“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

― Carl Sagan

”Quotes are for dumb people who can’t think of something intelligent to say on their own.”

— Bo Burnham

anonymous

The first time I met him, I didn’t like him.

Good-looking people didn’t intimidate me half as much as people obsessed with their looks intimidated me.

Whenever I’d encounter someone blessed by Mother Nature in the same way she had blessed hydrangeas, blue jays, and emerald swallowtails, and find myself feeling uneasy at the sight, I always proceeded to check my reasoning, and stop feeling uneasy. Beauty wasn’t scary.

But beauty junkies were. Every subsequent run-in had been leaving me with the ever-strengthening impression that they all belonged to a very distinct and very unhappy breed of human. Prone to succumbing to peer pressure even in adulthood, never content with themselves, always spiteful within and stuck-up without, never living in the moment, always caught up in the minutiae, always projecting, never introspective, never self-aware enough to realize the roots and reasons of their obsession. At times it felt as if their only mission in life was to make other humans feel inadequate, to instill in others the doubt they themselves experienced every morning in front of the bathroom mirror.

Just as the most miserable, regretful, overworked, sleep-deprived mothers were always the loudest in pressuring others to have children — and the angriest whenever someone voiced the intent to never have children at all.

I liked myself for the most part; it’d taken a lot of time and mental effort to get there, and the state was still fragile.

I hated being around flawlessness; we had nothing productive to offer to each other, and the berth needed to be wide.

Thus, the first time I met him, I didn’t like him. The first instinct I experienced upon seeing him was to bolt and avoid him in the future. He looked perfect, so what else could it have been if not an obsession, I concluded. He looked perfect, and his perfection looked made. Artificial. Self-imposed. He looked perfect, with not a single hair or thread out of place (out-of-place clothes, though).

This perfection scared me shitless.

So I knee-jerked… Not proud of it.

“Is he the local poser or something?” I grumbled in low tones, studying his designer outfit, impractical shoes, subjugated zygomas, incongruously double eyelids, sculpted brows, chemically peeled, unblemished alabaster skin, and— Was that makeup? Thirty-three degrees in the shade, and he was wearing makeup?!

Eva snorted and declared, “You’re funny. I like you.”

She had a flour button on the caramel tip of her button nose, and I liked her right back, but I didn’t like this Wakuu character.

Eva proceeded to explain that he was an astronomer working at the local observatory.

“A scientist, are you sure? Not a research assistant?”

Although even the research assistants I’d met would have never been as glossy. Where would they find the time and motivation?

“Oh no-no, a real scientist! With a PhD, and I think he’s from your city, but studied abroad. Somewhere. And anyway, he’s nice, he got us an investor.”

Okay? Good?

“I see. So you have an observatory? Who else works there?

“It’s just him.”

How would that be possible? And what would be the point?

I felt my own unsculpted eyebrows push together in a frown. And noticed my nervous fingers braiding and unbraiding, and halted them, but not the stream of grouchy words.

“Interesting. Usually scientists need to rent time down to a minute at observatories. Yet this one stands unused for most of each night?”

Unless he never slept. Did he sleep? He looked like a porcelain doll more than a living, breathing, regularly-sleeping human.

“Well uh, you can rent time if you want to look at the stars, I guess,” Eva said, looking and sounding perplexed.

Had I, perhaps, ended up in a parallel universe? Or was it all some kind of a misunderstanding?

And why was I bugging her about it, anyway? She was sweet, kind, untroubled, a hydrangea, and a baker.

“I see. Sorry for splitting hairs, Eva. It’s just very unusual. And thank you.”

“Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

So she did.

“My pleasure,” he said.

“Likewise,” I lied.

There was an air of urgency and low-grade anxiety to him, and I couldn’t be sure whether those present were to blame or the nervousness was about someone or something else.

No, he was looking neither at my practical but very much not pretty clothes, nor at my tousled hair gathered into a tousled ponytail, nor at my unsculpted anything. Nothing of the sort.

He looked at the time and winced. He looked at the flour dot on Eva’s nose, and the corners of his mouth twitched, and I remembered the way in which the local marine biologist, Surya, observed dolphins; and how Surya all but manifested cartoony heart eyes at the sight. But I pushed this association away.

“Sorry to bolt like this, but they’re waiting for a report.” Wakuu shook my hand. An unexpectedly firm, no-nonsense handshake. “It was very nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” I said.

Nothing unpleasant had happened, but I still felt doubtful. On edge.

Yet soon, something shifted my initial impression further. Namely, sweatpants. He was sitting on a bench, wearing sweatpants, and stuffing his face with a falafel sandwich.

And I stopped walking and smiled at the sight. Yes, just like Surya had when looking at dolphins.

And then… Well, then Wakuu smiled back at me. Not an ‘Oh Dear How Silly Of Me To Have Hummus On My Face’ apologetic type of smile, but a ‘Hi Really Nice To See You What’s Up’ smile. The earnest type. Which startled me, because a smile this real was the last thing I had expected and because it changed him. Drastically. Not merely a smile, but a sledgehammer to an impeccable porcelain surface, making the surface crack, shatter, and, in an avalanche of sparkling shards, reveal a vaudeville performer who’d been trapped right behind the veneer and now jumped out with a ‘Ta-daa!’ and a top hat.

Wakuu’s smile was goofy as heck.

By the way, those sweatpants looked really comfy. And having hummus smeared on his face only added him extra goofiness.

~*~ I met Chaem. Each of her arms was wider than my neck. She said that she was renting a room on the ground floor of the observatory, as if the observatory was an actual tenement.

“For the climb,” she not-really-explained, tapping her stone-hard thighs, when I asked if no other real estate was available.

I had yet to make that climb. Would I discover that there was no observatory at all? That this whole thing was yet another mysterious and surreal town-wide gag?

Would there instead be a manor with a balcony that held an ornate spyglass and a hateful grandma?

But no, I could see it up there on the mountain, the white dome protruding, pointing towards the stars, and the edge of a silvery dish.

Meanwhile, the shift continued. For some inexplicable reason, the gloss was coming off in bits and pieces, and I would notice new changes whenever I encountered Wakuu around town.

No trace of makeup. The long, overhanging platinum earring was discarded. His black roots were getting more pronounced. The convoluted hair care, from what I could see, was reduced to shampooing and leaving things be: messy and tousled.

Hoo boy, he actually had a lot of respect for good pants, I concluded upon seeing him on a bench higher up the slope, in a baggy t-shirt and cargo pants this time, with a roll of printouts sticking out from the biggest pocket. He was pouring over a tablet computer and a narrow, meter-long sheet of perforated paper as if they were an ancient clay tablet and a sheepskin scroll respectively; and I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at all of him and then only at his sneakers that had been worn enough to be worthy of nicknames. They were ever-so-slightly caked with sun-bleached dust from that one place of the highest elevation.

It didn’t feel right to bother him.

Hoo boy, had I been figuratively myopic, I concluded upon discovering that he was literally myopic; one morning, he’d discarded contacts for a pair of prescription glasses. The first glance at those most unremarkable, square, oversized stainless steel frames would have suggested that they belonged on a grouchy grandpa’s nose. But the lenses were really good; thin, actual glass, tinted coating that safeguarded against scratches. Glasses like that lived for longer than I had lived, provided no one dropped them.

I saw him almost-dropping the glasses, I saw him cursing and laughing. I saw him noticing me noticing his almost-dropping the glasses, and I laughed, too, and for a bit we laughed together while I looked at his smile and he looked at mine.

He asked me how I was doing, he asked other questions, and I felt confused. Because of how idle and friendly those questions were, how friendly he was.

“What is up with your melanin,” he inquired all of a sudden.

Oh no. I stopped smiling and braced. “Pardon?”

“You were milk-white when you came here. And now you’re— You’re borderline brown. You keep on tanning instead of burning. How do you do it?”

“It’s genetic,” I mumbled.

“Aren’t you from P—”

“I was born and raised elsewhere.” The voice that offered this rushed explanation sounded apologetic. I wasn’t apologizing for interrupting him; no, for something else. A wretched habit of every other immigrant. I coughed and added in a leveled tone, “Sorry for interrupting.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “And yes, I kind of gathered.”

“Gathered that I’m not native to this hemisphere?”

“That, too.”

The sun penetrated our spot of the shade.

“Hold on.” Out of one of his numerous pockets, he produced a patch against sunburns and secured it on his nose, huffing a little. The patch looked super tacky. I loved that it looked tacky. “Anyway, do you know that if you get a sunburn, you can smear some yogurt on it? No, you should.”

“And it helps?”

“Yes, as long as it’s not low fat. But Jack hates low-fat yogurt, thank goodness. He never makes it.” Wakuu leaned over to me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “We’re safe.”

He laughed again: a silly, braying laugh. I noticed that a few small and spiky hairs had sprouted between his eyebrows. Also, he had a wispy stubble now; utterly dumbfounded, I observed him scratching that incongruence.

“So you’ve got a PhD,” I blurted out for some reason.

“Not yet, but I’m in the process. What about you?”

“Have I got a PhD? I— Uhm, I don't.”

"I know, but no, I mean, have you ever been invested in absolutely useless things for years on end?”

I felt even more dumbfounded. Bordering on stunned. This man was a… dork?

“Uh. Stand-up comedy. Back in the city,” I confessed. Strangely, with no hesitation. Why..?

“Open mic or—”

“Open mic. Every Thursday.”

No one else here knew. Somebody could have guessed, given time, but no one knew just yet; he was the first to learn of my shame. Something about Wakuu was making me feel like I would not regret being earnest about this one.

Hmmm. Why?

“So is it true what they say,” Wakuu started, combing his hair-productless hair back with his fingers, “that comedy is the best way to vent existential dread?”

“Yes.” I watched his long and slender fingers getting electrified and forced myself to look into his face. “Is it true what they say, that astronomy is the most humbling profession?”

In his glasses, I saw my reflection.

“If I ever meet an astronomer, I’ll ask him.”

“You’re— You’re not one?”…Why?

“I’m an astrophysicist.”

“So, only theory?”

He shifted from one foot to the other and chewed his lip, looking wistful and tense. “No. I do observational astronomy too. I just really wanted to make a professional joke. Last time I had an opportunity, I tried to tell a joke about a neutrino, but it passed over everyone’s heads.” A-and that was where his deadpanning cracked; he broke into a chuckle. I did too. “H—how was my delivery?”

It needed some improvement, but I would have never told him so. I liked his smile too much.

“It’s perfect. Flawless.”

“Thanks!” With this, he wrinkled his nose and adjusted the patch.

“You know, aloe and coconut oil help too. On sunburns.”

“Oh. Thank you very much. That might come in handy if some of them turn out to be vegans,” he deadpanned without breaking. Without a hint of breaking. Flawless.…Why?! Because sad clowns always recognized each other eventually, that’s why.

I made a tiny whining sound as I laughed. I needed to go.

“Right, I’ll uh. I’ll see you around.”

I hated to go.

~*~ He was wearing an earring again today, a big one, and I couldn’t stop staring at that earring; a chubby white cat made of clay or rubber. Its round, smug, grinning face and its front bean-paws were on his earlobe. The rest of its body was right behind the earlobe. I couldn’t stop staring, because it was adorable and idiotic, and because I couldn’t figure out the engineering required to shove it into an ear without a tunnel. I couldn’t figure out the engineering because I hadn’t had any coffee yet.

I was standing in line for it. Raja's Coffee Corner, a small outdoor coffee shop on the boardwalk, was packed. Wakuu’s table was already stripped of two out of four chairs. No one sat with him; he was reading off that tablet while gobbling up a muffin.

I shuffled forward. Behind me, high heels click-clacked. I inhaled a whiff of cotton-candy perfume and flinched as Leah, the local ‘influencer’, yoga instructor, and amateur photographer lamented to someone in a hissing whisper that Wakuu ‘let himself go’ and had been ‘much more presentable’ when she’d last seen him.

A long and hard nail tapped my bare forearm. Upon looking at its perfect gloss and then turning to face its owner, I realized that Leah was lamenting to me. Or at me.

The familiar, nauseating fear prickled me.

Designer outfit (always), impeccable makeup (early in the morning), clip-on jewelry (but the seagulls?), and decidedly no roots visible underneath that silky pink.

From what I could surmise, by this point Leah had grown tired of appraising me, having inwardly cataloged me into the ‘well, maybe she's really smart’, ‘not a threat’, and ‘always a bridesmaid, never the bride, but make it literal’ categories. Which I was more than fine with.

I wasn’t that smart either. Which I was fine with too.

“Pardon?”

“He looked so dreamy and hot. And now, just look at him.”

I just looked at him. Again. As if I hadn’t been gawking for minutes on end. He noisily sipped coffee out of a huge mug, and I wondered if the cat in his ear wanted any of that milk foam he now had over his upper lip.

“I guess he’s very busy with work.” I didn’t want to tell her that no scientist who wished to get enough sleep would ever bother with regular beauty routines.

“That is no excuse!”

Not like I would have admitted my opinion to her or anyone else, but...

this was hot. This was real, and real was hot. Besides, I felt as if I was receiving the unique privilege of peeking behind the veneer, and I felt grateful. Feeling uniquely privileged and grateful felt nice. Feeling nice felt nice.

“Theses don’t mix that well with—”

Leah was hardly listening, if at all. “I wonder what happened. Is he depressed? He was so mysterious. And now he’s just— Just—” Normal?

Ostentatious aloofness and shmysteriousness did nothing for me. In my opinion, brooding was counterproductive, especially as a façade. I was really happy to discover, and to continue discovering, that his was not just a façade, but a badly installed façade, lopsided and creaking.

Yet I, too, wondered what happened. Only, for different reasons.

Eyes still on the tablet, Wakuu wiped the milk foam off his upper lip and sucked it off the side of his palm, with an audible, devil-may-care slurp.

“Ugh!” Leah reacted, her compassion forgotten, fully replaced by indignation. “What is he going to do next, burp?!”

I also didn’t want to shatter her world with the knowledge that all functioning humans burped. Aside from humans who had a retrograde cricopharyngeal dysfunction. Which was a dysfunction.

And I did not want to participate in this discussion at all. The state was still fragile; the berth needed to be wide.

Luckily, it was my turn; Raj leaned forward over the counter, eyebrows raised expectantly, half of their fingers on the handle of an empty portafilter, and the other half, twirling the glorious mustache.

I pointed at Wakuu's table. “I’ll have what those guys are having!”

“Which guys?”

Right, the cat wasn’t having any. I needed coffee, asap.

I also needed to sit. And I would have chosen his table even if all the others were unoccupied.

“Hi,” I said, cautiously not placing my mug and plate on the table.

He raised his head and put the tablet on the table, screen up. Before dragging my gaze away, I glimpsed rows of letters and numbers and numbers and numbers—

“Hey!”

“Look, I don’t want to distress you, but. I think you have a, uh. I think a cat got stuck in your ear.”

For a moment, I felt guilty; I felt as if it was a little bit selfish of me to do what I’d done. But I wanted to see this smile of his so much that I would have stooped to Sad Clown makeup, not just stupid jokes.

He smiled, and that momentary guilt was gone. Gosh, what a goofball.

I cleared my throat. “Is this seat taken?”

“For anyone but you, it is, go-orgeous,” he drawled in a deep, smoky voice, twitching his eyebrows as if he had a nervous tic, and doing the funniest smolder I’d ever seen.

With an umph, I plopped down on the vacant chair across from him. “Oh come on! That’s so cheesy, would that line even work on anyone?”

“It just did.”

“Huh. You son of a—”

“Dog!” Arm outstretched, Wakuu pointed at Luke strolling along the boardwalk with his Shiba Inu, Taco. We both waved at him. And at Luke. Luke waved back. Taco didn’t.

“That’s actually a gift from Professor Stavrou.” He took off the earring to show me, and I nearly snorted at how slow my uncaffeinated brain was. Two parts. With a thin metal pintle protruding from heads. Secured in a teensy hole in tails. “She makes them as a hobby. Only a few per year, as you may guess. Not much time for a hobby.”

Yes, this was exactly what I could guess. Scientists were too busy doing science.

The name was unfamiliar. “Sorry, is she someone I have yet to meet?”

“No, unless you’re leaving.” He was one of her doctoral research assistants; remote, Wakuu explained. “I get my main data from her.”

“Not from your— our observatory?”

“Obs— Oh. No. That’s uhm.” I watched his features turn gloomy as he was sticking the earring back into his ear, and a new type of confusion whirred up inside me. Meanwhile, he tapped the tablet. “I barely use our observatory. It’s all from an L-two IACT.”

“Ah,” I said, not understanding what a single one of those letters meant.

“Currently we’re studying the binary pulsar that's the only known double. It’s actually pretty exciting, we—”

O-ook-kay. He might as well have been offering me literal word salad, I would have not known the difference. With each new unfamiliar word I found myself losing more and more focus, and, soon, his speech in my head was getting replaced by loud circus music right on entry.

But this was impolite, and I needed to make an effort, so I forced myself to start listening again.

“—and I had two heart attacks, an abortion, and did crack while I was pregnant,” Wakuu was saying.

“Huh? What?”

“It looked like you were drifting off,” he explained, with a ghost of a smile on his lips. I found myself wishing to be a necromancer or at least a spiritualist. “I had to check.”

Wincing, I rubbed my temple. “I was. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, I know it’s not your field of expertise. And I know I’m prone to getting carried away. Plus—” He pointed at my hardly-touched coffee mug.

“Yeah.” I took a big and noisy sip, wiped my upper lip, and sucked the foam off the side of my palm. “Okay, okay. It’s not like I wasn’t listening at all. Let me see if I got this right. There’s big galactic gloops you’re studying, and they emit a very special light. And when those particular gloops shine down, the breathy layer and the clouds eat up most of their special light. And you can’t look at those big gloops from the ground. I mean you can, but not very well. So you need a very special big-gloop-looking thingie that’s floating high above the clouds and the breathy layer. And your current gloop is the gloopiest of all, because he's actually huge gloopy twins.”

“That is absolutely correct, yes. Please have a muffin. You deserve it.” I’d encountered people who only smiled with their mouths and not with their eyes, plenty of times. Too many times. He was one of those rare people who did the opposite. “Also, that is how I will be explaining infrared astronomy from now on. Thank you!”

I gave him a two-fingered salute. “Always happy to help.”

We sat across from each other, and sipped coffee, and shared another muffin as evenly as we could, and spent ten to fifteen solid minutes only on discussing every type of muffin that’s ever existed in this world, and my favorites were chocolate chip, and his favorites were chocolate chip, too, but also calamansi glaze—poppy seed—mango buttercream ones that Eva made only for holidays, and those sounded delicious enough both to wait and to hate the waiting, and now I coveted them as well, and we both considered pizza muffins a travesty, and I told him about an even uglier travesty that was mutton loaf tarragon mashed potato muffins.

He got up, slow and reluctant. “I have to go.”

I could see that he hated to go.

“Right. See you around?”

“Yes.”

~*~ They were hanging a long string of lights over the main square as I was crossing it. The string looked pretty and festive, and I would have stopped and marveled, but I was running towards the salon because I had an appointment for waxing. Of a very intimate nature. This needed to be done today. Enough stalling.

I entered, expecting to find desolation and soothing music, but what I found instead was crashing noises, water noises, blow-dryer noises sounding in the depths of the salon, the air conditioner set to Ice Age, and Emily, one of the stylists, on her knees and waist-deep inside a chest of drawers.

When I closed the door, the bell above it chimed again. Emily raised her head. Her eyes were mad, and her ash-blonde hair disheveled.

Was this normal? Not like I had been to a lot of salons for a lot of appointments prior, but this did not seem normal.

“Sorry, honey,” she said when I asked if everything was okay and if she remembered. “But we can’t!”

My heart fell; I had been psyching myself up for a bit of pain in the name of personal hygiene all goddamn morning.

“Maybe later today?” I probed.

The other stylist, Erika — whom I knew as Frank’s loving and patient wife, the local school volunteer, and overall a person as kind as an angel and as calm as the waves in windless weather — pleaded for Emily to hurry up, from the other room. In a very loud, very urgent, very panicked tone. With a bunch of swear words weaved in as masterfully as tasteful lowlights.

“Yes, just a minute!” Emily yelled back, then addressed me, “Yes, honey, sure. And I hate to let you down like this, I do, but we’ve got an emergency on our hands. So could you come back in three hours? Wait! Wait. Better make it four.”

All the while, she talked while squatting in front of another chest of drawers, frantically pulling out bottles, tools, and sealed kits, and dropping them into what could have served as a laundry basket.

“Okay. Good luck with your, uuuh.”

She was no longer listening, too busy, in too much haste, huffing. Turning my head, already by the door, I watched her dragging the impromptu container into the depths of the salon, to the accompaniment of Erika thunderously accusing someone of engaging in unseemly relations with their mother.

Judging by what they had stocked up, the aforementioned emergency was: a trim, a dye job, a full facial of ten excruciating steps, all of the plucking and waxing known to humankind, a mani-pedi, and every single other makeover procedure that a small provincial salon could possibly — and impossibly — scrounge. Whoever was in there, stood to endure much, much worse pain than my once-every-five-weeks done-in-five-minutes five waxing strips could inflict. Maybe it was Leah? But she had a season ticket, so to speak; there was no need for emergencies.

Right outside, Antonio, the local clothing shop owner, smashed into my shoulder at full-speed while rushing into the salon with a bunch of garment bags in his arms.

Instead of apologizing, Antonio hugged the bags closer to his silk-shirt-clad chest and made the same vague accusation Erika had, with the same air of panicked urgency.

Huh?

As far as I knew, I wasn’t doing anything of the sort, and neither was Antonio, for that matter. He was divorced and hardly on speaking terms with the mother of his child. So what even..?

All of a sudden, I remembered the fuss that had reigned at home before the supposed visit of the Minister of Education to my school. I knew my friends had all suffered through the same: scrubbing, hair being pulled in the process of brushing and re-brushing, nails, exhortations, clothes-ironing, more exhortations, arguments-turning-fights about who was allowed chapstick and who was too young for chapstick… It felt a little like that.

The minister had canceled with no explanation, by the way, which the principal had let us know about after we’d already been baking in the gym for a whole hour, all lined up, white shirts, black skirts.

What a wretched, dumb motherfucker.

Instead of loitering, for about three hours I made myself useful as best I could, and headed for the Beach Shack cafe and bought a fishwich, to-go because I wanted to eat it in the marina, with a nice view and a nice breeze. The owner, a withered fisherman named Sunny, told me that the fish today was COBIA, BEER-BATTERED BEFORE FRYING. FROM A FRESH CATCH.

It was a huge monstrosity of a sub, with fatty, flaky, deep-fried filets, with pickles, tomato slices, salad, and so much tartar sauce that the excess was overflowing and dripping on the boards, and I was going to town on that monstrosity when Wakuu found me. A chunk of beer-battered cobia nearly got stuck in my throat. With effort, I gulped it down.

“No, don't tell me.” Palm splayed, I halted him as he was about to speak. “I know. You are actually two people.”

“You could say that. Good sandwich?”

I nodded. “Astonishingly good.”

Wakuu stared at what remained of it with deep longing in his made-up eyes. Looking at the eyeliner, then at the platinum earring, I took a step away, so as not to stain his flawless clothes, his perfect makeup, his powdered porcelain façade. Not that I liked the reversal; it’s just that by now I could guess that there was a very solid reason. A very not-fun reason.

I gave the last quarter of the sandwich to the seagulls, washed my face and hands in the drinking fountain, and wiped them with the edge of my pink flannel shirt.

“I’m waiting for someone,” he said in a hollow voice. “Care to wait with me?”

We ended up on a desolate bench overlooking the sea. I still felt a little sticky, so I sat some distance away.

For a while, we were frozen, surrounded by negative space.

Trying to keep my voice casual, I asked, “So what is this about?”

He answered right away. “It’s about Avsey van der Fokker.”

“Who’s that?”

Wakuu sighed. “Da Bomb,” he said in a tone that indicated his hatred for these particular letters in this particular combination.

“Oh!

The Da Bomb?”

The cosmetics industry golden heir? The same guy who’d pop up in the press now and then due to yet another exorbitant eccentricity? Like his attempt to buy three zoos as a retort to several of his companies being accused of animal testing. Or offering discounted blepharoplasty to a federal judge during a hearing. In which he was the defendant. Or his public declaration that people who didn’t shave their legs deserved to be shot like rabid apes.

“ The Da Bomb.” Another heavy sigh. “He hates being called by his real name.”

“I don’t think many people even know his real name. Or age. But I guess it checks out. If I was called Avsey van der Fokker, I’d have also preferred to da-bomb everyone who addressed me thusly.”

“You said it.”

I expected to hear that Wakuu had agreed to do product endorsement in order to procure money for the town. My expectations were punched in the face.

“Lately he’s been obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life. He’s rented a multitude of arrays all over, always choosing the remote, small ones that did not have enough funding. He paid for repairs, paid for the correspondent equipment to be installed or fixed up, like that radio telescope. Our range is small, our capacity is miniscule, but he doesn't care, all he wants is continuous scanning for radio signals, with tools to send a reply. It’s all automated, really. He only needs one person stationed, for rotation and reports. In the case of ours—” Wakuu pointed at himself. “He is very particular about how these people should look in order to be worthy.”

“But. Why would he do that?”

Not like he was in the space industry. Da Bomb was building neither da bombs nor rockets.

“Because he thinks he’s an alien.”

My gaze must have reflected the confusion and mistrust. But no, this deadpan was not hiding a joke. It was so not a joke.

“I’m serious. He thinks he needs to find his nomadic brethren and tell them that his mission is over, and that humans are too ugly to live.”

“Wakuu, but, uuuh.”

My gaze must have been pained. So was his.

Now it was Wakuu who splayed his palm, halting me. “I assure you, everything that could have been said about the ethical side of it, has been said. Yes, we are enabling a madman simply because he’s a very rich madman.”

Oof. “Does he have a science advisor?”

“Oh yes. The most dedicated and prolific enabler of them all.” With his fingers, Wakuu gestured 'Pay Me'. “Yes, I’m an enabler too. He doesn’t bother with the most basic physics, the world is two-dimensional to that loon, but I’ll be damned if I try to explain even in the gloop terminology because it’s useless, because other people have tried, and it always ended up with them losing jobs and funding, and— I’m sorry.”

I could see in his posture and hear in his tone that this defensive reaction was habitual, with words rehearsed, oft repeated; likely within.

“You don’t need to apologize to me. And I hope you’re not apologizing to yourself. What, like one person could ever really be capable of breaking the system?”

“Yes, they could be,” Wakuu argued. “But that person is not me.”

I looked into his eyes, the eyes of a good person who chastised himself for not being perfect, and my fingers twitched. I wanted to hold his hand, but that manicure was way too impeccable, and my hand probably still smelled like fish and vinegar.

“Either way,” he continued after a long pause, “this is a good place. Decent elevation, remote, minimal light pollution, drier weather, not the equator but close enough. Good air, good food … Dad lives here. I wanted to be stationed here, and this was the only way.”

The two of them had no one but each other. No other decent job opportunities around. Wakuu had spent too much time away, abroad for his degree. So he was willing to do anything, settle for anything, as long as the anything would put him here.

“There was also the option of me taking over the family business, but— All things considered, this is a win-win. For the island, the town. For me. For Dad too, although at times he acts like it isn’t.”

“What do you mean?” A shiny dot had appeared on the horizon.

“On his best days, he says I should be out there.” Wakuu gestured towards the sea, but I knew he meant the mainland. “Living my best life, enjoying myself while I can. Yet aside from the need for this buffoonery,” he gestured at himself, but I knew he meant the result of Erika and Emily’s labors, “things are just fine. And I can avoid video chats, by pretending the connection is bad. But I can’t avoid in-person inspections. A couple more years, and maybe we can build our own IACT array right here.” He pointed back at the mountain. “Not to mention cable cars.”

A spoiled, cuckoo golden heir with an obsession wasn’t nice. But the very idea at the core of this obsession intrigued me, always had. After all, I was only human. After all, what could be more exciting than discovering we were not alone in the universe?

Sounding timid, feeling a little stupid, I dared. “But. Just in theory. I know that the government de-funded the search. But what if you do find something? In theory.”

“Well, if we do find an alien signal, we take it to the government,” Wakuu replied, and in his tone of voice I heard the loud and clear and unsaid truth: ‘never going to happen’.

We sat in silence for a while longer. That silence was neither straining nor strained.

“Thanks for the explanation,” I said. “As insane as it is … makes so, so much sense.”

“Sadly,” Wakuu exhaled.

“Sadly,” I agreed. “So he comes over from time to time or—”

“No. He wouldn’t. He sends a couple of lackeys. From time to time. Speaking of which, look over there.”

Not a dot anymore. Although she was still quite far, I could squint and discern some particulars of the vessel fast approaching. A luxurious yacht. Maybe even a tri-deck. Sleek, silvery, glistening, chrome-plated, cutting through the deep blue and raising white exhaust in its wake, the yacht resembled a futuristic starship.

Wakuu got up, popped his neck, cracked his shoulder blades. Bracing.

“Sorry for the whole salon thing. I didn’t mean to barge in on your appointment.”

“It’s all good, not your fault. I actually should go there now. Should deal with this today.”

“Oh. Okay. What are you getting?” he asked, and I raised my head to look at him and found him staring straight ahead, at the sea, at that yacht; he wasn’t looking at me, wasn’t searching for imperfections, wasn’t guessing. Nor was he admiring her. He was simply clinging to the last small-talk-slivers of a comforting, earnest conversation. Despite the veneer, he looked very human at that moment. Weary and burdened. Exhausted.

“A wax.”

“Ouch. Legs?”

“Nope. Not legs.”

“Ouch,” Wakuu repeated, now peeking at me and grimacing.

“Ouch,” I confirmed and got up too. “But your stuff is ouchier. Right, see you—”

“Around.”