Leonard Abrams woke to the fiery gleam of a new sun on the horizon. The glowing arc, so much dimmer–certainly redder–than the Earth’s sun, reminded him of the distant waves in a sea of lava. He had grown accustomed to beginning his day like this, watching, from his hotel window, as newly arrived tourists and immigrants hiked across the dusty frontier of the exoplanet using only this first blast of stellar light. After disembarking from the rocketport, men in blue suits and bulky helmets held flares as torches. Women, clutching the hands of small children, walked in a S pattern to disrupt the wind, all of them wearing oxygen aids which draped around their necks as thick as scarves.

Even after two weeks, Leonard still felt travel-lagged. His neck forever sore because everyone traveled on the opposite side from what he was used to, and he could never remember which way to look. The nutrient recovery drinks were punched with too much salt. And it was so cold. When he bundled up and went out for a walk Leonard didn’t need to consult a map to know he was traveling across the surface of formerly uninhabitable terrain. He cursed the floating advertising banner, affixed to the top of the rocketport, which flashed the same, fluorescent, green message: Teegarden’s Star! Keeping Us Warm With the Promise of Renewal! 

The diffuse light from the red dwarf every morning was technically coming from Teegarden’s Star. Technically, they were on Teegarden’s Star B. But everyone on Earth, and everyone living there, called it Teegarden’s Star. Similar to other chapters in the history of colonization, Leonard mused, as he prepared himself his morning supplement, literal truth was secondary to the truth everyone ultimately wanted to believe in. 

He had planned this trip from Earth, picked this hotel, because it was the only way he could be near his ex-wife’s house. The one which he was soon shuttling over to, where his ten-year-old daughter—he had to keep reminding himself—permanently lived with her mother. Leonard had rented a Helios during his visit so that they would get plenty of time together to fly around and explore without interruption. Among the available automated flying vessels, it had come at the best price without waiting months for backorders on SkyChariot. The design was sleek and simple enough: a pod for each passenger, a hornet-face dark glass encasing with engines underneath. 

It had surprised him, however, when Deborah’s wish for their last day together was to go to a PlayZone. The indoor playground centers known as PlayZone were more basic and included fewer holographic engagements than the indoor playground centers he had seen around Teegarden: long, elaborate, and illuminated designs which resembled glass tentacles. PlayZone started on Earth, and Leonard used to take her there when they all lived together in Bethesda, Maryland. He had taken her there when she was beginning to walk and he didn’t want her young lungs exposed to the polluted air sediment, all the way up to age nine. It was a choice clearly rooted in nostalgia. And likely twice as expensive as the original on Earth. Then again, Leonard reflected, as his Helios approached their house, recreating an idealized past on Teegarden was probably the most desirable and lucrative pastime in the colony.

When his vessel arrived, dropping from the sky to a hovering distance of six inches from the curb, Deborah opened the door to her house. The way the lights were low in the hall behind her made him wonder if anyone else was awake inside. Surely, Cheryl still helped her with breakfast, didn’t she? At the very least, he assumed she joined her at the table so that their daughter wasn’t always sitting and eating alone. Leonard pushed the thoughts out of his head. Slowly, Deborah closed the door behind her. Slowly, she walked toward him, her head dipping so slow her chin was resting against her chest. He smiled as Deborah got inside. “Hey. How are we doing this morning?”

A flash of eye contact. But Deborah said nothing. 

Before he had left, Rachel, his fiancé, had warned him that she might act distant towards him. Perhaps more out of embarrassment, or fear, than anything else. And except for the obligatory hug and warm smile he had received upon his landing, this prediction had proven true.

“Let’s see how this PlayZone stacks up to what we remember,” said Leonard. “That’s where you wanted to go, right?”

Deborah shrugged. “I guess. It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does. Let’s see if there’s one nearby. ” 

He was pleased to locate a PlayZone using the “open territory” search, pleased again when he spotted a parking unit that required only a five-minute trek once he scanned his tourist badge. After they fit into their helmets and suits and exited the vehicle, he reached for her gloved hand, fuzzy and weightless in his own. But once the recreational facility came into view, Deborah broke away.

“Hey,” he called out, watching her run inside and shed her suit, her long caramel hair bouncing lightly on her shoulders. “Deborah,” he said a little louder, hoping his voice was strong enough to penetrate the walls. 

The inside of the PlayZone was heated, empty. Air filtered through a vent in the corners. A trapped smell arose—an aroma like freshly opened Tupperware. True to its original construction, with high ceilings and wide, thick walls, the PlayZone stretched out into a long, sprawling, rectangular layout. It was, Leonard thought, like a skyscraper toppled onto its side–except no dividers for floors and rooms existed. As such, the light seeping in was refracted through thick-plated layers of glass that seemed designed to withstand boulders. The red light coming in from the fading star made all the equipment inside look as though it was burning at a low heat. 

At the entrance, a blinking yellow sign brandishing the company slogan greeted them: “PlayZone: The Premier Experience in Recreated Natural Outdoor Entertainment!” Music played, a jingle with too much percussion for his taste. Leonard looked out at the maze of climbing equipment.

“Deborah!” he yelled.

To calm himself, he reached to the back of his neck and pressed until he felt the nubs of his spinal cord. He rubbed the gaps between them. In a dreamy way, Leonard wondered about the gaps between absolute and implied knowledge. Specifically, if someone her age had the intuition to predict what the adults around her were going to say from the tone of their voice, their slightly maladjusted mannerisms. 

It was only when he saw the white slip of her belly, visible beneath her zebra-striped shirt as she dangled from the climbing bar, that he felt the panic subside. There was Deborah again, a nice memory to file away for the ride back. Leonard tried to think of other nice memories: the way she always squinted, the brown sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose. An indelible tic she would either have for the rest of her life or grow out of by his next visit. 

“Deborah?” he called again, this time cupping his hands around his mouth to be sure he was heard over the music. “Please come over here.”

He tried to imagine what he looked like to her. Just another balding, gray-bearded, middle-aged man. Easy to ignore, perhaps. The difference being, she was his child, and he, her dad. On a rare visit, no less. One which every moment had to count toward the solidifying of their bond amidst the millions of miles of already existing, and constantly expanding, separation. When they landed, he had marched in with the other visitors as they tunneled into the arrival station, the residual rocket fumes lingering in the air, an effluvium of expired rice vinegar. He noticed how the infrared rays from Teegarden’s Star had bronzed Deborah’s fair skin to the color of a lightly-peeled potato. 

She and Cheryl had moved to Teegarden that May. Once the reality of their imminent departure became clear, Leonard immediately filed for the August PTO and booked a two-day shuttle there, even as something clamped tight in his heart from the knowledge. Divorce was hard enough. Preserving a meaningful relationship with his daughter now in a completely different solar system, another matter entirely. And with just a couple of hours left before his return trip to Earth, Leonard knew there wasn’t enough time to explain to her what he feared she might never forgive him for, news which he knew he had to tell her in person:  he was in love, again, and planned to remarry. 

At its worst, Leonard thought of this strange planet as a cruise ship lost in space, a place offering nothing more than the mirage of entertainment and luxury lifestyle accommodation for the masses. Promises of a new beginning—that fresh start everyone had become addicted to chasing since birth. 

As Leonard walked around the edges of sparkling equipment in the PlayZone, he looked at slides that changed shape every few minutes, twisting one way, then twisting another, an arrangement that reminded him of a surrealist M.C. Escher pattern. A bridge, or the mirage of a bridge, curved ten feet away from him, before moving in space above him. Little steps leading to the bridge appeared next to his own feet. Steps that, he could only assume, would change and solidify as needed for the participant’s practical navigation. Leonard ignored them and tried to walk quickly. His feet felt sweaty, heavy, swollen from the boots. 

Leonard cleared his throat and primed himself for a shout. “Honey?” His voice squeaked instead. 

This time, Deborah took notice. Sitting atop the shimmering green climbing structure, she hunched forward, squinting. In the glass casing above them, purple meteors streaked across the sky. “What is it, Dad?” 

Leonard grinned. “You okay?”

“You’re being a weirdo.”

“Okay,” he said. “Just checking.”

In preparation for Deborah and Cheryl’s move to Teegarden, Leonard had scheduled meetings with their custody supervisor so they could discuss how to best cope with Deborah not seeing him very often. Not very often meaning months. And what was left unsaid despite being the most realistic estimation—years. 

The only way Leonard had been able to afford paying for the shuttle to Teegarden was via a loan from a bank, cash he had been able to secure through a steady down payment of money that amounted to a year and a half of his savings. Leonard knew the connection he had with Deborah deserved more than just lip service and occasional visits. Still, in the weeks after he moved out, in the weeks after his ex-wife had announced she was going to do everything in her power to move to Teegarden with Deborah, Leonard hadn’t fought her. 

Even when they reviewed the custody arrangement and she spoke to him in the goading voice of a politician sizing up her opponent by way of ironic disregard: “I mean, you of all people always knew that leaving was the best option.” Even then, despite the innuendo fired at him like a flaming arrow straight through the heart, even then, he agreed. 

“Of course, Cheryl.” 

Because, of course, he did. As one of the top researchers on replacement habitats for the Environmental Protection Agency, Leonard poured over the data year after year until it was nearly committed to memory. And, according to the numbers he so carefully recited back to everyone during meetings, in only a few decades, possibly within Deborah's lifetime, Earth would become largely uninhabitable due to climate change and air pollution. 

His friends had agreed with him not to challenge the move: first of all, because the chances of them being able to leave and relocate to Teegarden were so remote. Second, because to fight it or block it legally in court would make him look terrible in the custody proceedings. Leonard also recognized her threats for what they were–spiteful. Baseless, because her heart wasn’t in it. Over the course of their marriage, every time he had advocated for planet relocation, Cheryl had rolled her eyes. At one point during marriage counseling, she had even said that he was “depressing the family” by continuously bringing the topic up instead of talking about vacation trips or exploring opportunities on the very planet they resided on. 

“Well, somebody has to have a plan for our future,” he started to grumble when these arguments became too much. Thus, Cheryl winning the relocation immigration lottery within the first year of its existence was not an outcome any of them would have ever predicted. At the time, Deborah had been spending more and more weekends with him and Rachel following the weekdays at her mom’s house. 

“Hey Deborah,” Leonard called out. “Come over here for a moment.”  

Deborah dropped down from the climbing structure. Leonard, in turn, dropped to his knees. He opened his arms. As soon as he wrapped around her, he could tell from her stiffness that she was irritated by the gesture. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

Deborah emitted a soft, audible, groan. “Dad? What do you want?” 

“Do you like it here? Are you having fun?”

“Sure,” she said, before her voice fell to the faint pitch of a whisper. “I love it. It’s really fun. Can you let me go now?”

Leonard stroked her hair between his fingers. “No problem.”

Deborah ran toward the swings. This time, Leonard decided to follow. “How about a push?” 

The shrug she responded with was all he needed. Placing his hands on the back of her cotton shirt, he imagined himself pushing into some deep psychological wound he had created. A thing entirely avoidable, yet impossible to fix, like when you drop a peach and watch the skin bruise and squish to the core. Leonard checked his watch: they would need to fly back to Cheryl’s place in the next ten minutes if he had any intention of making it to the station on time. Deborah dragged her feet to stop the swing. As if on cue, the PlayZone jingle stopped. She looked up at him.

“That can’t be normal. You must have some superpower,” he said, arching an eyebrow. 

“Don’t know. Never been to this one before.”

“Are you still a monkey for the monkey bars?”

“No, Dad.”

Slowly, she glanced around at the other equipment and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It reminded him of something famous human actresses used to do.

“Okayyy,” he said, drawing out the sound. “See-saw? I could get on the other end.”

This time, Deborah smiled. It was a faint grin, just the edges of her teeth, but it made his heart jump. “No, it’s fine,” she said, kicking the synthetic wood chips scattered around them. “We don’t have to talk right now. We can just be together.”

He could tell from the hunched angle of her shoulders she was upset. Deborah had the same unforgiving look on her face as Cheryl, Leonard thought. What that look would do to men, let alone women, when she was older, he could only guess. He remembered at three how she used to hug his legs and declare “I’m just a little bit shy” every time she entered a crowded room. He remembered the bedtime stories he used to tell her when she was four, about people living on gaseous matter, waltzing on the rings of Saturn. She was so little back then he could tuck her head under his chin and drape her entire body across his chest and legs until her feet rested at the top of his shins. They soon developed a whispered routine.

“Get the flashlight?” Deborah would ask once he finished telling stories. He’d nod close enough to her face in the darkness that their foreheads would touch. He loved to flutter his eyelashes against her cheeks to elicit giggles.

Lying next to her in the bed, they would use a single beam of light to illuminate the entire solar system habitation map for her, tracing all the possibilities on his work document with glowing fingers. Deborah began asking more directed questions when she turned five.

“And we’ll live on these one day, Daddy?”

“One of them. That’s the plan.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Tell me.”

Sighing in faux exasperation, he would proceed to recite the list in the voice of the silly cartoon news anchor she always loved to watch on one of her favorite shows. “Imagine no more flooding. No more hurricanes!” Then, because he was sensitive to Cheryl’s criticism and wanted her to be excited rather than scared, he added: “Imagine how fun it would be to have no more sheltered summers from the heat!” This was how he converted Deborah to the cause. These speculative planning sessions went on for four years until the day that NASA made their official announcement across his screen in the thick, red font of a hurricane warning. One of the planets orbiting Teegarden’s Star was finally ready for human immigration. 

Whenever the topic came up at the dinner table, Cheryl was less than reassuring. She had become jealous of all their secret plotting, he began to realize, never asking for her opinions or approval.

“I bet if we ever do end up there,” Cheryl said after dinner one night, scrubbing grease from a pizza pan with a worn sponge over the sink, “it will be an emergency. It might not be as fun as you two imagine.”

Deborah turned to her. “An emergency?” 

“No. Your mother doesn’t mean that,” Leonard corrected, wiping the countertop in an effort to keep himself calm as Deborah lifted their plates from the table.

“You can ask your father,” Cheryl continued, “why he’s already put us on some evacuation list. I found that out just the other day when I received official government notification about our relocation status.”

Deborah dropped the plates into the sink with a loud clatter. She was staring at him now with wide, accusing eyes. “Daddy. Is that true?”

Leonard dropped the napkins he was collecting at the table, walked to the sink so he could hug her against his waist and explain. “Yes, that is true. But it’s just a waiting list. We’ll always have a choice. And I promise that we won’t ever go there, go anywhere, until you are good and ready. Okay?”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.”

Later, however, lying in bed, Leonard could hear muffled sobs through the walls, a sound like someone moaning into a pillow.

“Cheryl?” he said, turning to face her in the darkness. “Will you ever, truly, learn how to shut the fuck up?”

Once the yelling began, Leonard stomped downstairs to sleep on the sofa, wondering, not for the first time, if he had ever hated a person more in his life. 

A startled blast of string music from the PlayZone speakers brought Leonard back to the present. Deborah covered her ears and shook her head, rocking back and forth. He ran over to what he thought was the control panel and stabbed at the glowing screens in front of him. Upon his touch, a map swelled red, spiked purple. He gripped the door handle, the heavy pull and release. He kicked the door, smacked the window, yelled as loud as he could. Leonard only stopped when the diminuendo began. The music drifted into a light, willowy sound. A booming voice from the dome announced they had ten minutes left. 

“Well,” he said to Deborah, raising his arms, “at least that’s over.”

She looked beyond the PlayZone equipment and through an oval window where pink light swirled. “Nothing beats a sunset,” she said. “Can we go?.” 

He watched her walk over to her suit and helmet. Leonard checked his watch again. The same intuition which told him it was a good idea to visit had convinced him to speak the truth to his daughter before it was too late. Taking her helmet from her, putting it gently aside on one of the benches, he crouched to her eye level. 

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

“I already know,” said Deborah. She looked at him. “I already know about the wedding. Mom told me before you got here. I want to go home now.”

Back on Earth, when he missed her, Leonard would check his status for the immigration lottery. Sometimes multiple times a day. Sometimes, he would pinch the distance on the map in his office. But there was no way to forget the separation between them when they were sitting this close in the Helios and not talking on the ride back to Cheryl’s. 

Leonard pretended to look at something out of the window. “School starts soon.” 

“Twelve days.”

“Your mother found out from the new custody document.”

Deborah nodded.

In the weeks after Leonard moved out, months before his daughter and ex-wife would move to Teegarden, he and Rachel had rented a small, newly submerged house in Columbia about 30 minutes away. Whenever Deborah came to stay, she complained about everything in that house, starting with the foldout couch sleeping arrangement, complaints that Cheryl would parrot back to him later. 

Leonard knew the true cause of his daughter's discomfort: Deborah was terrified that her father might leave her on Earth with her mother and move to Teegarden now that he had acquired a willing companion. While it had pained him back then to think his daughter would believe him capable of such selfish behavior, he also recognized the feelings of abandonment she was experiencing were completely natural. He explained that they planned on living in Columbia, Maryland for a long, long time. “Promise you,” he added.

Eventually, he stopped trying to reassure her when he could tell she wasn’t interested in  hearing him make predictions anymore. Leonard even complained to Rachel that Deborah was purposely trying to create distance between them because she blamed him for the divorce. Now, all he shared with Deborah was the same galaxy. Reflecting on this, Leonard wanted to slap himself for being so dismissive.

He wanted to tell Deborah about how, back when he met Rachel, the air quality on Earth was still good enough that they did not need to wear plastic suits or masks with gloves outside. Yet what had prompted them to skip out on the afternoon sessions of an EPA conference in San Diego was the growing awareness that soon their surface days would be coming to an end. Rachel had confessed that same awareness to him during breakfast. Her expertise in air particles and sediment, she said, had been shaping her growing despair. Like him, she said her worries about any future on Earth were making it difficult for her to sleep at night. So they both went to the zoo. Leonard wanted to experience the cool touch of the metal bars around the perimeter of the hyena cage with his very own, naked, hands, one more time. To their surprise, they were present for a hyena feeding. Bleeding chunks of cow meat lowered inside the pit. The hyenas circled, jumped and snapped. With each moment of contact, each bite, their eyes flickered, half-lidded, in unabashed ecstasy. They were animals oblivious to the suffering taking place in their environment. Rachel turned away. Despite hardly knowing him, she buried her face against his chest. A few of the attendees had even walked off once the feeding started. This was when their pasty-faced wildlife guide went ballistic. 

“This is nature!” the guide screeched to their backs, his knees twitching. “This is what you signed up for!”

Leonard wasn’t sure the words were meant to be a caution to the naïve or a threat to the hopeful. Either way, the guide’s sentiment made perfect sense to him on a planet that was already tipping toward its own haphazard destruction. A planet whose inhabitants wanted to insist everything was out of their control but preferred to look the other way. 

How he envied those hyenas. Their absolute satisfaction of base desires—gluttony, rage. Throughout his entire career, Leonard formed an uneasy relationship with the fact that he had studied the wild elements of the world from the cozy confines of his office cubicle. And now that he was being confronted by them, he felt completely unprepared, speechless. With the warmth of Rachel’s body pressed against him, Leonard made a promise to himself to change. To chart a course for his life more in harmony with reality. In this new-fangled existence, in which any enjoyment he experienced would come at the cost of feeling as if he was living on borrowed time anyway, it no longer made sense to swallow his unhappiness anymore.

“I was going to tell you about the wedding,” Leonard began, turning his head to look at Deborah as she stared out of the Helios window. “But that’s not important. Deborah. This is hard for me. I know it’s hard for you, too. I just want us both to be happy.” 

What he had never told her about, of course, was the observation Rachel made on the housing tour of the home they eventually moved into. She had gushed about the expanded living space before adding “and there’s just enough room for a nursery in front. It’s perrrrfect.” This was when Leonard’s epiphany occurred: any worries Rachel had previously expressed about life on Earth mattered less than the future she had always imagined for herself. She had a perfect house to raise a child. Their combined salaries made such a purchase possible. 

Leonard glanced at the signs along the passageway that he knew were drawing them closer and closer to Deborah’s house. He wished they could talk from a non-moving position. A conversation without continuous motion seemed to be a more serious conversation, a talk she might actually remember instead of being distracted by the flashing billboards advertising condominiums and investments in wells.

“Let me tell you something. When you were little,” he began, “you used to love to play with this glass-enclosed device with metal pins. You would press your hand against them. Do you remember?”

“No.”

“Well, there was one day that you pressed your entire face into it. Your eyes, your nose, even your lips formed a perfect likeness before the pins slid away back to their blank state. I knew I’d never see you that way again.” Leonard tapped the wheel. “I also knew you didn’t even notice. You see what I mean? I told myself, no matter what, you were going to be my daughter the next time I saw you, and that should be enough. My point is, it’s amazing how quickly time passes. But you don’t want to get too caught up in the moment.” Leonard looked at her again, trying to catch her eyes. 

This time, Deborah returned his glance. “I don’t have any friends here. Can I go back to Earth and live with you?”

Leonard coughed. “What?”

“Can I go back with you?” Deborah repeated. 

“You? No friends? I find that hard to believe.”

“If I go back with you, you can stop worrying so much. Mom can get a break. It’s a win-win.” From the corner of his eye, Leonard tracked the movement of her face. She was no longer looking at him. “Or, you can just say that you don’t want me to live with you and Rachel.”

Leonard reached for her hand. “Of course that’s what I want, Deborah. I hate having you so far away. But we have to be realistic, too. This is a special opportunity, living here, just like we always talked about. And I want you to have the best life possible. That best life doesn’t exist on Earth. Also, I’m in the lottery, too. We might be able to join you one day.”

“Dad, you know that’s not going to happen. Mom and I got here on complete luck.”

Leonard turned to face Deborah then turned back to face the Helios window. “What about Rachel and I getting married? Do you want to talk about that?”

The singsong lilt to her voice surprised him. “She’s not the problem, Leonard. The problem will be her baby.”

“Well.” Leonard paused. “Even if she did want a baby, Rachel could always have one after we moved. There’s no law against that.”

Deborah threw up her hands. “You guys can’t afford it here. Plus, they tax you double for children under five. Population control. How do you not know this stuff?”

Leonard spoke quickly. “It’s not definite what we’ll do, alright? There’s no point in focusing too much on what may or may not happen. A lot can change.”

As Deborah stared out of her window, Leonard tried to imagine a parting talk with her that would make up for his absence as a father, make up for all the ways he was never able to overcome the complications and unsettled occurrences around them. Even when she was an adult, he wondered: would he ever be able to explain himself to her? Would she ever be able to understand that he never planned on divorcing her mother and marrying someone else, just as he never planned on spending the rest of his life with someone committed to devastating him in the first place? Instead, when Rachel had appeared in his life, it felt like a miracle to get a second sail at happiness. 

Of course, it would be beyond reckless to talk to his own daughter this way. Just as, Leonard knew, it would be beyond reckless to confess to her that all his years of planning and pining to move to another planet more than twelve light years away had been as much about escaping his old life as discovering a new one. Then again, if he couldn’t find a way to have an authentic relationship with her now, how would they ever find a way to be close again?

Leonard pulled the Helios into the driveway and stopped. 

“I’m sorry Deborah,” he said, speaking slowly. “I wish I could have found a way to make this all work. I know this hurts—it hurts all of us.”

“Hurts some more than others.”

When he reached for his daughter’s hand, he was encouraged when she did not pull away. “Deborah,” he began, squeezing her fingers. “I want to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

Leonard heard his voice crack as he spoke. “Will you please come to the wedding and be the maid of honor?” He looked at their hands so he could concentrate on his words. “That would be the greatest honor I could ever think of. To have you in attendance.” As he closed his eyes, Leonard sensed movement outside, an endless collection of stars, smoldering masses of dying energy. 

“But how, dad? How?” 

“I’ll find a way. Didn’t I make it here after I said I would?” 

Deborah nodded and squeezed back. Leonard flipped their hands over, back and forth. He opened his eyes and smiled. “Just tell me that you want to come, okay? Because if you want to come, I’ll make it work. I really will. I promise.”

Deborah smiled with her lips and looked up at him. “Promise, huh?” 

“Promise,” he said, squeezing her fingers one more time. With his other hand, he brushed away the wetness on the side of her face. “Hug your father.”

And when she did, he could sense it would be their departing embrace. So he whispered in her ear what he had been afraid to say since his arrival, was afraid to say to her earlier, was still afraid to say as she pressed her warm cheek against his and reminded him that she was his baby, who might one day become a stranger, but who was also, no longer, disappearing from his world.