The Joe who had been through this door before was trying not to feel swept away by nostalgia. On the drive again, he had listened to the song on repeat, and while now it felt silly and theatrical, there had been a point when all the years had slipped away. He had raised his head up into a howl along with the singer, gestured along when the singer again sang about being so lost that only the stars could see him. Seeing the door again had been surprisingly like seeing an old friend. He hadn’t felt the same way when he had gone through the other ones. But this one had given him a purpose. A dumb thought that embarrassed Joe: Does the door remember me?

The other Joe was far more focused. He was preparing the small breakfast bar in the Airbnb they were all staying at—none of the area’s hotels had felt appropriate for how important the occasion was. Veuve, orange juice he’d paid some teens to squeeze, sparkling waters, and fruit that had originally been spread on a platter to look kaleidoscopic. The adventurers, as they liked to be called, had brought their own personal chef, a petite woman of Chinese descent with pink hair and tattoos of demons and forks on her forearms. They liked to brag that she had cooked for Oprah, but there was no proof of this on the internet. He was sure they would say it again while they ate their runny eggs with chili oil, their seed toast smeared in garlic, and their delicately cut avocados.

Still sleeping were three out of the other four members of the expedition. They had stayed up late drinking and already discussing their next adventure. Half wanted to take one of those quick trips up into the Earth’s atmosphere, to feel the velocity and force of trying to escape and to see how truly beautiful it all looked from up there. A famous TV actor had cried and wasn’t embarrassed about it, so it had to be pretty good. The other half had heard there was a jungle on an island off the coast of East Africa. Its inhabitants were famous, despite having no modern medicine and very little infrastructure, for living past one hundred. The nuts that grew there, buttery and delicious, were the secret to their longevity. The islanders looked good too. A sixty-year-old looked thirty.

“That’s what you call an adventure? Gathering nuts so you don’t have to do a skin-care routine?” one had laughed.

Another suggested he could bribe a senator he knew to let them stay in an area of the Utah desert that people were not allowed to camp in. It was a place where aliens kept crashing their ships. Several times nonhuman remains had been pulled out of the wreckage. They were divided between whether it was cool, gross, or boring.