Astrid the Astronaut's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

The first visitors arrived at dawn, drawn by news reports and satellite photos. Astrid stood at the edge of the plateau, watching their cars snake up the dirt road. Space Haven had been open for three weeks, but the crowds kept growing. People came, looked through the telescope, stood beneath the stars, and left quieter than they arrived. But the plateau couldn't hold them all anymore. Families waited hours for a turn at the telescope. Buses idled in makeshift parking areas. Astrid watched a woman argue with her husband about leaving before they'd seen everything. The question wasn't whether to expand. It was how to make the expansion mean something. She started building the next morning. Nine structures, arranged in a line stretching east from the original site. The first one glowed golden, twice the size of the others, with a wooden sign planted in front: Welcome to the Sun. Then came smaller buildings in order, each one representing a planet. Mercury, Venus, Earth. Mars with its red clay exterior. Jupiter's mass translated to volume. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. At the far end, she built a small house with an icy blue shell, its wooden door barely tall enough for a child. Pluto. Demoted, distant, but still there. A father lifted his daughter onto the flat-topped boulder Astrid had positioned for viewing. The girl looked down the row of houses, then back at the golden sun structure. "Dad," she said, "we're so small." He didn't correct her. Astrid watched them walk the length of the solar system, the daughter counting her steps between planets. By the time they reached the ice-covered house at the end, the girl had gone quiet. She pressed her hand against its cold exterior and stared back at the sun, now just a distant glow. Astrid had given them scale. They would never unsee it.