The Seed

One day, a shy and introverted boy planted an odd-shaped seed. Smoothing the fresh dirt over the seed he thought about what it could one day become. He dreamed of orchards full of ripe fruit, of apples that could be turned into applesauce but also made into pies if he were feeling adventurous. But most of all, he dreamed of a vine that would grow to distant galaxies and take him far away. He dreamed that one day his feet would leave the ground, and he would be the first to cross the outer limits of the solar system and travel into interstellar space. Luminous orbs would be his guide in darkness, and he would be the first to witness the full sensory beauty of space, cataloging with intensity every tingle, burn, and bone-rattling shock-wave. Earth would fade into a dot, and then a smudge, and then a questioned memory, but he would not dwell on the minuteness of human life, or on the fragility of existence. He would never lose sleep over the burden of his future as the intergalactic ambassador to all of humanity, the last of his kind in a cruel and foreign world. He wouldn’t even worry about the immediate dangers he would face, the all-but-certain fates he would suffer. Even when left to himself for days, months, years on end in the unfathomably vast expanse of violent, lonely space, he would dream of one thing, and nothing else, night after night in fevered, hopeful dreams: What will they think of me now?