An Unusual Voyage

When a young boy wants to go on vacation, the travel agency is hard pressed to help.

The travel agency had been a boring place the last month. May was always a very busy time as the soccer moms arrived en mass to try to secure the best, "educational" trip for their beloved sprogs. Patricia had the routine down pat. Mom arrived, without children, dressed to the nines and looking like she had just walked out of a vogue magazine. She would sit there, tell Patricia her destination, for example: Mexico. She would emphasize how educational she wanted the vacation to be. Mentioning Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, and the agricultural structures of Mexico City like the San Cristobal de la Casas. In the same breath, however, she will talk about staying in a resort in Cancun. Inevitably, little miss luxury will choose the resort where the darling soccer players can be kept busy with the staff there and she can work on her already impressive sun tan.

Of course, you also had the flip side of the coin. The overworked stay-at-home mom that has been saving up for years for a vacation to give her kids worldly experience. She will come in with at least one child under the age of five while her school aged children are with a hard earned tutor. She will already have her trip planned out and a list of prices from the cheapest online travel sites. She has a budget, and, inevitably, will walk back out with a stack of pricing but never return to finalize those plans. Patricia has no idea if she ever goes on that trip.

Today, however, was different. A mom did come in, yes. She was dressed nicely, but not extravagantly, in a t-shirt and jeans, and her hair is brushed and pulled back in a neat braid, unlike the hazardous bun of the previous mom. What really set her apart, however, was the fact that, instead of corralling the kids to stay with her, she was walking calmly behind her son, who opened the door for her and calmly waited his turn to see Patricia. When Patricia motioned them forward to her desk, it was the boy who sat in front of her, looking straight at her, while his mom sat beside him, not saying a word.

"I have a very important mission, and I hope that you will be able to help me get there." He said, forgoing any greetings or small talk.

"Oh?" Patricia asked surprised. "Where is it you would like to go?"

"I need to go to the sun." The boy said this with such a straight face, his mom sitting next to him with not even a smirk or a lifted eyebrow. Patricia was stumped.

"The sun? Why would you want to go there?"

"Didn't you know? The sun is going to eventually explode and burn Earth as it does. We will all die. I need to go to into the sun on a scientific mission. I need to gather data on when this will happen and what we can do to prevent it." Patricia looked back and forth between the two sitting in front of her.

"Is this a joke?" She asked. "It's not very funny."

"Not a joke m'am." The boy replied. "So far, every probe sent to the sun has burned up before it could reach it, so not enough data has been collected. I have invented a rocket that can get really hot as it dives into the sun and not burn up."

"How do you plan to launch the rocket?"

"That is where I need your help. Nasa has ignored all my emails. Space X has as well as Blue Horizons and ULA. I even tried to contact Russia, but I don't speak Russian and I don't think they got my email. I need your help in contacting the Space Station. If they can pick up my rocket and allow me to refuel, then I believe I can launch it from the grassy area by my house."

Glancing over at mom, Patricia saw that she was indeed taking her son seriously. Patricia didn't know if the mom thought her son truly could survive a homemade rocket trip through the sun, or if she was encouraging him in his dreams, but she decided that whatever the case may be, she decided to do the same. "Let me see what I can do for you."

Turning to her computer, she got to work. It took her a bit of out of the box thinking. Apparently there was a town called NASA in South Korea, but she didn't think that they would want to try to go that route to get into space. Finally, she looked up from her computer to her very patient customers.

"Unfortunately, I can't give you the direct phone number for NASA. What I can do, is book you flights and hotels to two different places where NASA is based out of. There is the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston." She proceeded to give them pricing and details before watching them leave out the door. As Patricia continued to help the next Vogue Cover model, she couldn't help but hope that the astronaut and his mom would come back. She really wanted to see his rocket and hoped that it would fly. Maybe one day, she will see him on the news as he made his dreams come true.