See You in the Cosmos: New Recordings 23–52

Steve thought all our food was so good but I like Johnny Rockets better to be honest. He said I didn’t like it as much because my palate isn’t refined enough, and I told him, No, I didn’t like it because I just didn’t like it.

And Zed said, We can always use an extra pair of eyes, and he kept staring at Steve, it was almost like he was trying to communicate with Steve telepathically.

I said, Did you know that Terra means Earth and my all-time hero Dr. Carl Sagan talked about TERRAforming Venus and Mars, which means making them more habitable for humans and plants and pups, and I’m recording sounds on my Golden iPod to show the intelligent beings out there what Earth is like...

I love the samosas and I love the bread, which is called naan.

I'm riding in Terra’s car which has rust on the bumpers, and whenever we go faster than seventy miles per hour the whole car starts shaking like a rocket reaching escape velocity.

She's a professor of astrophysics at Cornell University and she's written dozens of research papers and five books on becoming a multi-planetary species and a book of short stories and poetry also, and she's kind and sweet and beautiful and she's forty-nine years old.

I said, Oh, that makes a lot more sense, because we originally evolved from colonies of bacteria in the ocean hundreds of millions of years ago.

I said, Oh, you mean like in a black hole, because in a black hole the gravity is so strong that it bends light and time and space.

Steve said he can tell without opening them which packs have holograms because the packs with holograms weigh a little more than the ones without holograms.

Then finally we got to Ronnie's place and we went up to the gate but I didn't have his condo number, I didn't even know it was a condo until Terra pointed at the sign in front that said Residence West Condominiums.

STEVE: I don't want anything to do with your dysfunctional—
TERRA: Alex, don't listen to him.
STEVE: No, listen to ME, Alex, because none of them are going to tell you the truth.

Ken said let's go out to the observatory and that way we can talk in our normal voices, and I said, You have an observatory! and then I covered my mouth because I didn't mean to say it so loud.

Hannah’s watching me talk to you guys now and her eyes are really big again, and—
[Hannah shrieking]
Um, I think she wants the iPod.
[Hannah speaking gibberish]

It was like I was the radio telescopes at the Very Large Array in Contact and it's all static and then there's a signal and it starts going vwooaww vwooaww vwooaww vwooaww except instead of detecting extra-terrestrial intelligence it was me detecting when I was close to my house.

For the Golden Record my hero converted pictures into binary, which is ones and zeros, so maybe I can come up with a way to convert smells to binary because I don't think that technology exists yet.

[Alex screaming]
[dogs barking]
[car doors slamming]
[engine starting]
[tires squealing]
[engine accelerating]

TERRA: Here, I’ll get it.
[hospital bed inclining]

Hi guys, I'm getting discharged from the hospital today. Discharged means I'm going home, like the hospital is the battery and I'm the energy and I'm leaving the battery so it's losing its charge.

I said, Hey Steve, if this game show is making you sad we can watch something else, and Steve said its not that, and I said, Then what is it, did you and Nathan fight again? because one time at the beginning of sixth grade Benji was making fun of me in the lunchroom in front of his new friends and I started crying, but then on the bus he said he's sorry and then we went to his house to play video games because forgiveness is a virtue.

Schizophrenia is when you hear voices that only you can hear and sometimes the voices tell you to do things, and you can’t tell the difference between real and not real.

And Ronnie is adamant about him not going outside because of everything that’s happening with CPS or DHS or whatever they call Child Protective Services here.

Anyway, I blabbed on and on about that stuff and Donna was pretty quiet the whole time, and then I asked her what she thought about all of it and it took her a moment to answer.

You remember when she used to go on those shopping sprees? I'd come home from class and there'd be shopping bags full of coffeemakers and jewelry, Louis Vuitton bags.

And we figured out why his name came up in the marriage index, Terra and I. Her mom said they did get married but it got annulled right away.

She reeked of some kind of strawberry perfume—to this day I can't stand that smell.

RONNIE: But then when I picked up the phone and it was his foreman, saying there'd been an accident...

Lander said he has an exact replica of the Voyager Golden Record in his office and he read about my Golden iPod in the forum post and listened to some of my recordings, and he would be honored if me and my family would join him as his special guests to watch the Mars satellite launch at Cape Canaveral, do I want to come?

Ronnie came inside and he said, Great job, and I said I'm sure that the social worker is going to be really impressed at how clean and Febreeze-smelling the house is now.

Ronnie said that when the social worker gets here we'll have her sit in the Lay-Z-Boy, and the three of us are going to sit on the sofa because that'll show solidarity.

She was holding a black leather folder in one hand and Ronnie shook her other hand and told her to please come in, don't mind all the commotion outside.