Celestial Romance

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. So please, I beg you to stop screaming. You will awake the others. Meanwhile back on Earth at NASA Headquarters, Astronomer Jones comes in with his usual apple, carrot, cranberry, kale smoothie. “Morning people.” Another fascinating day of observing data pipelines and all the other bull sh## that happens in the boring life of an observational astronomer. And Yes! A promotion would be nice, he yells towards the captain’s office. Then the phone rings. He answers and a deep voice says, I do not know who pissed in your ice coffee latte this morning but keep the noise down. CLICK! The phone went dead before he could apologize to his supervisor who he nicknamed, Captain Cook. As his peer, a solar astronomer who he also nicknamed BFF, just stared at him with wide eyes and kept working. "If I were you I would not gesture my middle finger considering there are cameras all over NASA," said Wendy the front office manager for new astronomers. Jones slowly lowered his hand and started working immediately. Two hours in, his ex-wife calls reminding him of his son’s surprise birthday party in two weeks. The conversational exchange as usual did not go very well. As Jones reminded her that he is the only bread winner and she as always reminded him that it takes more than money to be a good parent--just before the phone goes dead again with a loud CLICK!

Astronomer Jones reaches for his badge to enter the optical telescope room after hearing a beeping sound or alarm which happens only when an image is noticed or detected. It was eyebrow raising because for three years no data was changed in any of his reports that he had been gathering. Unfortunately, when he looked through the eyepiece of the optical telescope, the image was positioned a foot passed the focal point so he could not make out what he was actually observing. It looked like a silhouette of some celestial body. Meanwhile in the next scene, it appeared to be a tenth planet consisting of other lifeforms. There was a dark room with alien-like lifeforms sleeping with prison guard-like lifeforms standing guard. One of the lifeforms had requested an orbital potty break. When she entered the orbital room for ladies, she noticed a laser-like reflection inbetween two rocks. Though, the lifeforms on planet 10 are very small, they are built with enormous strength. So moving two boulders was nothing to her.

But, to her surprise was an electronic device developed by NASA to monitor activity on planet 10. At first she was hesitant to touch it. In fact, she left it and visited it the same time every bedtime. Space is always dark and has no seasons. This particular time, she decides to touch it and smell it for clarity. Meanwhile, Astronomer Jones was in the same routine of visiting the NASA optical telescope room daily back on planet Earth, around the same time and this time, this lifeform decides to put her face on the planet 10 orbital potty hidden electronic NASA device. Instantly, she gazed into the lens with her extraterrestrial senses and keen eyesight and saw a blurred image of Astronomer Jones who detected her or it on the optical screen which he has now projected on the big screen. At first it blew his mind. He was flabbergasted and doubted the reality of what was actually happening. He began to faint knocking over microscopes and other lab type equipment in the optical telescope room.

Another employee heard the noise and called into the room to see if help or security was needed. Astronomer Jones instantly made up an excuse and declined help. While Astronomer Jones was getting rid of the employee, the lady lifeform could not see him so she begins knocking on the electronic device, shaking it around a bit. She was nonverbal. At the time, she did not have a mouth like a human. Her planet 10 was very quiet and its lifeforms communicated with an extra sense called internal. Internal was their English or method of communicating. They could actually read each other’s thoughts and communicate back and forth.

For the next fourteen days during Astronmer Jones’ shift, he and the lady lifeform would just stare at each other for hours. He would attempt to speak to her as her eyes would grow wider and wider, making her more and more interested. Although she could not understand him, she could tell when he was addressing her. It made her feel warm and fuzzy inside, something that she had never felt before. The scene began to split as if God were watching both of them, he on Earth looking through the optical telescope and she was all warm and fuzzy on planet 10 holding an electronic device the size of a 13 inch TV.

Astronomer Jones would always hide when another employee would badge into the room and he would start instantly panicking and waving for the lady lifeform to hide as well. She was very smart with keen perceptablity so she was easily trainable and she knew when to put the object down until she heard him knocking on the screen for her to return. That was their first line of communication, the “knock!” And the “panic wave,” was their second line of communication. And the third was the “screen kiss,” goodbye.

NASA guys met once a week for happy hour in downtown Washington D.C. at a little corner bar. He found himself thinking about her, pondering on ways to communicate with her and highly anticipating the “screen kiss,” which was starting to get longer and longer. They were secret lovers living and interacting from two different planets. He showed her on screen how humans eat and drink. Her eyes would get wider and wider as she unknowingly learned simple aspects of human life. He began to teach her English using cards and pictures. She could point at objects like apples, lips, eyes, hair. Although, she only had eyes in common with Astronomer Jones who named her Lady. Everytime he would refer to her as Lady, her eyes got bigger and bigger and they glistened tremendously. Astronomer Jones was able to geomap into a location nearby where she sat inbetween two rocks to visit with him each night during bedtime. Unfortunately, she made a mistake and stayed too long and one of her prison guard-like lifeforms observed her playing with this electronic object. When she noticed that she was being watched, she gave a panic wave and Astronomer Jones cleared the feed. When he cleared the feed, an alarm went off at his supervisor’s desk signaling that they lost power on planet 10 which led to a statewide NASA investigation. Meanwhile on planet 10, Lady was reprimanded for abusing orbital potty time and her electronic device was confiscated. Unfortunately, the two secret lovers lost contact.

A month went by, NASA could find no trace of any reason why they lost circuit on planet 10. Astronomer Jones was questioned but evaded all answers to the questions which piqued NASA’s curiosity as it became more and more curious about his daily badge swipe-ins to the optical telescope room. They knew that he was hiding something and that something would change history forever. So, they proposed a space voyage to planet 10 inviting Astronomer Jones to take part in the launch of his life. He knew that he had to find his Lady but feared exposing her to the earthlings. He thought to himself, what is my next move? What should I do?