Burt is Free

Tell me he's not.

Burt is Free

“You really sure about this, Burt?”

“’Course not.”

“Then why are we doin’ it?”

“’Cause we can. Look, you don’t actually have to.”

“Nah, I wanna do whatever you’re doin’. It’s never boring.”

“Remember, dude, we’re not coming back. We’re gonna die. You know that.”

Burt’s friend Charlie thought about that, rubbing his chin with two fingers.

“I dunno…”

“You see, you aren’t sure. I am. Just watch and wave good-bye when I leave. This mission is not for you.”

“So, why is it for you?”

Burt put down the circuit board he’d been studying, and looked at his friend.

“I’ve explained all that. I’m, like, the only person on Earth with a full complement of the technology. They reverse-engineered an alien drive system, but still couldn’t quite figure it out. But no one would listen to me, because I’m not a scientist, or an engineer. I understood it. I also understood the system to mitigate cosmic radiation, and no one would hear that either. So now, I’m gonna take what I learned, and I’m gonna use it.”

“But, to what end? What do you gain from flying off and dying?”

“Vindication, that’s what. I can’t really care that only you and I will know of it. Hell, I don’t even need you. I just want to see it work, I want to fly on out of here, off of this planet, and careen through outer space.”

“But, you’re not comin’ back! Why is that, again? Exactly?”

“Charlie, did you ever have enough of something? Like, enough is enough? Well, I’ve had enough of humanity. I can’t escape the fact that I’m human, and I wish I could. When I die, I’ll have done that.”

“Yah but you’ll still be human. Just a dead one. Maybe a stupid dead one.”

“My body will exist, that’s true, But I won’t be in it. Any more.”

“Look, Burt, I still wanna go. So make room.”

“Whatever you decide, Charlie. You’ve got about a week to make up your mind. I’m hoping you’ll stay behind.”

“Burt, I’m looking at a man who’s beaten aging, who’s solved the mysteries of space travel, a man too old to be standing here. Never let anyone tell you, you aren’t a scientist or an engineer! You’re both, and far in advance of everyone else. Tell you what; I’ll stay behind if you leave me your work. Your texts, your writings, all of it. There’s no way I can publish it as mine, because I don’t understand it. But someone will.”

“You mean, you expect so. I’m not so sure. What will happen,” Burt mused, “Is you’ll waste your life trying to get someone to listen.”

A week can pass rather quickly when it seems your life is in the balance, and so it was for Charlie.

Burt’s glittering new spacecraft shone in Montana afternoon sun. In the nearby lake, fish jumped, feeding. A whitetail deer peered from her leafy cover, and stared. And Charlie regarded his friend Burt as though he was about to lose his own life.

“So Burt, you’re not even packing sandwiches?”

“Actually, I am. Quite a few of them, I might add. And I’m provisioned with foodstuffs for most of a year, and I have seed, too. If you were going along, that same food wouldn’t last six months. But then again, it may not take that long, to get where I’m goin’.

Charlie brightened. “Then you are gonna live?”

Burt sighed. “There is that possibility. There’s a lot to know, you know, that I certainly don’t. I have no idea what ‘top speed’ is. I don’t have star charts, or anything else to guide me. My destination,” he mused, “Is simply, out there.”

“And you’re leaving me your data, your work, your discoveries?”

“Charlie it’s all there. In my home, in my study, in my library. Have at it.”

“Gonna miss you, Burt.”

“Well I guess I’ll miss you too, Charlie. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” murmured Charlie, as Burt ascended the ladder and entered his craft. Then, in a move that Charlie would replay in his memory a million times three, the ship ascended noiselessly to treetop level and then disappeared, straight up.

Now, no one knows what happened to Burt. Conjecture is only that, and one might hope his journey through our local solar system didn’t take very long, at all. Perhaps he’s dead, no longer a living human. Perhaps he’s found the planet of his dreams and now nurtures a garden. We’ll never know.

Charlie, on the other hand, we very much know about. I met Charlie when they checked him into the psychiatric facility where I work. They think he’s mental, you see, because he can’t stop talking about Burt and his many accomplishments. In fact, he can’t stop talking, and that’s the real problem. If only he could shut up, maybe someone would listen. Besides me, that is.

Charlie claimed he’s seventy-eight, and he doesn’t look forty. He said he enjoys the drugs, and will stick around as long as it suits him. Which apparently ended last week, you see, they came around with his complement of pills, and he was simply, gone.

Bon voyage, Charlie. Wherever you may be.

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Far across the cosmos, Burt exited his little spacecraft in his shirtsleeves, and breathed deeply. Who would ever have thought? Who would ever have believed?

As planets go, this planet was the most earth-like he had found, one of three habitable planets in this small system. It was not unlike Earth’s Pleistocene years, with megafauna everywhere. So Burt had settled his craft atop a knoll overlooking a forested valley, and had adapted by hanging a plastic tarp out front for a porch roof.

But, what had he been thinking? He was alone now, with not even pesky full-of-questions Charlie for company.

Far below his craft-become-cabin, a lone young humanoid woman walked into a clearing, and looked up. She was unclothed.

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