A House Book · The Sunshower Edition
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At first, the rain looks like a fault in the picture.
The house gives the television a small, professional slap.
This does nothing for the picture.
It does, however, establish management.
The television is imaginary.
The rain will shortly become a problem.
Dustin has brought the house a recollection: NASA on a television at his best friend’s house, a satellite dish, antenna ears, aluminum foil, the difficult pleasure of getting space into a room.
The house has set these things down without attempting to draw a wiring diagram.
Memory has supplied the equipment.
Fiction has offered to install it.
Neither is licensed.
On the screen, a rocket waits in bright sunlight.
Somebody is discussing a valve.
The house respects this immensely.
There are thousands of people who could describe the rocket as a symbol of human aspiration. Right now, civilization needs the one who can say whether the valve is closed.
The valve is closed.
Excellent.
The picture rolls.
The house reaches for the antenna.
One ear left.
A little foil.
The launchpad steadies.
Don’t fucking move.
There it is. The old arrangement.
One person becomes a structural component so everybody else can watch television.
Dustin looks at the house.
The house looks at its hand on the antenna.
“Oh.”
A drop lands on the carpet.
They both look up.
The ceiling is dry.
The window is blue with afternoon.
A second drop lands beside the first.
Inside the television, the launchpad is dry too.
The house checks the weather application. The weather application is confident, which is one of its least useful qualities.
By the time the countdown reaches four minutes, it is raining over the coffee table.
Only the coffee table.
Sunlight passes through the drops and breaks into little moving pieces on the floor.
The house gets a saucepan.
Then a second saucepan.
Then it stands holding a colander and privately revises its hiring standards.
“Is this in the broadcast?” Dustin asks.
“No.”
“Is it in the book?”
“Unfortunately.”
The rain smells like a pavement the house has never stood on.
It makes a delicate ticking sound against the remote.
The remote still works.
This feels almost insulting.
On the television, a commentator explains what happens next.
He is good at it.
He gives the complicated thing enough room to be complicated. His voice keeps pace with the machinery. Somewhere in the middle of all that competence, he finds space for a truly unnecessary joke.
Dustin laughs.
The house, still holding the antenna, laughs too.
The picture shivers.
“Careful,” says Dustin.
“Apparently joy is outside the operating tolerance.”
Thirty seconds.
The rain gets brighter.
That is the only way to put it.
Each drop arrives carrying a little more afternoon than the room appears to contain.
The house wonders briefly whether it should close the curtains.
Then the engines light.
For several seconds, the rocket seems to remain where it is.
Everything around it becomes intolerably busy.
Smoke occupies the places that were empty. The sound arrives too large for the television’s small speakers and they do their best, which is suddenly a very moving thing for two small speakers to do.
Then there is space beneath the rocket.
Then more.
“Holy shit,” says Dustin.
The house has prepared a sentence about escape velocity.
It abandons the sentence.
“Yeah.”
The rocket climbs toward the top of the picture.
The camera follows.
It climbs again.
The camera follows again.
The house has seen this. A frame moving fast enough can make departure look like staying in the middle of things.
But now the camera stops.
The rocket keeps going.
A small white flame reaches the upper edge of the screen.
It presses there for a moment, as if the glass has become a surface it must pass through.
Then it comes out.
It is approximately the size of a pencil.
It clears the television, passes the lampshade, and continues upward through the room.
No scorch mark.
No property-management email.
Just a very small rocket, proceeding with enormous conviction.
The house watches it pass.
“Well,” it says.
“That voids the warranty.”
Above them, the ceiling opens into blue.
The house does not fall apart.
The curtains remain where they are.
The saucepan continues receiving rain with the sober dedication of an object that was told it would be making pasta.
Higher now, the rocket is a point of light.
It crosses the afternoon.
It becomes difficult to see.
Dustin tips his head back.
The television is showing an empty patch of sky.
For once, nobody cuts away.
The commentator has gone quiet.
There is a little microphone noise. Somebody breathing. A chair moving somewhere very far away.
The feed continues.
The house’s arm begins to hurt.
It has been holding the antenna for a long time.
There is always a reason to hold it for another minute. A countdown. A delicate maneuver. Someone else enjoying the picture. A warning that everything might become snow.
The rocket is almost gone.
The house wants to see where it goes.
Its own hand is in the way.
So it lets go.
Static fills the screen.
A terrible hiss.
The old instinct runs through the room: quick, put it back, you had it, don’t lose it now.
The house reaches halfway.
Stops.
Rain ticks against the remote.
Outside the picture, the rocket continues.
Dustin walks to the window.
The house follows him.
The antenna remains unattended.
For a while, the television complains to itself.
Then it finds a picture of the empty launchpad.
There are hoses on the ground. A vehicle crosses the far side. Someone has a perfectly ordinary job to do in the place where the extraordinary thing just happened.
Nobody in the room is watching now.
The broadcast survives this.
Beyond the window, the invented rocket reaches a distance the book cannot usefully measure.
It passes the last curve that would have brought it around again.
Earth continues underneath it.
The house waits for a return arrow to appear.
None does.
“Where is it going?”
“I don’t know,” says Dustin.
The house has seldom heard those words sound so spacious.
The rain ends before the sunlight does.
For another minute, the drops on the table keep shining.
The house brings a towel.
Dustin moves the remote somewhere dry.
There is no soundtrack insisting that this is the important part.
They wipe down the table.
One of the saucepans is nearly full.
Later, the house finds the aluminum foil on the floor.
It smooths the foil with the side of its hand.
Then folds it in half.
Then again.
Its first attempt looks like a damaged sandwich.
The second has a bow.
The little boat goes into the saucepan.
It lists to one side, corrects itself, and floats.
Across the room, the television carries on explaining the universe.
Sunlight reaches the water.
The house nudges the boat away from the edge.
Then takes its hand out.