Rocket Man

Adam Daedalus Rocket was not born with the middle name Daedalus, or the last name Rocket. He chose his own names. The kids in the orphanage taunted him relentlessly. “You’re a moron to dream you can go to the stars, the shortest kid in the class. Elton John’s Rocket Man is not even a real astronaut, but some character in a dumb song!” The jeering that stung the most? “Your parents didn’t even care enough to keep you. You were unloved.”

There was no time for anything but school as far as he was concerned. He made no friends and kept to himself. “He’s an odd one,” his classmates would say. “His eyes are more on a comet 50 light years away, an asteroid belt 100, or a galaxy. He’s a joke.” But even the meanest students had to admit, if only to themselves, Adam was obsessed with astronauts to his bones. He worked not just hard, but singularly driven, and he’d make it to NASA Space Academy.

By the time he was thirty, he’d blasted off the blue marble of earth more times than anyone. He was the genuine article, streaking away in the early dawn, the curvature of the earth shimmering in the sun. Assigned missions for his skill, but also because he had no one to leave behind, his only ambition was to travel in space, alone.

And now he was on a mission with more risk than ever before. When he reached Mars, it would be 500 years into the future and take less than a day. A special engine with never used technology lay waiting in the belly of his bullet shaped spacecraft, Icarus. At first, he ripped through the sky as usual, the rocket fuel roaring behind him, his body riding a bunking bronco. But this bronco was powered by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and he was the first man to chase time. Once the fuel engines played out, an unproven gravity control engaged, and the new engine woke. Icarus reared up and howled. She leaped to her stride. With his chest compressed in G forces sucking his breath, he launched into the future at what felt to him like a million-million miles per hour. But he wasn’t scared. He laughed as the first years in minutes distanced behind him.

On earth, time moved fast as well. At first, his heart stirred at the miracle of life; perfect blue oceans, swirling clouds of weather systems, and the shimmering lights from the cities of the eastern seaboard of the United States. The earth was in its supreme glory that early morning. But then the sight of earth pierced his stomach as if stabbed by a Satan’s herald. This terrified him with a grief he didn’t know, his blood rushing like his heart was on fire and would soon burst from his throat. 

Just a few years had passed compressed into the first hours after launch, and the earth had flashed a different kind of glory. Behind his spacecraft, malevolent evil rose in mushroomed clouds, the lost hope of a nuclear insanity. What would take weeks, or years, or decades on earth, for him was just a few hours, and ended in a hulking dead planet, the last gasping breath of a sorrowful and smoldering wasteland, leaving only debris and death. 

Ahead of him loomed ever closer the colony of Mars. But as he approached, 500 years unfolded. The colony transformed into a vast metropolis. What looked like clear domes fabricated by giant honey bees covered towers of high rises, their sparkling lights reminding him of London, New York, or Hong Kong. In an instant, he felt the deck beneath him shudder as his ship went into orbit, guided by an unseen force.

His communications consul sounded out with what the Commander first thought was the voice of God. “Welcome to Mars, Commander. We’ve been waiting for you.”

***

“You were the first sent and the last to arrive,” Dr. Felix Fitzwalter said. A scientist, he had rumpled white hair, an old man. In the earth weeks that the Commander had spent on Mars, from what he could tell, the city stood near exhaustion, trash blowing in the streets, empty buildings, and collapsed schools with Martian sand drifting in doorways. When he saw people, they gathered together like aging denizens of Greece, dressed in robes, and talking in groups like chittering sparrows.

“And you’re our last hope,” interrupted Chairman Mathews, his face like a politician, sycophant, and beady eyed.

The Doctor glanced at the Chairman, scowling with his white eyebrows, his forehead furrowed.

But Commander Rocket’s questions never stopped. “Why the last to arrive? Who came first? And why am I the last hope?” 

Dr. Fitzwalter chuckled. As he did, his formidable belly jiggled. He wore a scarlet Mars Federation logo on his white robe. “Let me explain.”

Again, Chairman Mathews stared down the doctor. “A travesty. This is what happens when humanity has the power to destroy. It’s human nature. Earth is just one more example.” He snapped his fingers. “Gone... But it’s fate and messing with time that’s a sin. Earth paid the price, Commander.”

The doctor stood up and towered over Mathews from behind him. “What you don’t know, Commander, is your fellow astronauts came after you and died hundreds of years ago. But they told us about you, the speed of your ship fast enough to come well after them. It’s only you, Commander, who arrived over 500 years from earth’s catastrophe. You’re the last.”

Commander Rocket nodded. He’d guessed if he could reach Mars in a few months, others could also. He wasn’t surprised he was the fastest. “Why is everyone on Mars so old? The streets are empty? Where is everybody?”

“That’s why you’re the last hope, some of the misguided say,” said Chairman Mathews. “But you can’t mess with fate. Half our population thinks you’re the Messiah. There’s a better place ahead of us.”

“You see, Commander,” said the Doctor. “We can’t procreate. We can’t conceive. It seems the DNA alterations we used to extend our lives modified us. A sad irony, given we were pursuing life extension.”

“Modified!” Mathews declared. “Just like earth, we’re dying also! We live until 200, but our youngest are nearly 100! It's blasphemy and there’s nothing we can do.”  

The Doctor took a seat next to the Commander and leaned in towards him. He gripped the Commander’s eyes with his own. “We can’t seem to complete artificial insemination because of the DNA infection. We’ve concluded we need an uninfected man and a natural birth. YOU don’t have damaged DNA, and we assume, can perform naturally.”

The Commander put his hand on his own head as he realized. “So you want me to have a baby? Who with?”

The doctor smiled.

***

The woman, Evelyn, chosen for the Commander, was over 100 years old, looked 30, and embraced the excitement of life like a sixteen-year-old. She was having no nonsense from Adam. If they were going to do this, they would do it her way, and by golly they were going to have a baby post haste.

“You’re doing a heroic service for the continuance of life on Mars,” Evelyn said, snuggling down next to the Commander. They were outside the Mars Interstellar Research Center (MIRC). She scanned the Commander up and down while he fidgeted.

“I’m not really sure how this works,” he said.

Evelyn laughed. “You’re not sure how sex works?”

The Commander turned red. “It’s not that, it’s…it’s...”

And so began to everyone’s observation, a love affair. And it worked. After the entire Mars community held their collective breath, Adam, Jr. was born, a bawling blue-eyed boy. The Commander, to everyone’s surprise, became a doting father. 

Mars City glowed like first time grandparents while he pushed the baby carriage (which he insisted on doing). The gossiping matrons passed him, pretending it wasn’t on purpose. “Good afternoon, Commander. Your boy is quite the handsome young man!”

The Commander would light up with the broadest ‘proud poppa’ smile imaginable. “He is, isn’t he?”

It wasn’t just Adam Jr. that captured his father’s eye. The Commander and Evelyn were inseparable. He would sneak looks at his wife doing the simplest of tasks, preparing dinner (he cleaned up), painting at her easel with her delicate fingers (she was an artist), and laying out his manuals to help him study the new science. His heart would break just at the sight of her.

Dr. Fitzwalter was beyond delighted. “You realize, Mathews, where this is headed?”

“Yes. You want this Rocket Man to be a very busy man,” replied Mathews. “It’s a sin is what it is.”

The Doctor flicked his forefinger at Mathews, dismissing him. “We’ll marry each of them off if that makes you happy, but there’s an issue. I’ve never seen a man more in love with one woman. How will it go with another woman?” He placed his hand on his chin and his mind on the repercussions.

But neither man knew ‘the repercussions’ would shortly become unnecessary.

***

The Commander knew something was up when Dr. Fitzwalter and Matthews brought him and Evelyn in.

Dr. Fitzwalter stood with his back to the Commander as he gazed out the conference room window, fifty stories high, a purple gray overcast day above the sheen of the clear domes. Behind the glass of each building were fewer and fewer people. The city was dying.

“We’ve had our hopes, Commander, but tests show Evelyn has, for lack of a better term, infected you. There’ll be no more babies.”

“And you were the last hope, remember?” Mathews said, smirking. “The last DNA from earth. This is written as I expected and caused by our own sin. We will all surely die.”

“So what now?” The Commander asked.

Dr. Fitzwalter turned. “Now you live your life — you, Evelyn, and your son.”

So the Commander did live his life, and what a life it was. For the next fifteen years he was a husband and father. The Martians accepted the inevitable death of the race, not with sadness, but with a celebration of life. Festivals were commonplace, fireworks flared the sky with blues and reds as only the Martians could do. Bursting into space itself was a man-made Martian aurora borealis like the tides of heaven flowing forth. And why not? They were living, and living is about life, not death. But within those rising beacons in the sky were also messages for any civilization to hear. ‘Is anyone there? We are alone and dying. Help us.’

Adam Jr. was sixteen before his father knew it. They both learned together the Martian science of rocket propulsion. With a dying race, the mission was more about building a library of knowledge for whoever might come to a dead planet. The actual engineers with the knowledge of advanced science became ever scarcer.

As the Commander aged, he turned gray. He was surprised when Dr. Fitzwalter called him in once again to the MIRC Facility.

After small talk, the Doctor said, “We’ve had a turn, an unlikely possibility, but our scientists are telling us you may have one more mission. If you’re willing, that is.”

The Commander’s radar tickled the crook of his neck. Why was the Doctor so shy about getting to the point? “I’m pretty old for missions, Doctor. I’m not the man I used to be.”

“Here’s the thing Commander.” The Doctor spoke quietly, but his eyes glinted with excitement. “Our remaining engineers say they’ve possibly rewritten the rules of spaceflight—not to mention completely defying conventional physics. An impossible drive, they call it the EmDrive.”

In his gut, the Commander knew his life on Mars was going to end. “So how does this affect me?”

“We can send you back Commander, back to the actual day, 24 earth hours AFTER you blasted off earth. NASA will think you were only gone one day. But after decades, you will return nine weeks and three days before the beginning of the nuclear war. As you know, relativity has been proven to take us forward in time as we approach the speed of light, but going BACK in time is thought of as impossible. Einstein, over 500 years ago, predicted it was impossible. But our people are hoping to bend, if you will, the space-time continuum. Unfortunately, if we send our own Mars spacecraft back and the future changes just from the simple observation of what we’re doing, our spacecraft won’t make it. We might never exist once the past changes. The only chance for success is to send objects that actually came from the past. You, and your spacecraft, certainly qualify. And we’re hoping, desperately hoping, your memories on Mars will also stay intact.”

The Commander hesitated, the pit of his stomach soured as he thought of Evelyn, his son Adam. “That means by returning to Earth I can change the future. But if I’m successful, will everything that I experienced on Mars never happen?”

“Precisely. At least not in our plane of reality. We surmise infinite planes, each with their own past and future.”

The Commander’s eyes glistened. “Why go back Doctor? To die with everyone else on earth?”

“No Commander. Not to die in a nuclear blast. To prevent it. And if possible, send another type of message.”

***

Harnessed in the command seat of Icarus, feeling the adrenaline spike in his chest, the Commander guided his spacecraft through space. Mars receded as the centuries unraveled over three years of flight to return to earth. The clear globes covering the planet’s cities faded. Mars slowly turned into the red planet with only a colony remaining.

Two photos, the only objects from Mars he brought with him, were taped to the rear monitor. His loneliness grew in the silence of space, and he couldn’t help willing himself back. He couldn’t help weeping for his own death, for a false hope of return. Space turned a cold shoulder as he burned out his fuse, alone in the emptiness. He pressed his hands white against the bulkhead, his forehead pressed against the monitor next to the photos, pleading against the reversal of time.

Ahead of him, the dead planet of earth turned from the darkest agony to an aqua blue beneath living clouds of swirling white. It was now three years since he’d left Mars. He was back 500. As the re-entry through the earth’s atmosphere scorched around him, Icarus’ wings were aflame, he rode a comet ablaze in the sky. No, you haven’t gone too close to the sun, he thought. You have lived, and loved. Touchdown on earth occurred in exactly the three years he was scheduled. I’m old, but not too old, he thought. I’m still a Rocket Man after all.

***

“You have about three months, Madam President.” The Commander petitioned his case, spilling his memory to those gathered in the oval office. The President, Secretary of State Forsyth, three others. Why won’t these people believe me?

The President shook her head dismissively. “Again, Commander, you’re telling me you SAW earth destroyed by nuclear war? This seems preposterous, you must admit.”

Secretary of State Forsyth, dressed in a slick black suit, the party logo of a black taloned hawk on his lapel, chimed in to the President as if the Commander wasn’t there. “The enemy has ways of injecting disinformation into our people. This man has no background in anything but spacecraft. No world view.”

The Commander was ready to give up. Exhausted, he was tired of explaining what he saw when he left earth the day before, but also what he found on Mars 500 years ahead; the dying of life, the infections, Evelyn and Adam. In final frustration, he thrust to the front of his seat, spilling his coffee. “I left one day ago, Madam President. Look at me! I’ve aged at least thirty years.”

Secretary Forsyth stared only at the President as he spoke. “You can’t travel BACK in time. This spaceman could be some sort of double agent for all we know. But for the look of his supposed aging, he’s only been gone one day. That can be faked. Worse, we’d be violating our Preemptive Policy. This could mean your impeachment Madam President, losing the coming election. This is not a time for naïve olive branches, but peace through strength.”

“Walk with me Commander,” The President said. The two of them strolled to the Rose Garden.

Snow flurries were falling in the early evening but The President ignored the cold. “I can try, Commander,” she said. “I’ll tell your story. But I can’t promise anything. You know Commander, if you’re right, have you thought of what happens if we contact the Mars Colony NOW with what you’ve told us about their DNA?”

***

The Commander approached security in a brisk walk, like he always did. At the desk, a young woman called out to him. “Hey Space Cowboy,” she said. A tiny brunette, her eyes sparkled.

“Rocket Man,” the Commander said, correcting her.

“You look more like a space cowboy to me. You need to slow down. The world isn’t going anywhere.”

The Commander laughed. “Yes, I suppose not,” he said.

As he stepped outside the White House, the stars were out. It had stopped snowing, and the night was clear and brisk.

I’ve seen two worlds die, he thought. Does that have something to do with why haven’t we seen anybody?

Reaching into his pocket, he took out the photos of Evelyn and his son, Adam. The photos began to BLUR, then crystalize in bright yellow fireflies of flakes rising in the air. He grasped but realized he couldn’t hold a piece of light, a story, a memory. The sparks were soon gone as no more than a dream.

Mars rose on the east horizon, a reddish speck of light — the only life a fledgling colony.