Read by Gloria Sanders
- Read
You are young when you start reading books about space. Event horizons, the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt enter your lexicon long before you learn to spell the word egg-zill-er-ate-ing, acc-sell-er-ate or happy-ness. Your school doesn’t allow you to write in pen. They’re not even teaching physics. “My Very Easy Method Just Shows Us Nine Planets” was something you learnt when you were three, and when you were four, your learnt it was false.
By seven: “Pluto is not a planet, Miss,” you say.
“Yes, it is,” the teacher says. “Pluto is most definitely a planet. It says so in your textbook.”
The textbook is twenty years old, which means it’s thirteen years older than you, which means it is shit.
- Dream
You can’t sleep. Tomorrow is your ninth birthday and you have asked mum and dad for a telescope. You can’t wait to unwrap the box, assemble the parts, inspect the mirror, to turn your gaze to the moon.
In the morning, you get a book: Stars You Can See with the Naked Eye, a NASA t-shirt, and chocolate. You hug your mum and dad and go upstairs to cry as quietly as you can.
When night falls, you go into the garden and lie on the grass. It is already damp with dew and it soaks your new t-shirt. Through the haze of light pollution you see Polaris, Sirius and Betelgeuse but not much else. You look at the moon. Its light gives off a green and yellow glow. You are enchanted. You are sad.
- Read
You are eleven when you start reading Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip K. Dick, Douglas Adams. You could never stand the books on the school syllabus, so every week your dad takes you to the local library where you sit and read whilst he does the shopping, takes a walk, or whatever it is he does when you’re at the library.
You learn about aliens. You learn about time travel. You learn about teleporting. You learn how to spell “exhilarating”, “accelerate” and “happiness”. It’s very exciting, and in the evening you write stories which are basically poor remakes of what you’ve read during the day.
At night, you stay awake staring at the ceiling. You can’t wait to grow up.
- Train
You climb on to the roof to see if you can handle the vertigo because you imagine astronauts – who orbit the Earth at 240 miles above the ground on the International Space Station – experience intense vertigo. You stand on a second-floor window ledge, grip the gutter, then clamber up.
You don’t mind the height at all. You find it eggs-zill-er-ate-ing. From here, you can see the park, your school and the church. You stay for a while, wondering how you are going to get back down. After a while, you start to panic. How are you going to get down? Eventually, you message your mum.
She freaks out. She shouts, cries, swears: all things you have never heard or seen her do before.
The farmer comes around with a large ladder. When he arrives, you see him shaking his head.
“You need to call the fire brigade,” he says.
They arrive with blue lights. They are wearing fancy uniforms. They carry you down in a “fireman’s lift”!
“I’m not angry,” your mum says, over dinner. “I’m just embarrassed.”
- Read
You are thirteen when you start reading books on physics. You learn then that science is more interesting than science fiction. You learn that the entire human race could fit inside a sugar cube. You learn about white holes. You learn that a space suit costs nine million pounds. This is long before you have learnt the meaning of the words “ubiquitous”, “suffice” or “homogenous”.
At night, you barely sleep. You’re too busy reading.
- Send in a speculative application
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am an astronaut. I am unafraid of heights. I have climbed onto the roof of my house and was absolutely fine. I am in perfect physical health. I’ve never had a single thing wrong with me except for Scarlet Fever which went away after a couple of weeks and didn’t leave any scars. I don’t have anything wrong with me psychiatrically either. I’ve never been depressed or anxious or manic or psychotic. My reflexes are good. If you throw a ball at me, I’ll catch it. I can run for two hours without stopping. I know the names of loads of the stars you can see with the naked eye. I am predicted A’s in Maths and Physics and Chemistry and Biology and even English and Art. I don’t drink or smoke or take drugs (except Paracetamol). I have been following every single NASA mission for six years and know a great deal about your organisation. Please write back to me if you’d like to interview me. I’d love to join your team.
- Train
You can do twenty press-ups now. You can lift half your body weight. Your team at school smashes every opponent and that’s mostly because of you. You get your school to start doing rugby for the girls and quickly become captain. People call you big, huge, the Monster Girl. You don’t care. You’re training.
You enrol on to the RAF cadets. You fly. The pilot takes over and does a loop-the-loop. You can’t stop grinning. You have never felt so free.
- Dream
All the good aeronautical engineering courses require three A’s and you’ve got three B’s, so you decide to take a gap year, re-take your exams, and try again.
At night, you barely sleep, dreaming about Machu Picchu, Incan kings, campuses with cloisters, libraries that go on forever.
- Get close to the stars
You are on an island in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. You are nearly four thousand metres above sea-level. It’s difficult to breathe. You pant, sweat, complain. There are no cars so you have to walk everywhere or take a horse – for which the locals charge a relative fortune
When it gets dark it’s time to go to bed because there’s no electricity. You are walking back to your hut when you friend grabs you by the arm.
“Look up,” she says. “Look up now.”
You frown before doing what she says.
The sky is enormous, bigger than any sky you have seen before. You can see from horizon to horizon, every single millimetre punctuated by thousands of stars. You feel like you’re falling into it. It’s not just the altitude that takes your breath away.
“Polaris, Sirius, Betelgeuse,” you say, but you have forgotten the names of the other stars, the other galaxies you can see, and so stop there.
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing,” you say. “I’m saying nothing.”
- Dream
You are sitting on the balcony, smoking with a co-worker.
“What did you want to be when you were younger?” you ask. “Did you always want to be a social media executive?”
“Kind of,” he says. “I did get on Twitter when I was seven.”
There is a pause.
“What about you?”
You mull this over a while. What did you want to be when you were young?
“A police officer,” you say. “I just loved those cop shows.”
“Huh,” he says. “What happened to that dream?”
You shrug. “It went away,” you say. “To be honest, I don’t really know what I want to be now. Maybe an astronaut.”
He laughs.
“Go for it. Reach for the stars.”
You take another drag and watch the smoke float up into the sky. You live in London, where there are no stars.
“Nah,” you say. “I’m all right.”
(c) Alice Franklin, 2019Alice Franklin is a London-based intern, hammock enthusiast and writer. Previously, her work has appeared in the Financial Times and three Spanish-language anthologies. From September she will be studying for an MA in Creative Writing at UEA.
Gloria Sanders trained at Drama Studio London. She regularly narrates audiobooks for the RNIB and recently joined the cast ofTime Will Tell's Dracula at Whitby Abbey. She often works as an historical interpreter at heritage sites around the country and has continued her training in clowning and historic fooling.
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