“I’m gonna say let’s pass on the explosions inside my head,” I say. “It’s a good head. I’d like to keep it if possible.”
“It’s just one of many solutions I’m working on,” she says.
“By the way, I’ll pick up toilet paper on my way to work,” I say. “Unless you’re driving in with me.”
“I’ll be working at home,” she says. “You really shouldn’t stay at the lab so long. Your staff is more than capable of running your experiments. Oh, and grab some clementines, too. The bag in the fridge has gone bad.” She squeezes my thigh and turns on the television—more conspiracy theorists who believe the starship is part of some Noah’s ark project planning to leave the rest of humanity behind when a supposed planetary body they call Nibiru crashes into Earth. “Maybe we can have dinner tomorrow and not talk shop for a change?”
“Of course,” I say. I kiss her and realize that maybe I do think of our relationship as a hybrid of professionalism and romance, the square root of what everyone might have wanted for me. But Theresa needs me to be present at dinner, fully and completely, and to attend Axel’s school functions with her. She wants me around enough to watch a movie or play a board game or make out on the couch during one of her frequent nature documentary marathons. Axel, with his newly dyed pink hair, asks if I’m starting to receive messages from another dimension. I detect sarcasm and hate it in my son. He used to read to Petal at night. He used to stick up for her when the other kids at school made fun of her lisp. Now he thinks I’m a huge nerd, a total joke. I don’t think so, I tell him, and give him Spock’s Vulcan salute. But there is a lot we don’t know. Whatever, he says. I’ve told him I’m sorry more times than I can count. I told him Theresa isn’t here to replace his mother. I told him it’s fine if he hates me, but we need to try to be a family while we still can.
Scans. Tests. Questions. Repeat.
My engineer father once told me that marriage and who you fall in love with are largely a matter of chance, chemicals, and how far you’re willing to drive. He said who your kids turn out to be is even more of a crapshoot. I blame some of my failings with human connection on this man. But my son, Peter, is a good kid, all things considered. He doesn’t get into much trouble, earns decent grades （though not recently） despite not being particularly bright, only drops F-bombs with his old man, continues to volunteer at the hospital plague wards far beyond the school’s community service requirements, actually likes working out. Petal seemed like she was going to take after me, though. She’d join me in the backyard at night to stargaze, ask me about energy and light speed and parallel universes. She devoured my old stack of Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown books and told me she wanted to get abducted by aliens—even if only for a weekend.
I’ve been working on a video journal for my wife. It’s my attempt to share with her in the best way that I know all the things I’ve never said, that I want her to understand.
TRANSCRIPTS
00:22 You don’t know how much your mind filled me with awe, Theresa. How I needed a team of colleagues to understand the corrections you made on my equations. And maybe I didn’t always say thank you enough. Part of me was jealous at how effortlessly you visualized the intricacies of black hole physics.
00:36 And you really did save me. Before you came along, I’d cry in the bathroom at work, sometimes even entertaining the reality of Axel dying instead of Petal. I was so angry at myself for even thinking this. I once put my fist through the drywall, as if everything inside me had come to a boil, a singularity of emotion exploding like a star.
00:48 Lately, when I turn on the accelerator in the lab, I feel more alive and loved and complete than when I’m with any other person on the planet except for you. It’s the only way I can feel like I haven’t completely lost my daughter. She believed she would be out there one day, in space, that her energy would dance among star dust. Maybe the hole in my head is a way for her to reach me.
I feel fine, I tell the reporters. Better than ever. Not that I would recommend this for anyone.
The fears outlined in the comment threads of various news websites are mostly laughable, but I have begun to wonder if the conspiracy theorists might have it somewhat right, if my life is counting down toward an end of days. One comment suggested that I’d be taken over by a heavenly entity and this would mark an age of enlightenment. The commenter ended with the word Namaste （just like that, in italics）。 Another said I would simply disappear, essentially be sucked into myself. For some reason, I imagined a cartoonish popping sound as the last cells of my body blink out of this reality.