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When John Sheppard was a little boy, he watched the first space missions on television. When his father said that he couldn’t stay home to watch them, John would sneak a warm washcloth under his bed and pretend to be sick. His father couldn’t argue against verifiable scientific symptoms. Adults were like that. But his mother, just smiled at him indulgently and said that he must be heart sick.

John’s imagination was captured by the men in spacesuits, the rockets blasting off with nothing more than the magnitude of great explosions to send them flying out of Earth’s orbit and hurtling into space. One day, John imagined (like all little boys imagine) that he would fly among those stars like those great heroes of the space program, or maybe even like Captain Kirk.

Now there is something powerful about imagining, something that when we grow up we tend to ignore. For there are forces in the universe, dark ones perhaps, that can tell you the power of belief: the way it bends and folds the veil of matter that composes the universe, dips down into the energy at its zero point and weaves truth like the gossamer strands of an infinite spider web. But adults ignore this truth, and let magic slip from their lives like a thief in the night, stolen from them by facts and figures and the belief that it cannot be so.

This is why most little boys grow up into businessmen or mechanics or scientists without ever once thinking that their dreams of space flight could have come true. John Sheppard could have been one of those boys too, but he was rescued from that fate by a little man with a crooked smile and blue eyes that sparked like the web that holds up the stars.

After the disaster of the Apollo 13 mission, for which John was heartsick for days, he decided to such dangers could not be permitted under his watch, so he drew up designs for a new, safer spaceship. Keep in mind that this was John’s first drawing, and his last for a long time. It looked something like this:

Eager to impress upon his father the dire need to invent a spaceship that wouldn’t need large vulnerable stores of fuel, John approached him in his study – the place where John’s father went to smell like cigar smoke and not be disturbed while he dealt with maters of consequence.

“That’s a pretty breadbox, John, now please, your father’s busy with matters of consequence,” his father said, turning away without barely meeting John’s eyes.

“No!” John protested. “It’s not a breadbox. It’s a spaceship. But it can fly on Earth too. You could even use it to jump puddles. It doesn’t need rockets. It just floats.”

John’s father scoffed. “It doesn’t have any wings, John. It’s not … planes need to be aerodynamic, son.” John’s father had never learned to talk to children. It’s not that adults need to speak to children as if they were stupid, because they’re not. In fact, some of the smartest minds can be found in children. But being less experienced in the matters of the world, especially matters of consequence, they do not understand the meaning of words like ‘aerodynamic.’

John frowned. “The lunar lander didn’t have wings. Helicopters don’t have wings either. I don’t have wings, but I’m going to fly.”

But John’s father had already dismissed him. “If you really want to fly,” he said. “You’ll be a good boy and do what you’re ordered. If you’re a good enough boy, one day you’ll be able to fly, just like your father.”

John nodded, seriously, because good boys were serious, and even then, John’s dreams were nothing by wide blue sky. He made a new drawing, for his father, but he had a feeling that something about it wasn’t right:

All the adults he ever showed it to just wondered what a breadbox would be doing with wings.

So after many tries, John stopped showing his picture to people. He was a good boy and true to his father’s word, they let him fly planes and helicopters too. And when he was alone with the wide blue sky, John touched happiness for a brief moment, but it wasn’t the same as his childhood imaginings. Without wonder, how could it be?

And so John would have gone on living his life as a good boy, turned good man, flying planes and coming home to a loving wife who’d called his spaceship a breadbox and forgetting that there were things like magic and wonder and imagination in the universe, if one day he hadn’t had an accident with his plane (despite its long wings) and found himself in the middle of the Iraqi dessert with little food and barely enough water to last him a week.

His spaceship never would have had engine trouble like this, but John tried not to dwell on that.

He was stranded, miles from human habitation and even further from friendly human habitation, and his sense of direction, admittedly, was not likely to lead him towards the army he knew was a small speck in these vast sands somewhere. So you can imagine his surprise when after the first night after his crash he awoke to a rather cranky-sounding voice ordering: “Wake up you, moron! Can you please wrestle your thought process away from that spiky black monster pretending to be hair for a second and draw me a laptop?”

“Huh?” John asked, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Perhaps he’d hit his head on the way down. He ran his hand through his hair, checking for lumps.

“For god sakes!” the little man standing before him chirped. “Don’t pet it!”

John rolled his eyes, examining the figure standing before him. He wasn’t exactly a child, though he only came up to a little above John’s waist. His hair was a mess ofblond ringlets and his rosy cheeks were nothing less than cherubic, but there was something wise in his wide blue eyes, like the knowledge of the empty desert sky above them. And the way half of his mouth seemed to frown while the other half was smiling wasn’t the kind of balanced optimism found in children. He was wearing a blue shirt that matched his eyes and grey slacks, all of which didn’t seem to fit him quite right, as though they were styled by someone who had no idea how to make clothes for children. He looked something like this:

“Who are you, anyway?” John asked.

“Draw me a laptop!”

Bewildered, John struggled to his feet. He was tired and sore from the crash, maybe that was the cause of the hallucination, though why he’d hallucinate an angry little man-child of all things, John had no idea.

The little man snapped his fingers pointedly. “Sometime this century please. I’m a very important man, you know – a genius. My time is valuable, who knows how many women and children and puppies are dying while you stand here looking pathetic and petting your hair?”

Well, it wasn’t as though John had anything better to do. Judging by the smoldering mass that was once his fuselage, he wasn’t going anywhere. “Sure. No problem.”

John picked up a pen and the small notebook that he kept in the vest of his flight-suit and drew the only thing he knew how to draw.

“No! No! Not a puddlejumper! Not that I can’t fly in a straight line or anything, but I’m right where I need to be at the moment. And how do you even know about that, anyway? Maybe some form of genetic memory, though I find it hard to believe that … never mind. A laptop, sometime before I get cancer from all this unfiltered UV radiation, please! I burn easily.”

So John sighed, warning the little man, “I’ve never really drawn anything else.” Graphs and the occasional schematic for engineering classes, maybe, but even his doodles were of ‘puddle jumpers.’ What a perfect name! John had never thought to name them.

“It’s art, not rocket science. Trust me, I know. I’m an astrophysicist,” the little man proclaimed, puffing out his chest and jutting his jaw. “Drawing's not even a social science. Surely even someone of your limited intellectual capacity could manage it. It’s like a book with a keyboard and a monitor.”

“I know what a laptop is,” John snapped, making his first attempt, which looked something like this:

“No! No! No, no, no! Not some antiquated tadpole, piece of crap! Try a thinkpad, or maybe a Dell. Oh, wait, those haven’t been invented yet. Hmm, maybe if you just make it kind of thinner and less boxy.”

John complied, rather proud of himself:

“Running Windows? Are you crazy? I don’t doubt Microsoft's ability to give even 10,000 year old ancient tech a virus. Linux! Linux! You know, the penguin?” The little astrophysicist gave a put upon sigh. “Fine. As much as I hate to say this, just do the same thing, but draw an apple on the top of it.”

John blinked and the little astrophysicist was sitting on top of John’s plane with this:

“Well, your engine’s shot. Not that I needed a virus-free computer to figure that out. And your radio is broken too, but manufacturing a basic transmitter on the archaic channel used by your military shouldn’t be too difficult.”

The Little Astrophysicist had been tapping away at his laptop nervously for some time, his lips drawn together in a tight line and his ski-jump nose creating the most dire shadow on his porcelain features, when John couldn't help himself and asked, "So, you never answered my question."

"Hm?" The Little Astrophysicist replied dismissively.

"You know, when I asked you who you were."

"I told you already. I'm a genius."

"And where are you from?"

The Little Astrophysicist gestured vaguely at the sky, without looking up from his laptop.

"Space?! Like Star Wars or something?"

The Little Astrophysicist rolled his eyes. "More like Starman. But without the um -- you know. Not in this body. I'd feel like I'm dating a pedophile and that's really not acceptable."

"I'm not ..."

"Save it, Sheppard. I've never seen a straight man spend so much time on his hair."

John patted his head. He didn't spend that much time on it. Besides, it was hot. "I was going to say, 'I'm not a pedophile.'"

"Well, that's a relief," The Little Astrophysicist remarked, burying his nose back in the figures on his laptop.

John was upset about his plane, of course, but as he set about building a transmitter out of salvaged circutboards and wires (as per the Little Astrophysicist's instructions) he was able to learn pieces about the Little Astrophysicist's planet.

It wasn't that the Little Astrophysicist didn't talk. It seemed that all he did do was talk. The problem was that he said things like, "And then they always seem to serve lemon chicken," and "when I get my Nobel , they'll be sorry." But every once and a while he would talk of his planet, and from little snippets, like complaints about waste-disposal programming and how the sea air made his asthma act up, John was able to construct a model of what the Little Astrophysicist's planet looked like.

Most of it was indoors. It was a great big city with many towers and many rooms, and every room contained a new adventure and an undiscovered truth, like the many rooms of the heart. What wasn't city was a wide open ocean that stretched across the horizon as far as the eye could see.

John figured it looked something like this:

But when John asked about what it was like and the people who lived there, the Little Astrophysicist just blushed and stammered. "I can't ... there aren't any people. Just, you know, me. Little old me."

The Little Astrophysicist, like most children, was not a very good liar.

But John was very tired and thirsty, as the desert sun was bright and he had to ration his small supply of water, and the only good thing in this empty forbidding world was the Little Astrophysicist's smile, so he let the lies slide, sure that the Little Astrophysicist had his reasons.

"You must be very lonely," John replied, with a twinkle in his eye.

The Little Astrophysicist puffed up his chest, as he was prone to do, snapping indignantly, "I'll have you know that I have an exceedingly beautiful boy-" He gulped, little voice breaking. "An exceedingly beautiful -- flower."

John raised his eyebrows incredulously. "A flower?"

"Yes, a flower. What's so strange about that? Flowers are beautiful."

"I'm not disagreeing with that. So tell me about this 'flower.'"

The Little Astrophysicist smiled dreamily, sighing. His wide eyes seemed suddenly even more amazingly blue, like sapphires. It wasn't just the sky in them anymore, but something undefinable and infinitely more wonderful. It took John's breath away and he wondered if anyone would ever think of him with that look in their eyes. He doubted it.

"Well, he's," the Little Astrophysicist began.

"He's?"

The Little Astrophysicist flapped his hands at John like a ruffled bird. "Yes, he's. There's no need to confine ourselves to conventional gender stereotypes, now is there? I mean, what would the feminists say? Open your mind a little, Colonel."

"Hate to burst your bubble here, buddy, but I've just made Captain."

The Little Astrophysicist huffed. "Colonel, Captain, same difference. It's not as though you Americans can even say Lef-tenant properly." He crossed his arms over his tiny chest and John knew that was the end of that line of questioning.

"So, your flower?"

"Right. Yes. Well, he's very beautiful, as I said. Not exactly conventional. Kind of rakish looking in fact."

John didn't know what a rakish-looking flower would be. Maybe a little like Han Solo? He shrugged. Maybe the flower looked something like this:

"And he's very brave. And stubborn. And prideful sometimes. He always thinks he's right. But at least he tries to do the right thing. Some people don't even do that. He's smart, but doesn't like anyone to know it. As though being beautiful and heroic and smart at the same time are impossible. But you see, when you love a -- flower, especially one that likes to do stupid heroic things, you suddenly realize that no matter how big his -um- thorns? No matter how big his thorns, he's still just a fragile, beautiful flower. Ephemeral."

The Little Astrophysicist looked at him then, eyes shining with a sadness as deep as the ocean on his world full of water. But John thought he understood. He'd already learned about loving ephemeral things. It was a good way to get hurt.

It was as though the Little Astrophysicist could read his mind. Or perhaps, John was no better a liar than a child, because the little man's eyes widened, and he said. "No, but you have to love them anyway. Because that's the secret."

"What secret?"

The Little Astrophysicist smiled his crooked beatific smile. "The secret to all this," he pointed to the stars and the desert and maybe to John.

And John wanted to believe him, except: "If you loved your flower, then why did you leave him behind?"

The Little Astrophysicist winced. "I didn't want to. And I didn't. Not really. I just - there are rules. But if I could tell him something right now, it would be that we never really leave the ones we love. Not really."

The Little Astrophysicist would not speak of why he had left his planet and his flower and the ZedPMs that he had to keep clean and the storms he had to watch out for, but he did tell John of the people he met once he stepped from world to world exploring.

On the first planet the Little Astrophysicist visited was a woman who loved to eat. There was very little room on her planet for anything else but piles and piles of food:

The Little Astrophysicist approached her, asking if she had ever looked at the stars or kept a flower or did one of the many other things that make up the secrets of the universe. But she just grabbed another piece of food and growled at him.

"All living things have to eat," she said.

"Yes," the Little Astrophysicist replied. "But because you have to doesn't mean that's the only thing you can do."

She just kept eating, paying attention to him only when he seemed ready to leave. "Don't go," she said.

"Why not? If you're not going to do anything but sit there and stuff your face? My time is very valuable, you know. I'm a genius."

"That doesn't matter to me," she said.

"If you don't care about that, then why do you care if I leave?" the Astrophysicist demanded, impatient now.

She smiled. "Well, what will I do if I run out of food?"

The Little Astrophysicist ran away. "And you should too, if you ever were to meet anyone like that," he reminded John.

John didn't think he was very likely to meet any cannibals, but he told the Little Astrophysicist that he'd keep it in mind.

The next planet the Little Astrophysicist visited was the planet of a paranoid man. He pretended to be a farmer, but being a genius (of course) the Little Astrophysicist saw through this ploy immediately. He was more like an Amish Nazi. Though he looked a lot like that transporter guy on Star Trek:

"Build me a bomb," the paranoid man commanded.

"Why do you want a bomb?" The Little Astrophysicist asked. It wouldn't be difficult - not for a genius who had built one for his grade six science project.

"To blow up all of the bad people in the world," the paranoid man replied.

"But how do you know who all of the bad people are?" the Little Astrophysicist asked. Because if he was going to all the trouble (and possible radiation exposure, which he'd already had enough of, thank you very much) to build a bomb, it had better be used properly.

The paranoid man shrugged. "The same ones you think are bad."

The Little Astrophysicist thought that maybe it wouldn't be bad to blow up some bad people, like the woman that might want to eat him, and anyone who would want to eat his flower, but: "How do I know that you won't think I'm bad some day?"

The paranoid man couldn't answer him, so the Little Astrophysicist never did build him his bomb.

The next planet the Little Astrophysicist visited was the home of a Goddess. She was very beautiful and her planet was filled with flowers, but unlike the Little Astrophysicist's flower, they were all perfect. They weren't proud and they weren't stubborn and they didn't feel the chill of the wind, because the Goddess kept them behind a glass, where they could worship her. She even took away their thorns so they would be more perfect and beautiful:

"But why don't you let them keep their thorns?" the Little Astrophysicist asked. "My flower is very proud of his thorns."

"Because I'm here to protect them," the Goddess replied. "They have no need of thorns."

"But what if you go off somewhere? Or get sick? Who will protect them then?"

"I don't get sick," she said.

"I have a flower," the Little Astrophysicist said. And he showed it to her, when she stepped over to his world to visit.

"It is the most beautiful flower I've ever seen," she said, because, the Little Astrophysicist imagined, she was lonely with her planet full of perfect flowers all behind a glass.

"Well you can't have it," he replied. "You'll just take out its thorns and put it behind a wall of glass or up on a pedestal and you won't know until you've done it that you've made it ugly."

But that didn't stop her from trying to pluck the Little Astrophysicist's flower. He was just lucky that his flower still had its thorns.

When the Little Astrophysicist arrived on the next planet, it appeared as though there wasn't anyone there, except a lot of very dangerous UV radiation. But before the Little Astrophysicist could leave, he noticed a trail of dust, like the rings of Saturn or many other planets. And in the middle of the cloud there was a figure, by far the biggest man that the Little Astrophysicist had seen:

He wasn't scared, though. Well, maybe a little.

"What are you doing?" The Little Astrophysicist asked, running after the tall man, a little against his will (the Little Astrophysicist didn't like to run unless his life was in danger).

The Runner grunted and kept going.

"Thank you, Conan," the Little Astrophysicist panted. "That was very helpful. But that doesn't tell me why you're running circles around this planet and kicking up all this dust. It's wreaking havoc with my asthma."

"Gotta keep running," the man replied.

"But why?" The Little Astrophysicist was very insistent when in the pursuit of knowledge. Once he got a question in his head, he wouldn't stop until it was answered.

"Because."

"Because why?" The Little Astrophysicist whined.

"Because I don't have anywhere to stop."

"Oh," the Little Astrophysicist said, stopping and grabbing a hold of the Runner's leather jacket. "Well, if you need a place to stop, why not here? I mean, I suppose you could come to my planet too. If all you need to get into your meat head mind is an invitation, then - well, you can always stop to see me."

So the Runner did.

The next planet the Little Astrophysicist visited was the biggest most beautiful planet he had ever seen. He thought that before exploring it, however, he would stop to talk to the nun seated cross-legged at the top. She was very beautiful, but from the way she sat cross-legged like a granola-munching good-for-nothing hippie, the Little Astrophysicist knew that she probably wasn't going to be a lot of fun.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm trying to achieve enlightenment," she replied.

"Oh. How do you do that?"

"Well, the techniques are very refined and subtle. It takes years of practice before you even have a chance of it. But the basic posture is to sit with your spine straight and your hips angled downwards, breathing deeply and evenly, with your eyes open but not focused on anything. You want to clear your mind of thoughts and your heart of desire."

The Little Astrophysicist sat down, copying her posture, but soon learned: "Hey, this is uncomfortable!"

"Yes, I did not say it would be easy."

"So you just sit here, doing nothing? For how long?"

"I have been mediating most of my life."

"But what about your planet? It's very beautiful. Why haven't you seen it?"

She hadn't because she was a hippie deadbeat too focused on the afterlife to see the beauty and the wonder right before her eyes, as the Little Astrophysicist explained it.

"But you wouldn't want to do that, would you? I mean, no matter how good enlightenment might be, how could you stand eternity without loving anything?" The Little Astrophysicist asked.

John shrugged. "I don't know. I've never been one for meditation."

The Little Astrophysicist seemed pleased.

The last planet the Little Astrophysicist told John about was a planet with a scientist.

"You must have gotten along with him, then," John remarked, watching the Little Astrophysicist type away on his laptop.

The Little Astrophysicist smiled mysteriously. "You could say that."

The Little Astrophysicist kept asking the scientist questions as if he wanted to be friends, but the scientist would just wave him away, saying that none of it mattered. He was busy with matters of consequence, things like the mysteries of the universe.

"And then what happened?" John asked, because it seemed as though the secrets of the universe was something that the Little Astrophysicist was concerned about.

"Well, the details aren't really important. He was too proud."

"Like the flower."

"Yes, like the flower. Only, the flower didn't realize that. Or he wouldn't have realized that. Because, sometimes like the nun, all the scientist wanted was to find the ultimate truth and he was convinced that he could find it. But you can't. You can't find it unless you appreciated what's before your eyes. And after the scientist realized that, he was sorry. Trust me, he was sorry."

The Little Astrophysicist was getting increasingly agitated, his bright eyes clouded with worry. John hated to see the little man hurt, so he pulled him into a tight hug and said. "Okay."

"Yeah, okay. Just -um- do me a favor. If your best friend ever blows up 5/6ths of a solar system, go easy on him, okay?"

John laughed, as though that was ever a danger of happening. "Sure, buddy. So after the scientist blew up the solar system."

"5/6ths of it."

"After he blew up 5/6ths of the solar system, did he want to be your friend?"

The Little Astrophysicist smiled. "After I forgave him."

The Little Astrophysicist once met a whale. Whales were one of the Little Astrophysicist's many fears, along with lemons, clowns, earthquakes, volcanoes, bugs, drowning, frostbite, and kangaroos. It was an alien whale, of course, so John imagined it looked like this:

The Little Astrophysicist at first thought that the whale was going to eat him, like the hungry woman on the first planet that he visited, but the whale just smiled at him from a distance, asking, "Why do you think I'll eat you?"

"Because you're a great big leviathan, that's why!" the Little Astrophysicist shrieked.

The whale laughed. "Not all big things eat all little things."

"But, you have to eat something."

"Not you."

"Why not?" the Little Astrophysicist demanded, as though suddenly offended that he might not be tasty enough for a whale's discerning pallet.

"Because you think and feel and talk to me. Would you eat me, now that you have tamed me?"

The Little Astrophysicist grimaced, thinking about the taste of whale meat. "No."

"Just because there are bad scary things in the universe," the whale said, "Does not mean that there are not friends and wonders as well. Not all things that you fear are things that have reason to be feared."

The Little Astrophysicist nodded and when the whale passed by his city in the sea, he made sure to stand out on the balcony and say hello to his friend, even though whales still scared him.

Now, many days had passed, and John's transmitter was finally complete. He had no more food and practically no more water, and he was beginning to feel lightheaded and weak from the heat of the day and the desert cold at night. The Little Astrophysicist curled up against his side, looking up at the stars, but he was small and light as a bird, even when his littleblond curls tickled under John's nose.

"You people will be here for you soon," the Little Astrophysicist said.

"Good," John replied. "I can't wait to introduce you to Mitch and Dex." In truth, he couldn't wait to hear what the Little Astrophysicist would say about two guys who thought crushing beer cans on their heads really was the height of entertainment.

The Little Astrophysicist tensed beside him. "About that. I have to - my flower is waiting for me. And, well he already thinks I've left him behind several times, and I can't. You understand. Of course you understand."

John nodded, trying not to let his disappointment show. They had only know each other for a few short days, but there was something about the look in the Little Astrophysicist's eyes, and the wonder in his voice, and the way he seemed to stare at John with all the focus in his little genius mind that had made John love him, even though love of ephemeral things was nothing short of dangerous.

"And you'll be fine. I know you'll be fine. You don't need me anymore."

But John did. He needed someone to look at the stars with and to tell him stories and tell him all of the good things about the world while simultaneously complaining about the bad. His job was war and he was a good boy and without someone like the Little Astrophysicist, how was he supposed to remember how the very dangerous nature of the world was what made it beautiful?

"You'll remember," the Little Astrophysicist said. "It'll all buried in there somewhere along with the part of you that could have gotten into MENSA." John didn't bother asking how the Little Astrophysicist knew that. "But you'll remember."

"Then at least tell me where your planet is," John said. "So I know where to look when I remember you."

"You can't see it from here," the Little Astrophysicist said. "It's very far away. But you don't need to know exactly where. Just. When you look up there, know that I'm up there and that I won't leave you behind, okay?"

John nodded, trying to blink back the tears he could feel forming.

"Everything will work out," the Little Astrophysicist said, "Trust me on this one. I'm not exactly the poster boy for these kinds of cliche sentiments, so I wouldn't say it unless I knew it was true."

The Little Astrophysicist squeezed John's hand as the sound of a helicopter's rotor blades sounded in the distance, coming up over the far off ridge, back lit by moonlight and stars.

John smiled at the sight. It was beautiful. Maybe like the Little Astrophysicist's flower was beautiful. He turned to ask, but when he looked at where the Little Astrophysicist had been just a moment ago, there was nothing but a trail of pure gold light.

John never told anybody about his Little Astrophysicist, especially not Mitch and Dex and any adults really. Because adults didn't believe in those kinds of wonderful things.

But he remembered the Little Astrophysicist. When he looked up at the sky at night, he thought of the planet out there and whether or not the little man and his flower were happy there. He remembered it when he flipped a coin and decided to accept a dangerous mission that might take him to those very same stars and the dangerous things that made them beautiful.

He remembered the story of the hungry woman and ran away just as the Little Astrophysicist had told him to. He remembered the paranoid man, and never trusted anyone just because they had enemies in common (especially not Amish Nazi farmers who looked like the transporter guy on Star Trek). When he met a Goddess he remembered the double-edged sword that was her protection. He remembered the runner and he offered a place to stop for anyone who needed it and the nun and thought twice about the benefits of enlightenment. He even remembered to forgive his best friend when he blew up 5/6ths of a solar system and to listen to whales. But most of all he remembered the Little Astrophysicist and the way he smiled and said that he would always come back.

So when another man with blue eyes disappeared in a glowing haze, John Sheppard didn't worry that he'd be back. In fact, when he did, John just hit him upside the head, complaining, "I can't believe you compared me to a flower."

And Rodney smiled and said, "Hey, non-interference isn't all rainbows and kittens. Besides, you are kind of a delicate flower."

John smacked him again.

"With thorns! I gave you thorns!"