Beckett 88

I’m looking for a good exoplanet. Earth is finished. It’s been trashed by humans. I need to get out while the going is good. We may get our first blue ocean event this summer. If you think the weather is crazy now, you haven’t seen anything yet. Goodbye food security, hello famine.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found any listings at Red Fin, Trulia or Zillow. The best source I have right now is Wackypedia. Wackypedia is the wackier version of Wikipedia. The information is roughly the same, it’s just wackier. Wacky is good when you’re looking for an exoplanet. The margin is wider, the ceiling is higher, and there’s less resistance to the restraints of logic. Logic isn’t going to get me where I need to go. I need to travel long distances. For that, I’ll need lots of logorrhea. A Winnebago RV capable of space travel and a ton or so of pepperoni sticks.

A recent review ascertained that the exoplanets Kepler-62f, Kepler-186f and Kepler-442b were currently the best candidates for being potentially habitable. But habitable by whom? Habitable by me. My wife and cat. A murder of crows and a washing machine. There are few restaurants or laundromats in space.

By space, I mean outer space. The cold black void on the other side of our atmosphere. Once you get out of Earth’s gravity, hold on to your hat. There’s not much out there except neutrinos, asteroids and comets. I’m hoping we might discover a Motel 6 on Pluto, but once we get past the Kuiper Belt, it’s doubtful we’ll stumble upon a Denny’s or Applebee’s. And the likelihood of a Best Western of Four Seasons is abysmal. Outer space is long on distance and short on amenities. We’ll need plenty of fortitude, ingenuity, and towels.

Kepler-62f is 1,200 light-years distant from planet Earth. I’m guessing I can do it in about 1,500 light-years if I can get the Winnebago near to the speed of light. I won’t have to worry about detours or traffic.

Kepler-62f has a radius and mass bigger than Earth, so we’ll weigh a lot more. That’s important to consider when building a house. A rambler with no upper floors might work. The equilibrium temperature on Kepler-62f is a chilly minus 85℉. I’m definitely bringing a coat. The good news is that it most likely has a rocky surface. It receives roughly the same amount of sunlight as Mars, which isn’t a lot, but if we stay indoors watching whatever reruns are drifting around in outer space, who cares.

Kepler-186f is a little closer at 582 light-years from Earth. It has a radius similar to Earth’s and orbits a red dwarf. I’m not sure how I’d feel about orbiting a red dwarf, but it’s got an orbital period of 129.9 days, which means more birthdays.

Proxima Centauri b is the closest, at 4.24 light years away. It, too, orbits a red dwarf. As yet, its radius and mass have not been calculated. This is discouraging. It also gets 2000 times the stellar wind pressures of Earth, which is enough to blow any atmosphere away. I’m guessing Proxima Centauri b is just not what we’re looking for in a potentially habitable exoplanet. We’d have better luck in Arkansas.

Kepler-442b is more promising. It’s 1,206 light years distant in the constellation Lyra. It’s got a radius and mass bigger than Earth, meaning surface gravity would be about 30% stronger. It receives about 70% of the sunlight on Earth. These statistics are not filling me with excitement. I’m beginning to get that feeling when I go on virtual tours of homes for sale and cheesy rock posters are still on the walls and toys and socks litter the floor. It’s as if the realtor was too demoralized to stage it properly.

I think we can do better than Kepler-442b.

Steppenwolf is a planet in the Triangulum Galaxy. It has an unscrupulously rocky surface and a fat shiny atmosphere of whisky and Benzedrine. The climates are nuts, but the oceans are lush harmonies of jelly and hallucination. It orbits a red giant reeking of garlic and motor oil. It is among the closest of exoplanets, only a magic carpet ride away from all that is holy and vivid and born to be wild.

Wishful Thinking is an opulent ball of congenial rock and clay in the forearm of the Dumbbell Nebula. This is a fixer up planet. The drywall is crumbling and the orbit is decaying.

Planet 9 is actually my index finger in an astronomy textbook. I’m trying to understand celestial mechanics. I thought it had something to do with belly dancing. I was wrong. It’s all about prairie, convenience, and fondue. Community is so important. Unless you hate people. That’s the beauty of space travel: the isolation. The long hours of navigation punctuated by quiet interludes of masturbation.

I like Beckett 88. Beckett 88 is a planet in the Molloy constellation. It glows like a candle in the pineal gland of a chipmunk, alluring and gloriously unscientific. It has the mass of a black opal and a radius similar to the hormone of a beautiful green wind. The surface varies from the bald round head of a granite Sibelius to the soft white sand of an unnamable soap. Water is abundant and forests of fluorescent beauty wink and glimmer in the light of a giant red moon. It orbits a white dwarf named Smutty every 400 days and each day is 400 hours long and four days wide. Temperatures vary from 65℉ in the far north near the pole and 82℉ near the equator. I think this may be the place. As soon as I get there I’ll plant the flag of indolence and claim it in the name of all that is good and lazy.