He fought for a few seconds before conceding with a nod. “Yeah. But you’ll see enough. That’s why I’m here telling you. You’ve got to get through the hard times, and you won’t if you don’t know. Besides, you don’t have to see it to know it’ll happen. It’s like, I won’t see us get to the stars, but I know it will happen; which got me through my hard times.”
There was that twinkle in his eye again when he said that. And this time, when he looked up at the sky, it was not at the Moon or Jupiter, but someplace else; someplace I couldn’t exactly make out because if there were any stars there, they were too dim for me to see.
I knew he was inviting the question; hell, daring me to ask it. “How do you know?”
The answer was so obvious I should have guessed it. He pulled out the device, and cradled it in his hands. “What do you think I do with this thing when I get back? Toss it out?” He shook his head. “You see, my grandchild is going to be on that first starship. Your great-great-grand-daughter. And I know she’s going to make it because when I was your age I had a visit like the one you’re having now. And let me tell you, if you think what I’ve said is pretty incredible… that I wish I could tell you. But she told me I couldn’t, because of what she said her granddaughter told her.
“But I’ve already said more than I should.” He struggled to his feet, in that slow, deliberate way older people have, not like it’s so hard but like they have to do it just right, and brushed the sand off his trousers methodically. “It’s time I should be getting back.” He put a hand out when I leapt to my feet to protest. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, grandfather. Especially from such a different perspective than the one I remember.”
“But—”
—Was as far as I got. He took a few steps back, touched the device, and faded into nothingness just the same way he’d appeared, leaving me in my dark solitude. 1 started to shout something, as though my voice could carry across the years, but caught the stupidity of that in time. He was gone. I’d never see him again, until… well, until I was old and he the child with so much future ahead of him. If, that is, I believed any of what happened this night.
I stood there for a while longer, trying to take it all in, to make sense of what I’d just experienced. I finally decided that the only explanation that made any sense was that I’d fallen asleep out here on the dunes and dreamt the whole thing. But I didn’t believe that for one moment, of course; how the hell could I have…?
Doesn’t matter, though. I mean, in a few years I’ll know the truth, but standing there, gazing at those distant worlds and what lay beyond them, I realized that none of what had just happened had to be true to mean something. You see, even if it is just a dream, it’s a dream I can live by. And sometimes, that’s all a person needs to keep going. Even for a kid.
Especially when the dream is real.