DAY 21: Looking for Heaven through a Broken Telescope

It was lunchtime at the Green building; Sara had the department to herself.  It was Methany's birthday, and it seems that nearly everyone had been lured by free cake and the rumor of a strip-o-gram dressed in a Chewbacca costume.  Sara was happy to hold the fort, and pore over the latest Kepler data sets alone.  An argument had begun that the data sets were trending circumstances similar to what preceded the loss of the first two reaction wheels. If Carl's team was right, Kepler may already be a brick, and the team would be spending the next year and a half finding the exact day and minute that the data went bad.  It had taken long enough to craft the formulas to compensate for-

A young girl with a single side-braid was standing in the office.  She looked no older than 10, wore glasses, and appeared to have recently discovered the novelty of dressing oneself; every major component of the rainbow had been assigned its own article of clothing.  She was looking at the data pinned to the walls.

As soon as she caught Sara's eye, the young girl extended her hand for a shake, smiling widely.  "Hello.  Are you Doctor Sara Seager?  I saw your lecture on YouTube.  You're great."

"Thank you," Sara replied.  "Who let you in?"

"I was with a tour - my parents want my brother to go here, and I want to, too.  I guess I wandered off.  He's talking to an ROTC recruiter, but I've been wanting to see this place.  You're great."

"Thank you very much..."

"Jean. Jean Bowie.  Jeanie.  Whatever you like.  You're Doctor Sara Seager.  Can I get an autograph?"

Dr Sara rolled her eyes.  "Sure.  Do you have something?"

Jeanie produced a visitor's map of the MIT campus.  "I wish I'd brought your first book, but it's my dad's.  He reads it to me."

Sara accepted the pamphlet.  "Wow!  I never thought of my books as bedtime reading material."  She looked for a pen, while Jeanie continued to ramble.

"I know!  We only read a couple of pages, and Dad tells me what he thinks, and I tell him what I think about it, and we keep talking about all this amazing stuff!  It takes me forever to go to sleep, but I only read it on the weekend.  Is this from the Gemini?"  

Sara looked up from her searching; Jeanie was using one of the computers, scanning through a battery of extrastellar images from Chile.  Sara wedged herself between Jeanie and the keyboard.  "You can't do that, young lady!"

Tears began to build in Jeanie's eyes.  "I'm sorry, I got too excited, I'm so happy to be here!  I want to do what you do!  Have you found anything in the Vela system?"

"Th- the what?"

"The Vela constellation system.  I-I- My mom adopted a star for me, and it's in the Vela system, and I wanted to find it!" 

Sara took a step back.  "Kepler can't move, even if we wanted to.  Our view's locked on the Draco constellation.  Vela's being observed by another team."

"But I think you should really look, I mean really really look at it!"  Jeanie started typing and moving the mouse, scrambling to find a way in.  Sara reached for Jeanie's wrist-

Sara could feel a building wave of heat, like she had just stepped out the door to a Mississippi summer.  The radiating heat was coming from Jeanie's direction.  "Jeanie, please stop."

Jeanie exhaled, and got up from the chair.  "I'm sorry.  Please don't tell anybody.  I just wandered off, I'm going to leave now...  I just want to go home."

Sara nodded, and watched silently as Jeanie backed away to the door.  The girl took another deep breath; then she offered to the professor, "You should look for silicon.  The diffraction rate's different from ozone, but similar enough that it might be in your ranges.  You wouldn't know if you weren't looking, but it's obvious once you do.  There aren't a lot, so they stand out.  I really think you're great."

By the time Sara collected herself to walk to the door, all traces of the strange young girl had disappeared.  But the doctor could not be convinced that she was alone...


inspired by Discover Magazine article "Worlds Without End"