The interior looked like a dorm room at Starfleet Academy. It had a symmetrical two-occupant layout, with a loft bed on either side, each enclosed in a transparent soundproofed box that could be blacked out with the touch of a button for privacy. Each loft also had a built in ladder, dresser, and uniform closet, and there was a large flatscreen television monitor embedded in the ceiling directly over each bed. There was also a small computer hutch beneath each bunk, with an ergonomic chair bolted to the floor. My backpack was sitting nearby.
I sat down at the computer, and its built-in monitor lit up, displaying a desktop with EDA logo wallpaper and a few program icons.
I took out the flash drive my father had given me and plugged it in.
I held my breath as the file list popped up. There were hundreds of text files saved on the drive, along with dozens of video files, all with similar filenames: “DearZack” followed by a six-digit numerical date. The first file was named DearZack100200.txt. October 3, 2000. A few days after my father was supposed to have died.
Dear Zack,
I’m not even sure how to start this letter. So much has happened in the past few days, and most of it still doesn’t seem real.
I’m writing you this letter from the moon. For real, kiddo. Your dad is on the moon!
You see, I didn’t really die in an explosion at the plant, like they told you and your mom. The government just made it look like I had died, because they need my help to fend off an alien invasion. I know that sounds ridiculous, like something out of a science fiction paperback or a late night movie. But there’s a reason for that! Star Wars, Star Trek—all of those sci-fi movies, novels, TV shows, and videogames I’ve been playing my whole life—they were all designed to prepare the people of the world for a real alien invasion. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, but I know it’s true. I’ve already seen the evidence with my own eyes.
We still don’t know when the invasion will begin, so I’m not sure how long I’ll have to be away from you and your mom. Maybe it will only be a few months. But it could be years before I’m able to come back home. There’s also a chance I might get killed up here. If that happens, I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life believing your dad was just some loser sewage worker who died in a stupid accident before he ever did anything important with his life.
I want you to know who I really was, and what really happened to me. But more than anything, I need you to know how hard it was for me to leave you and your mom, and how hard it is now to know you both think I’m dead. Please know that I never would have put either of you through all of this if I felt like there was any other chance.
The government has promised to take care of my family while I’m away. They set up some sort of fake settlement for the accident, so you and mom should never have to worry about money. You’ll be able to live a lot more comfortably than the three of us ever could have on a sewage worker’s salary, that’s for sure. I know it won’t make up for me being gone, but it does make me feel a little better.
I really miss both of you, but I have to admit that it’s also kind of amazing up here. My whole life, I felt like I was destined to do something important, but I was only ever good at videogames, which I always figured would be completely useless. But it’s not useless, and neither am I. I think this is what I was always destined to do with my life. I just never knew it.
My whole existence is classified now, so I’m not even allowed to send you birthday cards while I’m away. But I’m still going to write you, as often as I can, and I’ll save the letters until I can give them to you. I’m going to write to your mom, too. It’s only been a few days, but I already miss both of you a lot.
I hope you’re both doing okay—and I hope my funeral wasn’t too hard on your mom, or you, even though you’re not even a year old yet, so you won’t remember being there, but she will, and thinking about how hard that must have been for her makes me feel like jumping off a cliff. Of course, I realize now—I already jumped. That’s why I’m stuck up here now.
Anyway, I promise to write again soon, when I have more time. I’ll tell you about everything that has happened to me, and all about this moon base where I live. But right now, I have to go defend Earth from alien invaders.
Love,
Xavier (Your Dad)
I kept on reading, devouring letter after letter.