Window 2

"A seed doesn't grow without soil."

"What?"

"A seed doesn't grow without soil," Marius said conclusively. The 25-year-old always spoke as if his words were the very last to be spoken, the very deepest to be spoken, the legacy of humankind echoing throughout the cosmos.

"Well, no shit, Marius."

Marius sat at a large bay window overlooking half of humanity. He leaned his head towards the glass in annoyance. "I meant the human spirit," he sighed, looking towards the stars like they were spotlights on his personal play. Then he looked back at the Earth, growing ever-smaller as he ascended "down" the lunar elevator. Or perhaps he was moving sideways. But no one could bring themselves to say "I went sideways on the elevator", so up and down he went.

"Ah, of course you did. Hey, Elsie."

B-ding! The floor glowed a soft purple as the Lunar Space Elevator, abbreviated as LSE and affectionated as Elsie, waited for a command.

"Route 66 on Window 2."

The window now showed a dusty highway moving by at 70 mph, and the occasional car.

Marius could no longer see the Earth and the stars, nor his olive-skinned face and meticulously wild hair reflected over it all. He did see license plates for different states of the U.S. -- how cute -- and attempted to play "the license plate game" for an unbearable 3 minutes. He peeled his forehead off the glass and turned towards his companion, embellishing his annoyance with a cross of the legs and arms, and some twisting in the face, too. An indignant pretzel. "Why do you always need the window on?"

"I don't need it. You do." Leo had been sitting at another bay window that faced the moon, smoking an e-Pipe that smelled of tobacco and oranges. He tapped the window 3 times - b'ding b'ding b'ding - a front porch in the American South on a Summer afternoon. Cicadas sang from who-knows-where. "You tend to philosophize when you look at the Earth too much."

Leo was 90 years old, which was the approximate retirement age these days, but had decided to keep working due to fear of idleness. He looked older, however, having been exposed to solar radiation in his 30's when the elevator's climber was less sophisticated. He was one of the first men on it, he would brag. Been picking up cargo from Earth for 60 years. Could've given it to a robot but they picked me instead!

"You've been climbing the Beanstalk for 60 years" Marius inquired, "and you've never contemplated your place in the Universe, looking down at all that?"

Leo stood up and stretched, cartoonishly creaking and cracking from the joints, and walked towards the precious cargo for today: a pageant of flowers, hundreds of species stacked in the middle of the cabin. "Well, of course I have. My place is right here." He stopped abruptly, then walked two steps to the right. "Although sometimes it's right here." He laughed on behalf of Marius, then shuffled over to a pot of marigolds on the floor. He sat in what his grandfather used to call "Indian Style," took a drag from his e-Pipe, and blew the fragrant vapors onto their little lion faces.

A smile tip-toed its way across Marius' lips. "Are you casting a spell on them?" He walked towards the old man and looked down on the ritual, amused.

"The smoke is mostly water vapor. Mixed with the carbon dioxide in my breath, it's actually a good little snack for them."

Marius leaned down to pinch the velvet petals of a nearby orchid and wondered what it would feel like to have bedsheets made of them. "Oh, a snack," he mused. "That's quite adorable." He plopped on the ground next to Leo. " When you do things like this, I start to think that you do philosophize every now and then."

"Phah."

Leo began to blow smoke rings, some of them big enough to wrap around the head of a marigold and give it a smoky mane. Marius was enchanted. Perhaps the spell was meant for him.

B-ding ding. ETA to Base Serenity is 10 minutes.

Home again, home again, Marius thought bitterly. To the glorified piece of space lint.

"There is one thing that I ponder a lot," Leo said slyly, stretching out his legs and releasing a grunt. "Why a young philosophicizer such as yourself decided to be a cargo-snatcher. You could be making history at the base." He blew another smoke ring. "Writing our first books, criticizing our first government, having one of the first executions for writing too many books that criticize the government." Leo looked towards Marius expecting a chuckle, but the young man's good humor had faded with the smoke ring. He stood up silently and walked back towards the window.

"Elsie, Window 2 off," he commanded softly. And he beheld the Earth and the stars and the thoughts that came with them.

The LSE did not connect to Earth, but extended only halfway, to save on costs. Cargo would be shot from Earth and directed towards the elegant outstretched hands of Elsie, like a kid shooting spitballs at a girl he's too scared to talk to. The closest Marius had gotten to Earth was about 120,000 km out. Marius tried to imagine the smell of New York when he was that close. He wasn't sure what "greasy" smelled like, but he hoped New York smelled greasy. He imagined himself falling out of Window 2 and beyond the dark animal of space, into the plush white arms of a cumulus, falling and falling until he landed face-first in the dirt, eyes closed and mouth open, the pulpy soil permeating his tongue and nostrils until his arms and legs became roots. Not an orchid's roots, a tree's roots. And when he grew, he would look out at the flat horizon while leaves sprouted and fell, sprouted and fell from his fingertips for a thousand seasons, until eventually he lost all memory of the Earth ever being a sphere.

"I like being close to it," he whispered. "Sometimes I feel like I'm standing on it."

ETA 5 minutes. The Earth could fit between his thumb and forefinger now.

Leo slowly and laboriously got up from the floor and walked to Marius, grasping him on the bicep. "Kid." Marius turned his head, half-listening. "I know you've heard this your whole life. But hear this from someone who grew up on Earth. We need to give them hope," he pointed towards the blue and green disc out the window, "not the other way around."

"Spare me the hero talk. It makes me want to shoot my brains out."

"Everyone on the marble would love that, a hero of humanity killing himself."

Marius scoffed, "Some hero. My only power was being born."

"And not dying. That's one of the most powerful abilities to have right now. You're proof that we can live out here. "

"Yes, yes."

"And I hate to remind you," Leo hesitated, tasting the poison of his words, "but for all we know, your body might not even be able to handle Earth."

Silent as the expanse between stars.

"This is your native soil, Marius. You need to grow here."

And with that, Marius was uprooted and coughed back up like a chicken bone stuck in the throat of Earth, past the clouds, past space, past Window 2, and back to the miserable spot where he now stood.

ETA 0 Minutes. Welcome Home!