Excerpt: Seedling

It came on a rainbow.

There were plenty of scientific theories about it, in the immediate aftermath. And of course, eventually we understood in great detail about how and why it happened. But to my six-year-old eyes, it was a rainbow.

I was watching the story on TV, about how the thing in the sky was orbiting earth and dipping into our atmosphere to slow down, setting off spectacular fireballs and long streaks of light each time it passed low and fast against the Earth's fragile shell.

They said that it would be visible over southern California in about 40 minutes, on its fifth pass. I asked my mom and dad if I could go outside and watch it, and they agreed.

I don't think my dad really cared much about the thing. But he was always encouraging me to care about science and space and technology, in any way he could. He was raising a doctor or scientist or technician, and was always happy to take me to the planetarium or sign me up for an astronomy class at the junior college.

My mom seemed to genuinely like that stuff, though. Sometimes I'd even see her reading a sci-fi novel. She read a lot of books, and the murder mysteries and histories always vastly outnumbered the sci-fi. But every now and then, one would show up. When I was a teenager I'd tell her about some of the books I was reading, and occasionally push one on her. She'd always take them, and every now and then she'd actually read one.

What I remember about that night was the lady on the TV news and then the rainbow. I imagine we pulled out some folding chairs and sat down on the sidewalk, since it had the clearest view of the sky. I always imagine that it was just me, standing out in the middle of the street looking up at the seedling as it shot across the night sky, a flaring diamond leaving a rainbow in its wake.

That's the memory, anyway. But my parents were certainly there, at least one of them. And even though nobody really realized how much the seedling was going to change our lives at that point, it was still an exciting, once-in-a-lifetime sight in the skies. A new Halley's Comet. So I imagine the sidewalk on the Loop was full of gawkers, looking up at the night sky.

Back in those days I had a little red book, maybe six inches by three inches. Written on the front, in gold script, is the word _Autographs._ Why my parents got me an autograph book is beyond me; I was always a pretty shy kid. People who know me now can't quite believe it, but that's because they know me. I'm always awkward around people I don't know.

Which makes what we're doing now kind of hilarious, if you think about it.

In any event, I didn't use the autograph book for autographs. (There are, I think, three autographs in the back of the book, all more or less accidental, and only one from someone who would actually be considered a celebrity by anyone. At six years old I was unclear on the concept of the autograph. One of the book's three autographs is from a swim teacher I had at summer camp. That's gotta be worth something now.)

I used the book as a diary. Years later, I found it in a metal lockbox in my parents' garage, and realized that I had written an entry on that night. Here's what it said:

"I saw the unknown object fly overhead tonight. It made a big rainbow. Note: The object will be important for scientists to study."

Nice note, kid. How right you were.

Of course, it would take another few weeks for the seedling to come to Earth. And I don't have any clear memories of the actual event. Things were pretty crazy afterward, with the 24-hour news channels filling time with endless speculation and not a whole lot else.

The world was desperate for news about the thing that had burrowed into a swampy park in northern Florida, but within a matter of hours the entire thing was in the hands of a bunch of NASA scientists. And scientific problems don't get resolved in a matter of hours or days. Eventually the 24-hour news channels went back to covering other things. The Montana state spelling-bee champion, a 14-year-old girl named Melinda Barnhart, had gone missing. A boy in Texas shot his high-school Spanish teacher and three students before killing himself. Life went on.

The scientific explanations everyone had hoped we'd receive within a few hours of the landing didn't really come for years. But two months after the landing, we all finally got the dramatic news about the seedling that we'd all been waiting for.

There was someone inside it.