Mara was standing near the shore of the lake when Anna arrived. The noonday sun beat down directly overhead and was sandwiched between two towering cumulus clouds that billowed out in folds of white against a deep blue sky.
Anna descended softly, her feet lightly touching the ground as she landed. A silver, metallic box sat on the grass just behind Mara, whose arms were folded across her chest. Her expression was unreadable. Stoic.
“What’s going on? Everything ok?” Anna asked as she dropped her backpack to the ground.
“That depends. Are you ready?”
“For . . .”
“Lunch,” Mara said as she allowed a grin to soften her face.
“Really? You had me worried.”
“Today is a special day, Anna. I’m not one for celebrations. But, considering the success of our recent work, I wanted to show you my thanks,” Mara said. “Do you remember asking for a picnic in the sky?”
“Yeah, why?” Anna grinned. “Is that what the box is for?”
“Oh no. That’s a different surprise. Lunch is just the start.”
Anna looked around the lawn, and then back to Mara.
“I don’t see any food. Are we going somewhere to eat?” Anna asked.
“Yes, we are,” Mara said, then pointed directly up with her index finger. “Approximately two thousand meters straight overhead.”
“You’re serious,” Anna said.
“Almost always,” Mara said. “I created a floating terrace for us, where we can hang our legs over the edge and take in the view and eat. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It also serves as a good launch pad, too.”
“Launch pad?”
“You’ll see. Go ahead and open the box. I’ll explain as you try it on,” Mara said.
Anna knelt over the box and placed a finger on the small indent in the center of the metallic surface. The top of the box slid back and revealed a white bodysuit, just like Mara’s, folded neatly in half. The fabric glistened and shifted colors as she removed it from the box and held it in front of her. The top of the bodysuit had a hood and attached gloves, and the bottom had full leggings that would cover her feet.
“You want me to try this on here? Out in the open?” Anna asked.
“You could always change in the water if that makes you more comfortable.”
Anna looked around skittishly, then removed her shoes, t-shirt, and jeans and threw them in a ball near the box. She hurriedly put on the leggings first. The material felt slightly thicker than the shirt Mara had given her before, but it was just as light and pliable. The fabric wrapped around her like a second skin and formed a tight seal. No gaps or folds, just a perfect fit. There was a thin layer of soft padding that molded to the bottom of her feet. She pulled the top over her head and down to her waist with no effort, and just like the leggings, the fabric formed a tight seal once in place. The hood hung loose behind her.
“The fabric feels thicker,” Anna said as she swung her arms back and forth across her body.
“That’s to help regulate your body temperature and protect you from changes in atmospheric pressure,” Mara said.
“Atmospheric pressure?” Anna asked. “Where are we going?”
Mara smiled and waited for her young friend to catch up.
“No, it’s where you are going.” Mara said. “Do you remember I once asked you what you wanted to do most in this life?”
“Yeah. vaguely.”
“And?”
“And, I said I wanted to go to . . .” Anna stopped. Her eyes opened wide, and her arms hung to her side.
“Space?” Mara finished her sentence.
“Yeah . . . wait,” Anna said. “You mean, like space? Today?”
“That was the plan.”
“So. You’re saying this suit will get me into space? It has everything I need. Anti-gravity boots?” Anna asked excitedly.
“Built right in. And radiation protection, thermal protection. Trust me, you’ll be fine,” Mara said. “The question is, how high do you want to go?”
“As far as I can,” Anna said, as she began bouncing on her toes.
“Safely.”
“Sure, safely. But at least 50 miles. That’s the altitude you need to earn your astronaut wings,” Anna said.
“SID will make sure you track with Earth’s rotation and that you don’t wander off into the vacuum of space. That wouldn’t be good,” Mara said. “But you control everything else. Are you ready?”
Anna didn’t wait. She flung her backpack over her shoulders and shot up straight into the sky. Mara looked up at the streaking figure and shook her head.
“You might want to wait for me. You have no idea where we’re going.”
Anna could see the blue outline of the floating terrace from several hundred feet away. It was elliptical and blended in with the towering cumulus cloud floating just hundreds of feet away. They both landed gently on the transparent surface. Below their feet, they could see lower hanging clouds drift past, as well as a flock of birds and a green patchwork of forest and farmland. In the middle of the invisible terrace sat an old-fashioned picnic basket that looked suspended in midair.
Mara carried the basket to the ledge and opened it. Inside, were two large sandwiches, two glass containers of water, almonds, sliced cheese and grapes, and assorted small pastries and chocolate.
“Did you make this?” Anna asked.
“Of course not. I ordered it from Ivanhoe Diner,” Mara said. “The chocolate things are amazing, by the way. You should try them first.”
“I like your priorities.”
“Did you know that I had never tasted chocolate before yesterday? Cacao doesn’t exist in my time.”
“Really?” Anna said between mouthfuls. Chocolate lined her teeth. “That’s tragic.”
The two sat down and let their legs dangle over the edge and began to dig into their sandwiches which contained goat cheese, sliced green apples, and salted ham. Another first for Mara, who closed her eyes after every bite.
“Do you have any advice for my first space flight?” Anna asked.
“No, you know everything you need to know. And SID will make sure you don’t go too far off track,” Mara said. “But I might recommend waiting a couple of minutes to let your stomach settle. Trust me on that one.”
“How long can I stay up there?”
“It’ll take you about 15-20 minutes to make it to the edge of the thermosphere. Another 15-20 to come back. You just need to make it back in time for the fair tonight. So, I figure you can spend an hour or so up there. You’ll be surprised how quickly time will pass,” Mara said.
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“Because you have the special suit,” Mara said. “It’s also something that may be best experienced in solitude.”
“Are you just going to hang around here then?” Anna asked.
“Hang around here, enjoy the view,” Mara said, then reached into the basket for one of the cherry tarts. “And finish off the rest of these.”
Anna laughed, then wiped her hands on her legs. She reached behind and grabbed her backpack, opened it up, and pulled out her sketchpad and pencil. The breeze blew her hair across her face and made the pages of her sketchbook flutter so that she had to hold down the edges of one side with her elbow.
She looked out directly in front of her and watched the clouds slowly churn and shapeshift like milk in water. The cloud tower had grown since they arrived and now rose several thousand feet above their heads. And there they sat, in a canyon of rolling clouds. It felt like a childhood dream, where she could just reach out and scoop up a handful of cloud and eat it like candy. It felt like Mt. Olympus, and she was Mercury, flying high above the ground. She looked down at her sketchbook and realized she would never be able to capture what she saw at this moment and decided it was better to just try and hold onto this feeling for as long as she could.
The two sat silent for several minutes, then Anna closed her sketchbook and placed it back into her backpack. Just as she leaned back, a stiff, cool gust of wind laced with moisture blew across their faces. Droplets of water frosted their hair and tickled their skin. Anna wiped her hand across her goggles and began to laugh.
“Well, that was a lovely damp rag,” Anna said. “There’s a lot of moisture in the air. Are you sure a storm isn’t coming?”
“I double checked before we left. We’re good. These clouds will begin to thin out in another hour, so you should have a beautiful return,” Mara said as she brushed her hands off and stood up. She reached down and offered her hand. “Are you ready? It’s time.”
“I think so,” Anna giggled, as she took Mara’s hand and pulled herself up. “Is it okay to say I’m nervous?”
“I’d say something was wrong if you weren’t,” Mara said. “Here, put on your hood. You’ll want to make sure it’s a solid seal.”
Mara helped place the hood over Anna’s mop of thick hair, and just like the rest of the suit, the hood instantly formed a tight seal around her face. Anna activated her mask and heard an audible click as it attached to the rest of her suit. She ran her gloved fingers across the sides of her face then down her sides. There were no visible seams. No exposed skin.
“How fast can I go?”
“I’ll leave that to you,” Mara said.
“I can’t believe this is happening. Thank you, Mara. For everything,” Anna said.
“Of course,” Mara said. “Now go.”
Anna took in a deep breath, clenched her fists, then looked up into the sky. “See you soon.”
And with that, Anna shot into the air, her white suit a blur against the cathedral of clouds that swirled around her. Mara stared straight above, with her hand shielding her eyes, until the faint blue line that tracked Anna’s progress faded to nothing.
“SID, can you tell me what she’s seeing?”
Within seconds, Anna raced past the top of the cumulus tower and was flying in the clear. The sun was blinding at this height and the sky a deep, monochrome blue. She looked down. Just on the edges of the cloud bank, the rest of the world opened up and Anna could make out vast swaths of farmland and rolling hills. She could see the shadows cast by smaller, cotton ball clouds, rolling across the landscape. Lakes and small ponds, rivers and streams reflected the full glare of the sun in brief flashes like sparkling jewels.
It took her less than 18 seconds to climb another mile, and Anna let out a shout of pure joy.
Within minutes, she passed through contrails formed by jets crossing the continent beneath her. She was now above the flight path and ascending quickly. A mile every 13 seconds and accelerating. Her body was a dart barely registering any turbulence.
From this height, towns and cities became grey, crystal-like formations with sharp edges and odd lines. Roads and highways ran like threads, connecting the cities, until they blended into a landscape of green and brown and signs of civilization began to lose their edges.
As more of the landscape opened up, Anna was surprised to see that there were no map lines dissecting the terrain beneath her. She laughed to herself at how she had been conditioned to look for boundaries. At this height, she saw no parallels or meridians, just a continuum of land and water. She had always prided herself on being a person of the world, but she never felt that physical reality like she did at this moment. She was an inhabitant of this entire planet, not a square on the map.
Minutes later, Anna could make out the Great Lakes hundreds of miles to the north; impossibly big, like oceans. From this height, she saw a world she had only seen in books, but those images didn’t prepare her for this. The colors in those photos weren’t nearly as bright, and they didn’t reveal the myriads of shades and contours, the dimensionality of a great space unfolding beneath her.
The sky was darkening, even as the sun shined brighter. A strange juxtaposition she didn’t expect. She also didn’t expect the absolute and total silence that enveloped her, that gave her a sense she was floating even though she was now flying at almost half the speed of sound. Her earlier elation gave way to a quiet sense of calm, and she thought of the little girl who once leaped off the edges of beds and the sides of houses in hopes of breaking free of Earth’s gravity. But this moment was nothing like her earlier imaginings, with their flat primary colors and simple line strokes that represented topographical changes. Up here, she sensed the unfolding of geologic time. The topography swirled and flowed in countless shades of green and the clouds looked like small wisps of foam clinging to the surface of an ever-changing landscape.
More minutes passed and the night-blue sky gave way to the great darkness beyond, and Anna could see Earth’s horizon as a curved line for the first time. She was getting closer. Stars dotted the midnight-blue dome above her. Higher still, and she could see Earth’s atmosphere as a curved line too, but it looked so fragile and impossibly thin. How could so much exist within that delicate shell, all of her life and everyone and everything she had ever known contained within its limits.
She checked her iCom and saw she was now over 67 kilometers above her home, or 42 miles as she did the math in her head. Temperatures had dropped far below zero, but she couldn’t tell. Her insulated suit constantly adjusted to the variations in temperature and radiation exposure. It had taken less than twenty minutes to travel this far, and she was now well into the mesosphere; the great in-between. No longer tethered to Earth, but not yet part of space, Anna felt her connection to home loosen. It was a strange, humbling feeling. As more space opened beneath her and above her, her sense of self began to dissolve.
We really are wanderers, she thought. She remembered having this craving even as a young child, to not just break free of the confines of Earth, but to discover new worlds and new ways of seeing. But now, so close to open space, she began to question whether that desire was something she was born with, or if it was more of a beckoning that originated somewhere out there, in the stars.
Her iCom showed she was now 93 kilometers above Earth, more than high enough to earn her astronaut wings, but she wanted to go even farther to the very edge of space. She slowed her ascent, but didn’t notice a change in acceleration, and for a moment, she wondered if she had gone too far. She closed her eyes and felt herself tumbling backwards. Panic set in, and she looked to her iCom for reassurance. Her altitude readings continued to tick up and she was headed in the right direction after all, but now at a much slower space. A trick of low gravity, she thought.
If she travelled just a little farther out, she knew she’d end up leaving this planet forever. Anna stopped her ascent and floated with her arms spread out to her sides. The endless sea of stars seemed to take on a depth she never saw on Earth; a three-dimensional image she felt she could reach out and touch.
The desire to keep going was strong, but a new feeling, even stronger, began to take hold. She missed home. Mara was wrong. She said time would fly by. Instead, Anna felt as if she’d been gone a lifetime.
She looked back down and had to reconcile two competing perspectives: how grand and immense the view was beneath her, but simultaneously fragile and small and precious. She thought of what Mara had told her yesterday, about the rapid changes her world would soon see, and suddenly felt a desire to somehow protect it.
<Anna?>
SID’s voice sounded unbearably loud in the quiet of space.
“I’m sorry, SID, but could you lower your voice?”
<Pitch or volume?>
“Volume please,” Anna had softened her own voice to a whisper. “What do you need?”
<You’re now at the edge of space. I’ve limited your capacity to travel any higher as a precaution. But feel free to stay as long as your oxygen levels allow. It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it, Anna?>
“Yes, it is, SID.”
<Signing off now until you return. Mara wants you to enjoy the view.>
Anna didn’t respond. She wanted nothing more than to enjoy these final few minutes in quiet, to take in as much as she could before she returned home. Half of the world to the left of her, half of the world to her right. Then suddenly, a red flash caught the corner of her eye.
Her first thought was that it had originated from inside her eye, a flicker across her visual field due to a change in pressure. Or maybe it was an asteroid disintegrating off the mesosphere just beneath her. She looked to her left and waited.
Another red flash. This time there was no mistaking it. It filled her line of vision for less than a second, like lightning, and left a fading afterimage burned on her eyes that showed a large elliptical ball at the top, and tendrils that dangled beneath like a clump of roots that had been yanked from the ground.
“Wow! Did you see that, SID? I think I just saw red lightning. Is that even a thing, or am I going crazy?” Anna called out across her iCom.
Anna floated in silence waiting for a response. The seconds ticked off, but still no reply.
“SID? Can you hear me?”
Still no response. Slowly, a crawling, hollow feeling began to work its way out from her stomach to her chest. She started taking in short, quick breaths. Another bout of panic began to set in, and a feeling of complete isolation, like she was floating adrift in the middle of the sea with no land or friendly face to be seen for thousands of miles.
“SID!?”
<Anna! Get back here as fast as you can. Mara is in trouble.>