On January first, 2070, I am standing on Devonshire Street in Boston, Massachusetts, aiming a swollen index finger accusingly at the southern sky. My watch claims it is precisely noon but the damn thing isn't trustworthy: it loses almost a second per decade.
"See where I'm pointing, Peter?" I say. "If the sun wasn't washing the stars out, you'd be able to see Vega right about ... there."
My grandson is silent for a moment, lips squeezed by intense thoughts. His delicate face, oddly studious in one so young, has a milky glow in the winter sunlight and his clear brown eyes are carbon copies of my daughter Jody's eyes. The boy looks so precious to me, it makes my heart sting.
"You told me about Vega before, Grampa Scott, didn't you?"
"So I have."
"Vega," Peter says slowly, rolling the word around his mouth like a connoisseur sampling a wine.
"Means 'swooping' in Arabic. The ancient Egyptians originally named the star 'vulture' and when--"
"But it doesn't look like a bird, does it?"
"Not to me, it doesn't. Remember last summer when I came to visit? You and I went out on the back porch and we turned off all the lights and sat on your mom's big glider-chair together and looked at the stars. That's when I showed you Vega."
"I remember! Except I can't remember what it looks like."
"It's bright and blue-white." I recall, with a painful twinge, that my Companion had once dubbed it a "bleached sapphire."
"Is Vega where you died, Grampa?"
"More or less. An enormous dust field surrounds the star like a--I don't know--a big flattened donut around a baseball. Twelve asteroid belts hide out in that dust field. You know what an asteroid is, don't you?"
"Sure I do!"
"Good for you. As a group, the belts are known as the Lyraeads and that's where I died, on this huge crazy rock we called Charlie Horse."
"What a funny name." Peter's nine-year-old face is temporarily almost as wrinkled as mine; he is squinting at the bright sky as if he might pick out Vega after all.
"Charlie Horse is a funny little world, Peter. It's the Mr. Maggoo of asteroids." The statement earns me a blank look. "Ever see Mr. Maggoo? The cartoon?" I'm wondering if the show is still running after all these years.
"I don't like cartoons."
"What I mean is, the Lyraead asteroids mostly orbit Vega in the same direction but not good old Charlie. It kind of bumbles through all sorts of debris and somehow never bashes into anything big enough to hurt it. Not lately anyway. There's strong evidence that it wasn't always so lucky. From its shape, we think Charlie was created not terribly long ago, as such things go, when two huge rocks bashed together. Maybe someday it will hit something else; no one knows for sure."
"Why not?"
"Because the motions and interactions are so complex that--tell you what. Let's discuss this when you're a little older. Maybe next year when you're ten."
"I'm old enough right now, Grampa!"
"Then I'll let you in on a secret: It was twenty years ago, almost to the minute and right here on Devonshire Street, when I got the phone call."
"What phone call?"
"The one saying I'd been chosen for the loneliest job in the universe. I've got an idea. Let's you and me go someplace warm where we can snag some hot cocoa. Then I'll tell you all about it."
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