Lightspeed: Year One

I’M ALIVE, I LOVE YOU, I’LL SEE YOU IN RENO Vylar Kaftan

We have a history of missed connections, you and I. Years ago, when you called goodbye from the shuttle launch, my flight was landing in Zurich. I’d changed planes, been re-routed from Frankfurt. That’s why you got my voicemail. I’d have answered if I could, and would’ve wished you luck, even if you wanted a life without me. I never managed to see Europa, like you did—just Europe, where I met my first husband. The one I wished was you.

When I heard your message, I was glad you were happy—yes, I’ve always wanted you happy, even during our divorce. I thought of you traveling to Alpha Centauri, time dilating between us like a portal. I envisioned it like a slow-motion movie. You’d be back in forty years. I’d be sixty-four, and you’d only be half my age.

I saved your message for weeks, until I accidentally deleted it. It felt symbolic. We’d be happier apart, I thought to myself. But “apart” was always the way we connected. The word defines us relative to each other: one cannot be apart without the other.

Einstein spent ten years thinking about a mirror that troubled him. If he traveled at the speed of light and looked into a hand-held mirror, would he see his reflection, or not? Setting aside vampirism, or poorly-made glass that cracks at high speeds, the answer is that he must. Relativity means that you can’t tell how fast you’re going unless you have a point of reference.

We’ve been together for as long as I can remember. Just kids, running around the Sacramento suburbs. I liked you because you’d play with a girl. I ran faster, fought harder, and hit harder than any boy—and I knew it. Remember that time we played Capture the Flag and you couldn’t find mine? I shoved it in a drainpipe. You could still see its corner. That counts.

I was the girl next door—safe, reliable, undesirable. When I was thirteen, and you were sixteen—I was crazy-in-love with you. But you were blind. “Best friends forever,” you told me.

I thought that you’d never see me as a woman your own age. I had to hear about all those girls you dated. Remember that awful redhead who stole cigarettes from her grandmother? I bet she got lung cancer.

“Best friends,” I told you too. We were together, yet completely apart.

I used to wonder how to make you see me. Should I tell you what I felt? Stay silent and hope you’d see?

But you made the choice for me: you left for the military. So I joined the Peace Corps—the polar opposite of what you did. This drew us together again like magnets. It’s why we ended up living together in San Francisco. Roommates and lovers.

I didn’t know this then, of course—all of this I figured out during the journey to Alpha Centauri.

Two magnets, apart, continue to exert force on each other. Their power lies in the space between.

Einstein says that nothing moves at the speed of light, because the faster things get the heavier they become.

It’s true that as I accelerated, everything had more weight: two decades of child-rearing, juggling flute practice with my photography career, balancing a marriage’s weight against single independence. But weight is relative, and what’s heavy on Earth is light on the Moon and monstrous on Jupiter. Yet the mass remains the same. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When I think about the changes in my parents’ lives—and how much more I’ve already seen, in fewer years—I think of Moore’s Law.

My world is doubling every year. Somewhere in old Italy, Galileo is searching the skies with his telescope, wondering why his life doesn’t feel as full as it should. It’s because I have it all, four centuries later—his life, and millions of others.

The doubling sequence surprises people who’ve never thought it through.

Reno, you told me once. Reno, Nevada. When we lived in San Francisco, in that tiny apartment above a Mission District taqueria. Do you remember that conversation? We were sitting on that awful brown loveseat you’d rescued from a dumpster. You were heating dinner in the microwave, and the room smelled like curry. The fog rolled through the city and we both wore old sweaters. I didn’t yet know the relevance of Reno.

“If we’re separated,” you said.

“Why Reno?”

“It’s inland. When the big quake hits the Bay, Reno’s safe. Or if there’s a missile strike or something. No one strikes Reno.”

“You’re paranoid,” I said.

You shrugged. “I’m aware.”

We’d been living together for six months. We made good roommates—both of us loud, and neither of us tidy. You took out the trash, and I sorted the mail; we both did dishes when needed, and not more often. I didn’t mind your waterskis propped against the fridge, or your physics books scattered on the pizza-stained carpet. You didn’t mind the way I always slammed doors and drawers, no matter how quiet I tried to be. It was a good arrangement. But not what I wanted.