I walk to the launchpad like I’m out for a stroll. So, chill I’m eating a cookie. Crumbs fall and glance off my spacesuit. They fall to the Earth. I reach up during liftoff, a kid on a rollercoaster. But the thrill fades. Bored by the menagerie of stars, I recall lyrics to my favorite songs. Unnerved by the silence, I repeat dialogue from dumb movies. Nobody’s laughing. The journey is long. Many years. Finally, I land. On my new planet I’m a nobody, basically. Another schmuck who’s crawled out of a capsule and wants applause. I’m scared I’ve made a mistake. I keep trying to call my father, but they don’t have those here. Everyone grows from what resembles a cactus flower. They bud and sprout. They unfold and then they begin the business of being loved and loving back. They cry when I tell them about money. They laugh when I explain singing in the car or taking a bubble bath. They want to know what human death is like. Some people find it hard to be happy, I explain. They don’t understand. Homesickness begins to creep in. Loneliness. I showed them a picture of my girlfriend and they love her hair. It’s long and blond and she has it pulled back into a ponytail. One of them asks why I came all alone, across space, to this distant place. What have I done, I wonder. Penny is smiling at me with summer on her face. I remember taking the picture, remember thinking it was just another image on just another day. Are you ready to learn why we look forward to dying and why we have no fears, one of them asks. I tell them I have to go. I collect my things, climb into the ship, and launch into the purple sky. The journey is long. Many, many years. When I’m almost home, when I can see our small planet in the dark sky, I start to worry—what will the world be like? I’m an older man now. What might Penny be like? Older as well. Or worse. I brace myself. But when I land, Penny is there to meet me. She is as young as she was when I left. How, I ask? You’ve missed so much, Penny says. Being just one person was never enough, so they discovered a way to be dozens, to be thousands of you, if you want. Any age, any number of selves. Isn’t that wonderful, she asks. I’m amazed to be sure. But what if I only want to be this one person, I say. Now why would anyone do that, she asks, smiling at me. We stand there like that for a long time—Penny pulling her hair back into a ponytail in a way that seems just a little different than it used to, me wondering what we look like from very far away.