, have a look at today’s ECONOMIC numbers! Absolutely INCREDULOUS! Together, we will stop the LIES, SILENCE the nay-sayers, and DEFEAT defeatism!!!
I muted the phone and returned to work. Robbie sketched. I thought he was drawing people in the gate area. But when I looked again, his figures turned into radiolarians and mollusks and echinoderms, creatures that made Earth seem like a crazy 1950s issue of Astounding Stories.
I worked, ignoring the fidgeting in the chair to my left. A substantial woman, her head on a swivel, was berating her phone. “Is something going on out there?”
Her phone answered in the sassy voice of a young actress. “Here are today’s best events in the Chicago, Illinois, area!”
The woman caught my eye. I looked away, at the bank of television monitors: a cloud of acrylonitrile vapor several kilometers long was spreading through the Ruhr. Nineteen people had died and hundreds were hospitalized. A small paw clasped my forearm. Robin regarded me, bug-eyed.
Dad? Know how the training is rewiring my brain? His wave included all the craziness of the concourse. This is what’s wiring everybody else.
The woman to my left spoke again. “There’s something they’re not telling us. Not even the machines know what’s going on.” I didn’t know if she was talking to me or her digital assistant. Everyone else around us was bowed and tapping, lost in their pocket universes.
A voice came over the PA. “Ladies and gentlemen in the boarding area. We’ve been informed that no flights will be leaving this airport for at least two more hours.”
A shout rose from the seats around us—a thwarted creature ready to strike. The woman to my left held her phone level in front of her, as if about to eat an open-face sandwich. “They just said we’re in a no-fly. Yeah. Total no-fly.”
Another voice came over the PA, one so homogenous it must have been synthesized. “Passengers in need of unanticipated accommodation should apply at the service counter to enter a hotel discount voucher lottery.”
Robin tapped my calf with his toe. Are we going to get home tonight?
My reply was lost in shouts from down the concourse. I told Robbie to sit tight, then headed toward the commotion. A frustrated passenger three gates down had jabbed a ticket agent in the hand with his phone stylus. I returned to our seats, where the substantial woman was telling her phone, “It’s a cover-up, right? It’s those HUE people. Am I right? It goes deeper than you think.”
I wanted to warn her that it was no longer legal to say certain things in public.
Robin eyed the gate, humming to himself. I leaned in. The song was “High Hopes.” High apple pie i
n the sky hopes. Aly used to sing it to him in his infancy, while bathing him.
WE MANAGED TO MAKE IT HOME. Robbie went in for the neurofeedback session he’d missed, and I put out a rash of fires. A few days later, he took me birding. Holding still and looking had become his favorite activity in all the world. Naturally, he assumed it would bring out the best in me, too. It didn’t. I held still. I looked. All I could see were the dozens of outings my wife had asked me on, before giving up and going birding with someone else.
We went to a preserve fifteen miles out of town. We came to a confluence of lake, meadow, and trees. Right here, Robin declared. They love edges. They love to fly back and forth from one world to another.
We sat in tall grass by a boulder, making ourselves small. The day was crystalline. We shared Aly’s old pair of Swiss binocs. Robbie was less interested in spotting individual birds than he was in listening to the calls fill the ocean of air. I didn’t realize how many kinds of calls there were until my son pointed them out. I heard a song, wildly exotic. “Whoa. What’s that?”
His mouth opened. Serious? You don’t know? That’s your favorite bird.
There were jays and cardinals, a pair of nuthatches and a tufted titmouse. He even identified a sharp-shinned hawk. Something flashed by, yellow, white, and black. I reached for Aly’s binoculars, but the prize was gone before I got them up to my eyes. “Did you see what it was?”
But Robin was tuned in to other thoughts, receiving them over the air on some unassigned frequency. He gauged the horizon, immobile for a long time. At last he said, I think I might know where everybody is.
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