Cyrus started filling up his backpack. Toothbrush, check. Dinosaur pyjama, his favourite, check. A winter trouser, the Moon ca be a cold place. Also the sweatshirt with the S of Superman. The portable generator, they don’t know how long until we have solar panels. Multitool, check. Paper. A pencil. Just in case everything else fails, he remembered something about that happening on the Apollo program. What was that? Something about a million dollar pen. Mark is a dreamer but he’s right, if we don’t do something about the current situation no one will. The politicians always want more money today, not tomorrow, the NASA, ESA, JAXA and ISA, they just want to publish papers, or to make documentaries, or get lovers. Whatever. Fortunately for him and Mark he knows how to escape from Earth, and they will easily cook a preliminary lineup, who’s the captain of the project and who’s coming.
Going downstairs, he jumped two steps at a time and landed almost slipping on his entrance hall. To the left, the kitchen was as messy as usual. No one was cleaning and his father systematically neglecting to charge the home assistant, that was laying close to the doorframe like a broken toy. He decided to delay his exit a little to gently place the robot over the charging platform, then look to his right. Through the door of the living room, the back of his sofa and the hanging feet of his father were visible. Hesitantly, he murmured a farewell. His father, a very successful software architect was not precisely a model for him, but Cyrus loved him, specially because of his parenting approach about technology and science in general. Instead of fairy tales at night he had differential calculus and quantum mechanics. One of his first monsters ended up being, in fact, the Prime Number Theorem. All those integers, unexplained, distributed over the natural space. Scary as hell.
His father moved.
“Cyrus? Are you going to school?”
“No dad. Today’s Saturday, no school. I’m going to Mark’s.”
“Good. I like Mark. He’s not very bright boy, but what he doesn’t have on IQ he has on creativity. OK, you may go.” Cyrus didn’t usually ask his father for an approval for his trips but he was happy to get it this time. “I know it’s just across the street, but don’t come back home after dark! And say hello to Mark’s mother from my side…” He didn’t wait to his father to leave the sofa so he shouted OK. Then, he headed to the door. “I’m going to Mark’s” he mumbled to the doorknob. The door, after recording the customary information, opened with a smooth sound. Outside, the sun was still shinning. He adjusted the straps of his backpack and left his home for good.