I looked at the time. It was already two a.m. But I didn’t really feel like being alone right now, and I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep if I was.
I nodded and he smiled at me. “Right, let’s go.” He pulled off and started driving again.
We drove out the small town and left the lights behind us, and soon we were on a dirt road heading into the middle of the desert. I briefly wondered if I should be scared, driving out into the middle of nowhere with a virtual stranger. These kinds of things rarely ended well. I looked over at him as he drove and decided that all indications so far suggested he probably wasn’t a threat . . . I hoped not anyway. Soon the flat road we were on started tilting up, going higher and higher, and soon it felt like we were climbing up the side of a high mountain. We drove slowly, right on the edge of it. I plucked up the courage to look down only for a moment . . . instant dizziness and swelling nausea. We were higher than I’d imagined.
Finally, we stopped and Mark turned off the lights of the car. I was suddenly hit by how black everything outside was. I stared into the blackness. It was impenetrable. Like it was a solid wall. Or a thick, black mist. It seemed like the blackest black I’d ever seen before.
“It’s so dark here,” I whispered, a shiver running down my spine.
“This is called a dark site.” Mark opened the car door with a creak and climbed out.
“What’s a dark site?” I asked, also climbing out into the cool night.
“This is!” He threw his arms into the air and I looked up, and when I did, I gasped.
“Oh my God.” I stared up at the sky in absolute awe and amazement at the stars spread out in front of me. I didn’t even know so many stars existed. And they were so clear. Like perfect, bright pinpricks. A massive arm of them stretched across from one side to the other. I’d never seen that formation before.
“What is it?” I asked, lifting my hand into the air and tracing the line from one side to the other with my pointed finger.
“That’s the Milky Way,” he said, staring up at the enormous arch that cut the sky in two. “And down in that valley, there are ten massive radio telescopes that are studying it right now, and even the slightest disturbance from a cell phone, a TV or a radio signal could interfere with what they’re doing.”
I ran my eyes over it, from one side to the other, inspecting it, and soon I wasn’t just seeing stars and sky, I could clearly see colors. Faint purples and pinks formed what looked like massive clouds encasing the archway of stars. And in the middle of the archway, a thin vein of black ran through.
“It’s huge.” I knew I was stating the obvious, but it really was massive.
“I know. And we’re such a tiny part of it.” Mark’s voice sounded a little distant, as if he was really thinking about this. “They think there are 100 billion planets in the Milky Way.”
“Wow.” I let that number sink in for a while. It was a number so big, it was hard to truly comprehend. “Do you think there are other life forms out there, like us?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. “Like somewhere in the Milky Way there are two other people like us staring at the night sky wondering the exact same question?”
Mark turned and grinned at me. “I don’t know. Probably. Maybe. It’s very possible.”
“Or maybe there is a future version of us and a past version,” I said thoughtfully.
“What do you mean?”
“Us, but in a different state of evolution. For example, there could be a planet out there that is less advanced than us. And there’s a prehistoric version of us, all loincloths and making fire with sticks. But somewhere else, there is a futuristic Frankie. Some AI cyborg version of myself with technology integrated into my brain.”
Mark turned all the way around now and faced me. He looked surprised. “I had no idea you were so . . . deep?” He seemed completely amused.
I shrugged. “I used to read a lot of books when I was young and spent a lot of time alone thinking.”
“Oh?” That was definitely surprise in his voice.
“What? Don’t I look like the kind of person who reads books and thinks a lot?”
His grin grew. It seemed to wiggle its way up into his eyes, and suddenly those plain brown eyes that seemed less than extraordinary just a short while ago were looking pretty extraordinary now.
“Well, what?” I heard myself ask again.
He just shrugged. “Nothing.” And then he turned and walked over to the bonnet of his car and climbed on. He lay all the way back and looked up into the sky. He patted the bonnet next to him, and he grabbed my arm as I climbed up, helping me. I lay on my back and looked up at the sky. We were almost shoulder to shoulder, and it was so quiet here that I could just hear his breathing next to me.
We lay there for a while, until a breeze picked up and made me shiver.
“Cold?” Mark asked.
“A little,” I confessed.
He shuffled closer to me, our shoulders now touching, and the warmth coming from his body was a very welcome surprise. He gave my shoulder a nudge, as if to ask if it was okay that he touched me with it. I nudged back, letting him know that it was okay through some kind of magical shoulder speak that I think we were just making up.
