AntipodeanSF - Transitions

John is a Clarion West '97 grad and has had short stories published in Intertext, Jackhammer, Millennium SF & F, Planet Magazine, and Titan Magazine.

They told me we don't need dreams any more -- that temporarily preventing REM-sleep helps treat depression. But you lose perception and memory that way. I've chosen to keep dreaming, and to return to Cape Canaveral.

Orlando's world of make-believe recedes behind me as I point my rental car down State Route 528, lined with clumps of trees and plants. It's still the way it looked the last time I was here in 1969, more than forty years ago.

Back then my fourth-grade class took a school field trip to Kennedy Space Center to see rockets. I was nine, and told everybody that someday I'd be an astronaut. But once we arrived, I would have traded places with any of the people I saw in that orchestrated flurry of coveralls and forklifts. They had a mission.

I've never returned, because I didn't want to ruin that experience -- to superimpose new photo-realistic recollections over older, pastel memories.

Besides, there was no reason to come back. Until now.

A crosswind blows through my car windows, fluttering the edges of the drawings on the passenger seat. They are my precise, but uninspired conceptual designs for a major new space museum. I spent most of last night finishing them off. My architectural firm received the design contract and I accepted the assignment.

I cross the final bridge into what was NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and the gray storage buildings greet my return with wounded faces. The coveralls and forklifts are gone. The buildings are filled with crumbling concrete, and the ghosts of heroes and giant machines.

I park near a cluster of official vehicles and join a group of consultants, engineers, and client contacts boarding a faded bus. I climb in and take a seat. A voice crackles from the ceiling-mounted speaker. "Before we start the kick-off meeting, we're going to take a quick tour of the area so you can see what we're up against. First, we'll see Launch Pads A and B, used for the Apollo missions and later for the Space Shuttle. They're in bad shape."

It really doesn't matter. The manned space missions were cut in 2012 and the commercial satellite launches subcontracted overseas where it's more cost-effective. But why did they quit in the first place? Why didn't they keep reaching higher for the heavens with inspirational missions? I can't remember a single, tragic event to stop them. It just faded away.

I feel like a mortician making final arrangements -- planning where to inject embalming fluid, where to apply cosmetics, so that afterwards, we can all stand around and say, "Doesn't it look lovely? Almost alive," while our children shuffle their feet and yawn.

No, I can't do it. I've changed my mind.

My staff will take care of it. I'll give them my notes. It's decided.

Meanwhile, I'll take some time off and finally go to the Navajo reservation. I'll learn sand painting -- the kind used in healing ceremonies. An artist mixes crushed colors with smooth sand. Afterwards, a patient lies in the center of the sand painting and merges with the creation. It lasts only for a moment, but that's long enough. The act of creating is what matters. The healer and the healed -- I'll be both.

I look at the massive, abandoned Vehicle Assembly Building and close my eyes. The ghosts rebuild the scene in my memories. The metal and concrete structure is new, full of purpose. I'm nine years old again, with my face pressed against the window of that chartered bus. I hear the echoes of the Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast, as man circled the Moon for the first time. The crew read from the Book of Genesis: "In the beginning..."