Greg Keyes - Interstellar

“What happens now?” he wondered aloud.

But then he was swept away, as if by a massive wave, like the Ranger back on Miller’s world. But that wave had only lifted and dropped him. No, this was more like a fast-moving river.

Or a riptide.

In the current, and beyond it, he saw stars and planets being born, dying, decaying into particles, then being born again, faster and faster—through space-time, above space-time, a piece of paper bending, a pen poking a hole through it…

Where was he going now? He was done, wasn’t he? He’d accomplished what he was meant to do—it was up to Murph now. And Brand.

He wondered where Brand was, how she was doing. He wished he could explain to her why he’d had to leave her alone.

Ahead he saw a glassy, golden distortion, and in it the Endurance , and for a split second he thought his wish had brought him to her—but then he saw that this Endurance was like new, undamaged, just entering the wormhole. He drifted through the bulkhead and saw Brand and Romilly there, both strapped in.

Brand , he thought, reaching toward her. In a way, he had gotten his wish. Could he communicate with her? Probably not, or at least nothing important, since this was the past, and she hadn’t known that any of this was going to happen.

To his surprise, she saw him. She reached her hand up to his, and he realized there was something he could communicate. Something that maybe was important. So he reached back, hoping to feel the warmth of her hand, give it an affectionate squeeze. But when their fingers came together they mingled, distorting each other but not really touching. A quiet moment in the chaos.

He watched her face, the wonder on it.

Then, abruptly, he was swept on. The sulfurous orb of Saturn suddenly loomed immense in his vision…

Then quiet.

Cooper opened his eyes to the crack of a baseball bat, a faint breeze and gauzy sunlight. He blinked, trying to get his bearings.

He was no longer in a spacesuit. He lay in bed, tucked into crisp white sheets. The bed was in a room, and the room had a window that looked, not into space—but into light. The view was obscured by net curtains, but he could hear children laughing beyond it.

“Mr. Cooper?” someone asked. “Mr. Cooper?”

He looked up and found a young man with a pronounced chin and green eyes staring down at him. At his side was a woman with black hair in a ponytail. He didn’t know either of them, but as his brain picked up a little speed he saw that they were dressed in medical clothing—and he realized the bed was a hospital bed.

He sat up, trying to remember. He had seen Brand, and then had the stuffing knocked out of him. And Saturn…

He had been pitched back into the space around Saturn, two years from Earth and any possible rescue.

So why wasn’t he dead?

“Take it slow, sir,” the man—a doctor, he saw now—cautioned. “Remember you’re no spring chicken anymore.” He smiled. “I gather you’re—” The doctor referred to the chart in his hand. “—one hundred and twenty four years old.”

Cooper didn’t feel any older than when he’d left.

Time slippage, he thought.

“You were extremely lucky,” he continued. “The Ranger found you with only minutes left in your oxygen supply.”

Rangers? Around Saturn? Why? Had there been another expedition?

“Where am I?” he asked.

The doctor looked a little surprised, but then went to the window and pulled back the curtains.

There was no sky, only the upper curve of a huge cylinder, with upside-down houses, trees, fields, and pools. Cooper followed what he could of the curve as it continued down, realizing it went beneath him. And he knew had seen this before, or something becoming this. Back at NASA, in the mountain.

“Cooper Station,” the doctor said. “Currently orbiting Saturn.”

Cooper struggled to get up and the nurse came to his aid, helping him stand and walk slowly over to the window. Outside, beneath the topsy-turvy sky, some kids were playing baseball. As he watched, one swung like the devil and hit a pop fly. He tracked it as it flew up, slowing, pausing—then speeding up again as it crossed the station’s axis and continued on. The kids shouting warnings as the ball shattered a skylight literally on the other side of the world.

“Nice of you to name the place after me,” he said, as the ball players laughed at their faux pas.

The nurse giggled. But when he looked, he could see that it wasn’t at the ball players, and the doctor was giving her a look.

“What?” he asked.

“The station wasn’t named after you, sir,” the doctor said. “It was named after your daughter.”

Cooper smiled at his mistake.

Of course it was.

“Although, she’s always maintained how important you were,” the man added quickly.

That brought up a question Cooper had to ask, but he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know the answer. If he was a hundred and twenty-four—if eighty-odd years had passed since he left Earth…

“Is she… still alive?” he asked.

“She’ll be here in a couple of weeks,” the doctor confirmed. “She’s really far too old for a transfer from another station, but when she heard you’d been found—well, this is Murphy Cooper we’re talking about.”

“Yes,” Cooper marveled, “it is.”

“We’ll have you checked out in a couple days,” the doctor assured him. Then he and the nurse left Cooper alone.

Plan A , he mused, looking out at the fantastical station—Professor Brand’s busy-work come to a fruition the old man had never himself believed would occur.

Freakin’ plan A.

The administrator was very organized and very perky and—young. Thirty at most, with no hint of grey in his curly black hair.

“I’m sure you’ll be excited to see what’s in store,” he told Cooper, leading him along a walkway inside of a hangar. “We’ve got a nice situation for you.”

Cooper’s gaze found a row of Rangers—not the ones he had flown, but a new generation, even sleeker than before. Lovely to look at. How different were they, he wondered? He would love to climb into one, have a look at the controls. Were they propelled by some sort of gravity drive, as the station must be?

But his guide never even glanced at the handsome vessels. That wasn’t where they were going.

“I actually did a paper on you in high school, sir,” the fellow said. “I know all about your life on Earth…” They entered what would have been a quite ordinary town square had it not been in orbit around Saturn.

“So when I made my suggestion to Ms. Cooper, I was delighted to hear she thought it was perfect.”

Cooper stopped, staring, at a farmhouse. No, scratch that. The farmhouse, his house, the same porch where he and Donald drank beers in the evening. The place where his kids were born, where Murph had turned her back to him.

But cleaner—it looked like they had painted it.

As he drew nearer, a monitor came to life, and an old man appeared on it.

“ May 14th” the image said. “ Never forget. Clear as a bell. You’d never think…”

Now Cooper saw another man’s face, also old.

“When the first of the real big ones rolled in,” he said, “I thought it was the end of the world.”

“Of course,” Cooper’s guide said, “I didn’t speak to her personally.”

“ Sure, my dad was a farmer …” the monitor continued, this time a woman’s voice, quavering with age, but then they were in the house, the door closing off the narration. Another screen woke as they entered the kitchen, more old people talking about the dust, Cooper realized.