“Get him on the phone and ask if they have any alive ones on a base.”

One was quiet in the corner. He was going to find his son out there on the path. There would be no other adventures after this. Tomorrow, he thought, I will hug him and apologize for everything I did wrong the first time.

Nothing had been settled when they went to bed, but there was a glow all four shared from drinking too much liquor. They could feel all the books that would be written about them one day. Those texts would not include their conversation about whether they would have sex with aliens, if they would have to sign forms about whether or not they would if they visited Utah, and who the hottest alien to ever be featured on Star Trek was. Those conversations were not dignified.

Another member of the expedition who was awake was Margot. She was video journaling like she did every morning. The room she had was painted seafoam green, there were wooden children’s toys stacked in a corner, and there was a shelf full of books that all had titles like STEM for Babies. Margot leaned against the wall, adjusted the angle of the camera until her jaw looked its sharpest and her nose looked its smallest, and then talked through her feelings. This, too, could be history. Margot talked through the weight-lifting routine of the past few months, the different films she had studied, from the Roundhay Garden Scene to Battleship Potemkin. She could hear the affectation in her voice, and kept willing herself to sound less self-conscious, less studied. It was why she had never really taken off as an influencer; someone had always written in the comments about how rehearsed she sounded, if they were being nice. More often she received the comment this b is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake.

“What do you say,” Margot mused, “when you know your life is about to change?”