The Planet

It was about 2:00 a.m. when the popping noise woke Steven. It wasn’t extremely loud, but Steven had always been a light sleeper, especially if he had gone to bed upset, as he had four hours earlier after an argument with his wife, who was not awakened by the popping noise. Steven wasn’t sure, but he thought the noise had come from outside, maybe in the backyard of his suburban ranch home. He pulled back the curtains to see an unusually dark sky, only to realize his glasses were still on the nightstand. His vision had always been terrible, especially at night, but his glasses, which were designed to improve his visual acuity while reducing glare, should help him spot the anomaly that made the strange sound. Unfortunately, when he again went to the window, he noticed the same thing, just a bit sharper - that the sky was very black.

In a moment of bravery, Steven decided to sneak outside and check out this noise for himself. It was courageous not because of the possibility of what or whom he may encounter - their best-on-the-market home security system provided a sense of safety that his whole family could trust - but because he risked waking his wife Megan and continuing their argument from before.

He quietly ambled down the hallway past the bedrooms of his two hopefully sleeping children, Zach and Margot, through the dining room and the living room, and up to the sliding glass door separating the house from the back patio. Without stopping this time to take stock of the sky, Steven went outside and looked up to find something quite unexpected - there was now a giant, spherical rock hovering about 150 feet off of the ground over his and his neighbors’ yards. And Steven was relatively certain that this thing - in his head, he called it a planet - wasn’t there earlier in the evening. He would have noticed it, after all.

Steven had always thought of himself as someone who is adaptable. When Megan got a job as the assistant curator of the Boise Museum of Art eight years ago, he welcomed the change and didn’t complain once about uprooting his family, quitting his job at the nonprofit that provided after-school activities for children, renting a truck, and driving all the way from Lexington. Not once did he question his son Zach’s decision to join his high school’s football team; even though he was worried about the possibility of a head injury and, perhaps more damaging, that his son would fall into a clique of jocks that bullied and took advantage of children like Steven himself was many years ago. When Margot, at fifteen, refused to break up with her college-age boyfriend, Steven even invited the boy over for dinner to get to know him better and they were still together three years later. See! He was right to be flexible.

However, for all his ability to “go with the flow,” Steven had no idea what the hell to do now that the sky above his yard had been invaded by a planet. He had, quite literally, never experienced anything like this before.

He knew he didn’t want to shout in surprise; that could wake up his family and his neighbors. So he began by taking a brief visual survey of the situation. As he walked from his backyard into the Pierce’s to the west (there were no fences in their community, as the president of the neighborhood association had once told him, “Good fences make bad neighbors,” or something like that) he was careful to avoid their above-ground swimming pool. He continued his journey northward into the Trivett’s yard that abutted the Pierce’s, then through the Massie’s, the Blanton’s, and Cook’s before returning to the Coleman’s, his yard.

He estimated the sphere to be about 312 feet in diameter, which wasn’t really an estimate as he knew that each backyard was exactly 104 feet x 104 feet square, due to a dispute between Cal Trivett and Lucy Massie over the ownership of a dying pine tree supposedly on the border between their two properties, and the planet stretched from the west edge of the Pierce’s and Trivett’s to the east edge of the Blanton’s and Cook’s. The determination that the planet was 150 feet off of the ground wasn’t a guess either. The pine in question, which was still in dispute, was measured by the city at 45 meters (for some reason, the city used metric measurements) which equates to roughly 150 feet and, since the tip of the pine was grazing the surface of the planet in the chilly, evening wind, he had a good idea as to how far away the planet was.

Now that he had properly assessed the dimensions of the thing, he gave himself a little time to come up with a plan. First, he wondered if he could throw something at the planet, then chided himself for his irrational thought, then, in the absence of another plan, grabbed the 15-foot ladder that was leaning against the back of the house from roof work he had done weeks ago, and picked up a ratty tennis ball that their ancient dog Waylon treasured.

He set up the ladder on the line between his yard and Massie's yard, as he intended to throw the ball at the planet’s lowest point - after all, he wasn’t the athlete in the family. As he neared the top of the ladder, he felt something strange - a very light tugging feeling. He reached the penultimate rung, the one before the rung that said “Do Not Step On This,” and reached his right arm over his head, preparing to throw the ball. He didn’t throw the ball, however, as it was pulled very gently from his hand, as if he were playing old Waylon in a game of tug-of-war, and slowly traveled to the surface of the planet where it bounced twice and settled, still very much in his field of vision.

“Curious,” he thought as he began to take the unprecedented step onto the labeled-as-dangerous final rung, “I wonder if…”. This line of thinking was truncated by the loud scream he had forestalled when he first saw the planet so that his family and neighbors may stay asleep. He was being pulled off of the ladder and was drifting, quite slowly, upward toward the planet. He was grateful, however, that, in the 33 seconds it took for him to reach the surface, the planet had the courtesy to invert him so he landed on his feet instead of his face.

It was a bit brighter outside now as at least one light in all six homes had come on, presumably due to Steven’s scream. He threw up. He couldn’t help it, but he wasn’t sure if this need came from his utter disorientation, now hanging by his feet from a planet looking down on his backyard from above, or from the inconvenience he had created with his screaming. In any case, the vomit landed on the planet, thankfully not in his yard.

The first person to leave their home and venture outside was Morton Cook, the elderly man who lived alone in the house to Steven’s east (“Or are the directions backwards now?” he wondered). Morton, never one for subtlety, reacted first with a string of profanity that may have been the determining factor in waking the Pierce baby, who now shrieked through the entire neighborhood.

“What’re you doing up there, Steven? What is that thing?” he asked.

Before Steven had a chance to answer, the floodgates opened. Megan, Zach, and Margot all came outside. So did (he ticked them off in his head) Cal and his wife Angel Trivett, Lucy and her daughter Holly Massie, Buck (husband), Tiffany (wife), Skye (twin 1), Jewell (twin 2), and Sienna (regular daughter) Blanton, and Wade (carrying Nelson) and Page (carrying Forrest) Pierce.

Other than Morton’s concern, he could hear in the commotion that most of the initial conversation was about the planet itself, not about the fact that he, Steven, was standing on said planet.

“Hey Morton,” Steven said, trying to project his voice so the old man could hear, “I don’t know what happened. I heard this popping noise, then this thing was here, and I climbed up the ladder, and now I’m on it I guess.”

“Huh?” replied Morton, “Shut up for a second. Steven’s up there and he’s trying to say something.” He tried unsuccessfully to hush the gathered crowd - he especially had no sway over the caterwauling infant Forrest Pierce.

Steven, who had not moved an inch since he landed on the planet, decided to try walking towards Morton, which felt slightly lighter than on Earth (“My home planet” he thought with a slight giggle). He repeated his earlier statement to Morton, who gave him a thumbs up, indicating that he was heard this time.

His wife’s voice cut through the crowd, “Why did you go up there, Steven?” He didn’t have a great answer, so he told her about the tennis ball and his subsequent flight to the planet. “You’re not supposed to step on that rung, Steven. That’s why it’s labeled!” she replied with an abundance of care for his predicament.

“You can’t stay up there,” Megan added, “You’ve got to come down.”

“I don’t know how,” Steven yelled with emotion. Apart from the baby, this emotion quieted those gathered watching the scene.

“Hey buddy, you gotta calm down,” said Buck Blanton joining the chorus of concern.

“Have you tried jumping?” asked Angel Trivett.

Six-year old Holly Massie joined in asking her mother Lucy “Why is that man up there, mommy?” Steven couldn’t hear Lucy’s reply.

“Hey Dad, think fast!” He heard his son Zach’s voice and turned to see a football flying towards him. He reached out to catch it, but it bounded off of his left hand and landed on the planet.

“Cool!” yelled Zach, “What else can we throw up there?”

“Margot, get your idiot brother and go back inside. We will figure this out,” Megan ordered. The families with young children also sent them back inside, with supervision, of course, which left the Trivetts, Buck Blanton, Morton Cook and Megan to plan Steven’s escape from the planet, which they did quietly and without his input.

“Hey,” Steven said as loud as he could, “Did you forget about me up here?”

They talked for a few seconds more, then Cal Trivett, clearly their elected representative, spoke for the group.

“OK, Steven,” he said, “Here’s what we’re doing. We’re going to call the fire department to come get you down. While you wait, Morton volunteered to hang out here with you. Angel and I have to wake up super early, and Megan and Buck want to check on their kids, so it’ll just be you two. But I guess you can scream if you need anything?” He looked around at the group for assent and received a couple of head nods.

The gathered crowd, less Morton, said their goodnights and dispersed into their respective homes.

“So, uh, you doin’ alright up there?” asked Morton.

Steven decided to sit down. He had no idea how long he’d have to wait.

“Yeah, Morton,” he said, “I’m fine.”