Q. How do you go to the bathroom in space? – Atlanta, GA
       A. Not so easy, not so difficult; the zipper works the same in any environment; gravity bags
       and tubes; there comes a time when this question becomes redundant; there are no
       bathrooms in space; everywhere is a bathroom.

       Q. What does it sound like in outer space? – Cheyenne, WY
       A. Blank nothing. Eternal nothing. The nothing that fills the inside of seashells, the shushing
       of the womb, or waves that never stop breaking. You have never heard such nothingness.
       You have never heard with your own ears until you have heard this kind of volume. This
       loudness. You can’t turn it off or silence the silence.

       Q. Have you ever cheated on your wife? – Cape Canaveral, FL
       A. In space we call our homesick longing “cheating on Earth.” We stare out crystal-clear
       portholes and cannot fathom why we ever wanted to leave. We regret our flight. For
       penance, we conduct difficult math problems, eight hours per day. (A punishment even for
       math lovers.) We create physics sequences that allow us to travel back in time. The
       government does not know about these maths. Our daily atonement. We can show you the
       proofs.

       Q. Do you ever think about not coming home? – Houston, TX
       A. Anyone who’s been up here will tell you there is a certain freedom in blackness, in stars
       you cannot reach. Isn’t leaving a kind of reaching? Isn’t staying the same as withdrawing
       your hand? I will someday land and keep going. My hand reaches farther than I can see. I
       am home right now, I am never home. I have no things to pack.

       Q. Do you remember Earth? Specifically, do you remember me? – Ft. Wayne, IN
       A. I remember beaches. I remember being birthed into the ocean, and crawling on my belly
       up the shore. There were buildings you could walk into, doors that twirled, elevators that
       laughably shot people up a mere hundred feet. We have been gone not long enough to
       forget everything, but faces, yes, have disappeared. The idea of you has disappeared. For
       one of us, the idea of you has grown strong and tangled, like thorny vines. Define remember.
       Define me.

       Q. Are you lonely up there? – Dedham, MA
       A. Never. Always. But with a different flavor than Earth lonely, people lonely. I am lonely
       for myself, and for rooms with doors I can shut. I am lonely but for a mind that spins
       threads into nothingness and expects nothing, not cohesion, not seeing the thread-ends
       after they’ve been sent forth. One of us is lonely but has always been so. One of us likes to
       say we have each other. One of us retreats into the windowed chamber, waiting for the
       glimpse of the blue and green planet, waiting to see a storm churning over the Gulf Coast.
       Are you lonely down there? Come up. Join us. Be here now.