by Jack Cheng
ALEX: Voyager 3 is already set up on the launchurdles next to all the other rockets, and Carl Sagan and I are standing by the registration tents next to all our new friends. After lunch even more people showed up, and even before the contests started some people were launching their rockets just for fun, and there were more dogs and NASA shirts and dogs with NASA shirts and Calexico was playing guitar and singing songs I didn’t know and—
ANNOUNCER: Next up, we have the D-class. That’s D as in Discovery, D as in Danger, which also happens to be my middle name.
[polite laughter]
ANNOUNCER: Just trying to lighten things up here, folks.
[dog barking]
ANNOUNCER: OK! First up in the D-class, we have Joel and Noah Turner from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Step on up, guys! Let’s give ’em room everybody . . .
ALEX: I know I didn’t get to record as much for you guys as I wanted, I was too excited meeting everyone and seeing their rockets and T-shirts and lip rings and purple hair that I forgot to record more! But I guess I did get the sound of trains moving and the sound of cars on the highway, and the desert at night and Steve talking on the phone with his girlfriend who he’s in love with probably and—
ANNOUNCER: This is Joel and Noah’s second SHARF festival, last year they took first place in the egg loft . . .
ALEX: —and now you know what the launches at a rocket festival sound like! Isn’t it SO exciting? Maybe after my launch I can get another iPod and build another rocket, I can build Voyager 4, and then next year I can come back to SHARF and launch that too, and then I’ll do Voyager 5 the year after and—
ANNOUNCER: All righty folks, it looks like they’re ready to go. Let’s count it down for them!
ANNOUNCER: Five . . . four . . .
ALEX: Three . . . two . . .
CROWD: One . . .
[high-pitched roar]
[clapping and cheering]
ALEX: It’s still going!
[popping sound]
ALEX: They have two parachutes!
ALEX: That was a good one too.
ANNOUNCER: A mighty fine start for the D-class. I have a feeling that’s going to be tough to beat. While Noah and his dad go retrieve their rocket, let’s get ready for our next contestant, Alex Petroski!
ALEX: IT’S MY TURN! Guys this is it!
ANNOUNCER: Alex is here all the way from Rockview, Colorado. You might’ve seen him around today, looking like a spittin’ image of the late, great Dr. Carl Sagan. Alex, come on up!
ALEX: I’m coming!
[hurried footsteps]
ANNOUNCER: Where are you going, Alex? The controls are here under the tent.
ALEX: I have to put something in the payload!
ANNOUNCER: Looks like we have some last-minute adjustments, folks.
ALEX: OK guys, I hope you like all the recordings I made. I’m putting in the charger cable with the Golden iPod so that way you can charge it, and I wish I had something beautiful and poetic to say like my hero would about how we’re all hurtling through the vastness of space on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam and stuff like that but I don’t, so I guess, um, just let me know if you get these recordings! Bye! I mean, hello!
[rustling]
[muffled clapping]
ALEX (distant): OK, I’m ready!
ANNOUNCER: He’s ready, folks. Let’s give him a countdown! Five . . . four . . .
CROWD: Three . . . two . . . one!
[high-pitched roar]
[rattling]
[crowd oohing]
[clipped thud]
NEW RECORDING 14
7M 47S
[wind blowing]
[fabric fluttering]
. . . can’t believe . . . [muffled] . . . still works . . .
I thought it was broken for sure.
[sniffling]
You guys are probably thinking . . . You’re thinking, how can he still be making recordings if Voyager 3 is in space?
Voyager 3 didn’t make it into space. It didn’t even go a hundred feet before . . . be . . .
[sniffling]
I’m not making any sense again.
I shouldn’t have yelled at that kid Noah afterwards. I didn’t mean to say that stuff about his dad doing all the work for him. I don’t hate that kid, I just felt bad because my rocket failed and his went really high, and my rocket didn’t even go half as high as his did. That rocket simulator didn’t work at all . . .
I did apologize to Noah, though. He accepted my apology, and his dad said it’s OK, it’s no big deal. Everyone told me it’s OK, they’ve all had rockets crash and there’s always next time. I said I know there’s next time but it’s my fault that there wasn’t this time.
I let my excitement get the better of me, and it left the worse of me behind, and the worse of me did a bad job of gluing Voyager 3 in the dark.
[sniffling]
On the Golden Record there isn’t anything about the times our rockets failed, even though they did. That’s because my hero wanted to put our best foot forward. He didn’t want to put in anything about our rockets exploding because what if you guys saw that and thought we were trying to make them explode on your planet? Then you’d probably be scared and hide from us. Or maybe you’d try to blow us up before we could do it to you.
But my hero also said that knowledge is better than ignorance, and it’s better to find out and embrace the truth even if that truth might not feel good. I wanted to put my best foot forward just like my hero, but I believe in the truth too, so that’s why I’m telling you guys what happened . . . why I’m telling you my rocket crashed.
The worst part is that I was so close. I was here at SHARF and it was a beautiful day and I made so many new friends and they were all watching, and I could’ve prevented the crash if only I was more careful. Or if only I practiced launching my rocket ahead of time.
I thought this Golden iPod got destroyed too, I thought I lost all my recordings and now I had nothing left, and I went back to my tent and I was crying and so was Carl Sagan, and I hugged him really tight and stuck my nose in his fur and we cried together.
And then, I don’t know, I kept thinking about that Ancestry.com notification, the one that said there’s somebody with the same name and birthday as my dad but in Las Vegas, and I’m still thinking about it even now, and I keep thinking, what if that person in Las Vegas actually IS my dad? I know my mom and Ronnie said my dad died when I was three, but what if he’s still alive and they just don’t know he’s still alive. Like, what if when he had his accident instead of dying he got amnesia, and when he woke up he forgot everything except his name and birthday and he didn’t know he had a family in Rockview. What if that’s what really happened? Then shouldn’t I go to Las Vegas to see if it’s the truth, to find out if it’s really him? My hero believed in the truth, after all, and so do I.
I wasn’t thinking most of this until just now though. I was still hurricaning before and my tears were making Carl Sagan’s fur wet, and it was even worse than at the train station, it was probably a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. Then I saw a shadow on my tent and I unzipped the door and it was Zed, and he was holding his chalkpad but it was blank and I told him to go away. I was mad at Zed too, I don’t know why.
CivSpaceScott and Elisa came up to the tent then also, and they were carrying some of the pieces from Voyager 3, and I tried to tell them I’m sorry my rocket failed and if they don’t want to give me an internship anymore I understand.
But they gave me the rocket pieces and Scott told me it’s OK, it happens to the best of us, in fact, it happened to CivSpace when they were launching their Cloud 1 rocket. And I said, It did? and Scott said yes. He told me they were still a very young company then and they spent so much time working on Cloud 1, and everyone was working nights and weekends for eight months straight lead
ing up to the launch.
But when the launch finally happened, there was a malfunction with one of the fuel lines and the rocket exploded. Scott said after it happened everyone felt so bad, and some people were crying just like I was crying, because they felt like they did all that work for nothing.
He asked me do I know what happened then? and I shook my head, and he said Lander Civet went up in front of the whole company and made a speech. Lander told everybody that they knew from the beginning there were going to be failures, this IS rocket science after all, and that this was only their second try. He said that right now was the most important moment—how they reacted to the failure. They could either let it stop them or they could redouble their efforts, figure out what went wrong, and fix their mistakes so they can make the next try a success. Lander Civet told them that there was no way he was going to give up, and he hoped they wouldn’t either.
Their next rocket only took them three months to build instead of eight, and it’s the same rocket that carried their Zeus spacecraft to the International Space Station. I wasn’t crying as much after Scott told me that.
Elisa gave me my Golden iPod then, and she said, Look, it still works, and I pushed the middle button and the screen lit up like normal. Elisa said the Civet Prize launches are starting soon, do I want to watch it with her and Scott? And I thought about what Lander said about learning from their failures, and I told Elisa I do want to watch, but first I want to make a recording for you guys. I said I have to keep making these recordings because I want to redouble my efforts, just like Lander said.
And now I’ll go watch the Civet Prize launches and learn from the college teams about how they build their rockets, and then I’m going to build Voyager 4, and if that fails too then I’m going to learn from those failures and redouble my efforts again, I’m going to quadruple my efforts to build Voyager 5, and I’ll go to Las Vegas and I’ll find my maybe dad and if he’s my real dad and he got amnesia then I’ll help him remember he has a family, because then he can help me build my new rockets just like that kid Noah’s dad helped him, we can build them even better and faster, and then my dad can be my man in love because he’s in love with my mom and we’ll all come back to SHARF next year as a family, Ronnie too, and we’ll launch our rocket with the Golden iPod into space together and it’ll be so great. No—it’ll be better than great. It’ll be perfect.
NEW RECORDING 15
7M 58S
Hi guys, a lot of people left already.
Only a few of us are still here. The launchurdles are gone and the registration tents are gone, Ken Russell took those down after the awards ceremony, and in the morning we’ll all be gone too. So if someone drives by tomorrow and looks out the window of their car, all they’ll see is flat desert. They won’t even know anything was here, because they looked too late.
Maybe after you get my Golden iPod you’ll come to Earth and by then there won’t be humans on our planet anymore, because you looked too late. And all you’ll have are these recordings to tell you what happened. I guess that’s why it’s important that I keep making them—so when you come here, you’ll know what it was like.
The rest of the launches yesterday were so good, guys. I learned SO much from watching them. And even though Steve’s rocket went really high it didn’t go as high as the college teams’s. Steve was so mad afterwards. He was even madder than I was! He called his roommate Nathan on the phone and started yelling at him, and when Skywalker team went to recover their rocket, Steve said he hopes that it crash-landed and they don’t win the Civet Prize. Then during the awards ceremony, Steve was saying how him and Nathan’s rocket could have done a lot better if they had big sponsors too, and they should put a camera on THEIR next rocket like Skywalker team did so they can post the video on YouTube and make some ad revenue. I think Steve was jealous.
That kid Noah and his dad ended up winning the D-class contest, by the way. I watched them go up for their gold trophy and K&H gift certificate and I tried to remember what Lander said about redoubling my efforts. But I was happy for Noah and his dad too—they built a really great rocket. And then afterwards at the barbecue Ken Russell came up to me and he gave me a K&H shirt!
I said, What’s this for? And he said it’s a special prize for Best First Effort, and I tried on the shirt and it was SO big, the only size he had left was adult XL which is an acronym for Extra Large. I said, You don’t have anything smaller? and Ken laughed and he said, You’ll grow into it, and his bushy beard was fluttering in the wind a little bit. It’s a very majestic beard.
Ken gave me his business card also, and he said if I’m ever in Taos, New Mexico, to stop by the store and say hello. I asked him is Taos close to Las Vegas? and he said Las Vegas is a lot farther west, and I borrowed his laptop again to figure out how much farther, and then I was trying to change my Amtrak ticket to go to Las Vegas instead of back—
Oh look, Zed’s coming with the wood! One of the college teams was taking apart their launchpad and Zed went to see if they’d give us the wood for a campfire. Steve’s going to be really happy now because he kept talking about the fire earlier, after he stopped being mad. It was all Steve could talk about besides talking about his LOX and his girlfriend.
[wood clattering]
Hey Zed, our fire’s going to be huge with all THAT!
[Zed laughing]
I think Zed’s going to start the fire now. He’s putting some dried sticks and bushes in a pile on the ground and—
What? Oh, sure, you can use some of it.
[paper tearing]
Zed wanted a couple blank sheets of paper from my notebook.
Now he’s crumpling them up and putting them with the dried bushes. I think he’s going to rub two sticks together until they start smoking and—
Oh, no wait, he has a lighter.
Hey Zed, isn’t that cheating?
[Zed laughing]
The paper’s on fire now. Some of the dried bushes are too.
Now Zed’s adding the smaller pieces of wood.
Hey Zed, Steve was right, you really are a pro at this!
[Zed laughing]
Anyway, what I was saying was that I went on Ken’s laptop and I tried to change my train ticket to Las Vegas, but it said that to change it I have to pay an extra fee of—
Sorry, Zed—what?
[chalkpad sounds]
That’s what I said, Las Vegas.
[chalkpad sounds]
Because my maybe dad lives there.
[chalkpad sounds]
I thought he died too, but then Ancestry.com said there’s someone in Las Vegas with the same name and birthday as him, so I thought maybe he didn’t die, maybe he got amnesia instead, and—
[chalkpad sounds]
You don’t have a phone or laptop! How can I show—
[chalkpad sounds]
Oh yeah! We can get Steve. But what about the fire?
[chalkpad sounds]
Oh OK. Let’s go get him, then.
Hold on, guys. I have to show Zed something.
NEW RECORDING 16
7M 16S
Hi guys, I’m back.
We found Steve after my last recording and he was trying to sell the rest of his LOX to the people who were still here. When Steve saw us he said, How’s the fire going? And I looked back by our tents and the fire burned out because Zed stopped adding wood to it. I told Steve, It’s not going so good but can I see your phone? I want to show Zed something.
I logged into my Ancestry.com account and I showed the guys my maybe dad’s name and birthday in the Nevada Marriage Index, and I said, See guys? It’s the same as my real dad’s.
And Steve said, So what? It’s probably just a coincidence, and I said that’s what I thought too but isn’t it a really WEIRD coincidence, that not only do they have the same name but the same BIRTHDAY also?
Steve asked me did my parents ever get divorced and remarried, and I said No, after my mom and dad fell in love on Mount Sam they got married and had Ronnie and thirteen years later they had me.
Zed wanted to see the phone, so I gave it to him, and he gave me his chalkpad and chalk to hold on to and he started googling stuff on the phone, he was typing so fast.
I said, Hey Zed, what happened to not using internet! And I thought he was going to laugh but he was really concentrated on the phone. And then he showed me and Steve a website that said my dad’s name, and underneath it was an address in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Steve and Zed looked at each other and then Zed looked at me, and I gave him back his chalk and chalkpad because it looked like he wanted to write something. Zed wrote, We’re Already Going, and he showed it to Steve, and Steve said, We’re already going?
He looked at me and then back over at Zed, and then he said, No, uh-uh, we’re not taking him with us.
I said, Taking who with you? Taking me? Taking me with you where?
And Steve said, Forget it, it’s not happening, it’s practically kidnapping, and Zed wrote on his chalkpad, Father Quest, and then Steve said, No, no more quests, I’m sick and tired of your quests! Steve was getting really mad again, I think he has anger management issues.
Zed kept waving his arms though, and Steve kept saying no way, and I said, Will somebody please tell me what’s going on! And then on the chalkpad underneath where it said We’re Already Going, Zed wrote, To Vegas.
I said, YOU’RE going to Vegas? LAS Vegas? That’s perfect! Can I go with you?
But Steve said no, I can’t, and then he turned to Zed and he said, Besides, what the bleep would we do afterwards, we can’t just leave him there! And Zed wrote on his chalkpad, Ronnie.
I think he meant that Ronnie is in LA, and since the guys live in LA too, they can just take me to see Ronnie afterwards. I told him that was a GREAT idea.
Steve said no way, Las Vegas was supposed to be HIS time, and I said, Your time for what? and then Zed erased his chalkpad and he wrote on it, More Important, and Steve said, For him maybe, but not for me! and then Zed underlined More Important and waved his chalkpad again. I’ve never seen Zed so excited.