“Why, this is a planet called Earth, Kip.”

“No, no… I mean, obviously it’s Earth. Dumb question. And I know this is New Mexico, but wherein New Mexico?”

“Oh, about forty-five years to the west of the tiny town of Gladiola.”

“I really need to use your phone, Jim, if you have one. You know, to let everyone know I made it down okay. They probably have no idea where I am or anything.”

Jim is shaking his head. “You can use my cell phone if you like, but I really don’t think it’s going to be necessary, Kip.”

“Why not?”

“Take a look.” Jim gestures to the northwest, toward Roswell and Albuquerque, and Kip follows his gaze to where something undulates on the horizon, the shape indistinct in the rising heat, coalescing quickly into several objects. A small air force of helicopters rises into view, racing toward them, as a fixed-wing business jet swoops in low from the north and passes over the field with a deafening roar at the same moment Jim’s cell phone starts ringing in his pocket.

Somehow, Kip thinks, the reaction of everyone he’s met so far is wrong. Weird would be a better word.

There was all the excessive handshaking the moment the Air Force crew members tumbled out of their helicopter to prepare him for transport to the nearby base. It was as if some celebrity had suddenly shown up asking for their help, yet everyone seemed to be sidestepping his questions.

It was too loud in the helicopter to say much, and he’d written off their enthusiastic grins as nothing more than satisfaction that he’d made it down safely.

Even stranger, however, has been the greeting at Holloman. The wing commander and the base commander met him at the door minutes ago, fussing over him obsequiously as they ushered him into this private room where a Colonel Billingsley, the chief of the hospital, was waiting for him.

Now the doctor motions him onto an exam table and begins checking his vital signs, the craggy features and silver-gray hair suggesting a man in his late fifties.

“Doc, when did you hear I was coming down?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, when did they alert you I might end up in New Mexico?”

“Oh, not until just before you landed.”

“And… the whole base was alerted then?”

“Not at all. Just the rescue forces and the clinic. Breathe deeply for me. Now, hold it and let it out slowly.”

“Okay.”

Kip complies, waiting out the multiple stops of the stethoscope around his back before speaking again. “Everyone seems so… engaged with this, you know. Has there been something on television about me?”

There’s a knowing laugh. “Yeah, well… that’s one way to put it. I need you to turn around and sit on the side of the table now.”

Kip repositions himself, looking back up at the doctor. “But… I really would appreciate an answer.”

“To what?”

“Was there a lot on television about my coming out of orbit today? Everyone seems to be so aware of it.”

It’s the physician’s turn to look puzzled as he straightens up, the blood pressure cuff in his hands. “You mean, about the spacewalk, and your decision to try the engine?”

“My… decision?"

“You know, when you wrote that about burying your father and giving him back his operating system?”

Kip sits staring at Billingsley not comprehending.

“I thought that was well put, by the way,” the doctor continues. “In fact, I think you’re a good writer.”

“How… how on earth could you know anything I said up there?”

Colonel Billingsley laughs, cocking his head. “You’re kidding, right? I know you have a good sense of humor.”

“I don’t understand… how do you know I have a good sense of humor?”

“Kip, we may be out here in the wilds of New Mexico, but we have cable, so to speak. You wrote it up there and we read it down here.”

The doctor starts to wrap a blood pressure cuff around his left arm, but Kip pushes him away slowly.

“Wait… you were able to read that comment down here somehow? Did I say anything else? When did the radios start working?”

The cuff goes on the table and the doctor sits down carefully on a metal stool, his eyes searching Kip’s face, the realization sinking in.

“May I call you Kip?”

“Well, sure.”

“Kip, hasn’t anyone told you yet?”

“Told me what?”

“I mean, we all know from what you wrote that while you were stuck up there you weren’t aware there was a working downlink. But I figured someone had told you about it on the way here.”

“Doc, excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?”

The physician is smiling at him as he would to a child. He chooses his words carefully now that he’s alerted to his role. There is only a decade separating them in age, but he has to fight the urge to address Kip as “son.”

“Kip, for the last four days everything you wrote up there on your laptop was actually sent streaming real time back to a single channel monitored here on Earth.”

“WHAT? The Air Force was able to read what I wrote? The whole time? How?”

Silence fills a dozen seconds as the doctor glances at his feet, then back.

“My God, Kip,” he says softly, “I had no idea you didn’t know. You see, every time you punched a key up there on your laptop, that letter appeared almost instantly on television screens and computer monitors and even outdoor signboards all over this planet. Worldwide, Kip. Billions and billions of people have been hanging on your every word, reading everything you wrote asyou wrote it, sitting on the edge of their seats in pure terror, as you were at times, crying with you over certain things you said, and… basically… living vicariously through the whole experience. Not a whole lot of productive work has been accomplished on Earth in the past few days, thanks to you.”

“Everyone’s been reading… everything?”

“Yes. And thinking very hard about a lot of what you’ve had to say. Kip, simultaneous translators have been changing your words into, I don’t know, maybe a hundred or more languages. The President, senators, kings, queens, billionaires like Gates—and damn near everyone at this hospital and base—I don’t know of anyone who’s been able to blink or tear themselves away.”

“I was just writing for myself, and… and…”

“And whoever would find that hard drive fifty years from now. I know. We all know. That’s what makes it so incredible. We were watching the real-time thoughts of a doomed man grappling with his fate and his life. And, I might add, a guy who utterly refused to give up. That makes you heroic in my book.”

The physician can see the blood draining from Kip’s face as it begins to sink in. He squints, looking at the doctor for signs that he’s the butt of a joke, then moves back slightly, as if to distance himself from what he’s heard.

“This can’t be true! This isn’ttrue! I had no communications up there. You must have just received something after I spliced those wires, or… or someone was playing a cruel joke on the world.”

“Four days, Kip. From the very first sentence you wrote—although at first only a few were seeing it live. But all of it was captured and replayed endlessly. Even your first lines where you were saying something about having twenty minutes before you had to turn the ship around, and it was scaring you silly.”

“I don’t believe you! With all due respect, Doctor, I don’t fricking believe you!” He’s gripping the sides of the table now with white knuckles, almost wishing for the security of the spacecraft again.

Everything I wrote?

He struggles to find his voice after long seconds of wide-eyed silence, aware that the doctor has given no sign of suddenly breaking into a grin and saying “April Fool.”