Cavanaugh cried out “Kia wamarie!” on learning from his mobile device that his Princeton Project at Lot 49 was progressing nicely as Stacy and her psychiatrist had meanwhile settled into the viewing area above where Cavanaugh would soon be challenging Finn and Fred the Red to a game of squash. Stacy had asked her therapist to assess whether Finn’s obsession with Fred’s height amounted to a neuroses of one kind or the other, but the truth is she also had something else on her mind: her psychiatrist was a guy who knew a guy who knew Chet Beau-Zeau, a hedge fund billionaire with no profits to speak of and plans to colonize Mars.

“Kia wamarie” means “Good luck” in the Maori language of an aboriginal ingenue who bestowed her charms on Cavanaugh in the days of his wayward youth. Stacy likewise wished him the best of luck. From their vantage point in the viewing area, the spectators could watch the Finn and Fred prepare for their match against Cavanaugh by going through the motions of their squash routines. Fred bounced a ball off the walls and into a bucket while Finn tried again and again to break his record of striking thirty-two backhand strokes in a row. He struggled to get past thirty-one because Fred the Red was on his mind: Did she notice he was taller now? Did she suspect his added height was supplied by shoes fitted with Dr. Scholl’s Massaging Gel Insoles? Fred bounced a ball into the bucket and said:

"My mother dated a man from Greenland just before I was born. Erik the Red discovered Greenland and so I am pretty sure that's where my hair comes from."

Finn flubbed his backhand strokes time and time again as Fred related in some detail that Erik was a Viking from Iceland who discovered Greenland in 982 A.D. Greenland had far more ice than Iceland, but Erik the Red named his discovery after bushes and trees as a medieval marketing ploy. He said: “People would be attracted to go there if it had a favorable name.” A boom in Greenland real estate followed thereupon.

Once her tale was told, Finn regained his backhand stroke. His resentment of Fred’s bonus inches had moved him to google the heck out of her hair in hopes of finding some way to cut her down to size. He hacked this away: “People with red hair can’t take the sun. They get sunburn and freckles and lose their cool. I’m taller than I used to be.”

Fred tried to keep her cool but her next stroke missed the wall she was aiming at and hit the bucket instead, the ball careening hither and yon before coming to rest Finn’s feet. Stacy watched Finn kick the ball at Fred and decided this was a good time to get her own show on the road. She nudged the guy who knew a guy with her elbow as a way of inviting him to gaze upon her mobile device as it conjured double doors of stained-glass bearing the images of an Archangel brandishing a sword and a Mormon brandishing a book. Beneath them ran archaic script: “St. Michael and David Evans make common cause for the higher powers.”

The guy who knew a guy looked askance at the Mormon: a young fellow sporting a black tie, a black and white name tag, and a white shirt with short sleeves revealing the forearms of a stevedore. Stacy said: “Dave attended the webbing and the wedding of the internet. He established the computer science program at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City with a grant from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. President Eisenhower started DARPA after the Russians sent Sputnik into outer space. DARPA consecrated the plural marriage of Dave’s computer program to three colleges on the California coast during the Christmas season of 1969. The internet is the first fruits of this marriage. PayPal and Amazon came later on. Open the podcast doors, GAL.”

10…9…8…

The podcast doors opened onto a countdown etched into the reddish surface of Mars. The guy who knew a guy asked: “Who is GAL?” Stacy chuckled. “GAL is a what, not a who. GAL is the name of my selfie drone and an acronym for Galactic Action Locator.

7…6…5…4…

Cavanaugh strolled into the court below, his left hand holding his racquet and his mobile device and his left arm cradled in white tape and a sling so as to advertise the grievous injury he had suffered at the hands of Stacy’s spouse. He called Finn and Fred to his side so they might see how his mobile device transmitted the selfie wonders Stacy had contrived.

3…2…1…!

The podcast put the sounds of The Flight of the Bumblebee to the sights captured by her selfie drone: Stacy and Reid with Finn and Fred in a comic doubles match mixing genders and age. The junior players looked like dancers who could not agree to what sort of music they were dancing to: he a hip-hop rapster and she a country two-step girl. Stacy played a Ballerina and Reid a Keystone Cop: here enchanted by her pirouettes and there alarmed by Finn’s attempts to chastise Fred’s bonus inches by applying his racquet to her derriere. Reid brought order to the farce by closing the podcast with a nicely spliced stroke that separated the selfie drone from the rotor keeping it aloft.

“Those are some rambunctious kids,” said the guy who knew a guy. “Stacy replied: “Squash lets you take your aggressions out on a ball that feels no pain. Did you know that a squash court was home to the Fermi Paradox?”

“Pair a what?”

“Dox! Enrico Fermi was an Italian immigrant who built the first nuclear reactor ever in a squash court at the University of Chicago. His paradox was inspired by a cartoon in the New Yorker by Alan Dunn where aliens take possession of New York garbage cans. Fermi asked: Where are all the others? He said: if we are not alone in the universe, somebody would have conquered our galaxy by now. Enrico did the math to prove it. He was a brilliant scientist.”

Stacy smiled. Her therapist shrugged. After an uneasy pause, Stacy spoke again: “Sci-fi movies notwithstanding, there is no more evidence for aliens than there is for God and God, at least, does a star turn or two in the human comedy. To quote Popeye the Sailor Man and a can of spin-age from Exodus 3:14: ‘I yam who I yam.’ It is what It is. Of course, space aliens might have left their calling card on Mars.”

The guy who knew a guy wanted to hear less about God and more about space aliens on Mars but Stacy thought it best to split the difference by respecting his aversion while deflecting his desire. To this end she talked instead about the rambunctious kids orbiting Cavanaugh two-on-one. She noticed that Cavanaugh’s wounded wing did not slow him down: his steps were lighter than air, as if his wide shoulders and narrow hips were filled with helium. Her husband called him Cavanova after Casanova, and that was okay with her. Cavanova’s heart was as big as his body. Stacy sighed. If only her husband’s body was as big as his heart. She turned to the guy who knew a guy, who inverted his own gaze. He said:

“Your son looks like a healthy and happy nine-year-old boy to me but his playmate seems to be indulging in a Freudian fantasy. Sigmund had a name for the delusion of a girl who believes she is really the offspring of people far grander than the simple souls who are raising her to maturity. He called this the family romance. Miss Winnifred’s belief that she bears the hair of Erik the Red may reflect some internal conflict about her budding physicality. Red hair and freckles are lovely to behold but sunburn is the red flag warning of a predisposition to malignant melanoma. Freud would say Fred the Red is rejecting the flawed father of her adolescence and embraces Erik the Red as the valiant father she feared and admired as a toddler. She ascribes her beauty to Erik and blames Henry for her inability to conjured up a tan. And what is on your fantasy, if I may be so bold?

Stacy surveyed the court below. Finn sliced a backhand that eluded Cavanaugh and Fred retrieved the wayward ball and fluffed her carrot top. Stacy said: “My fantasy is you ask your attorney to set up a meet for me with Chet Beau-Zeau. I get the property abutting the Drones R Us factory and leverage that into a minority share in the company. Drones R Us is a GAL thing: no GUYs allowed. I think that is a error that Beau-Zeau can correct if he makes my employers an offer they cannot refuse: Sell out or I’ll steal all your GALs and make my own selfie drones. Billionaires can get away with that sort of thing. Once we control the company, I sell selfie drones on Earth and Mr. Beau-Zeau sends one to map Mars as a come-on for his colony. I’ll explore the Inner Sanctum while he explores Outer Space. Our biometrics may be able to tell him whether there are bed bugs on Mars and our tech support can put him in remote control of the mapping from his hot tub if that’s what he wants to do. I know a bit about hot tubs.”

“Yeah?”

“My boyfriend and my husband had a fracas over a hot tub just the other day. That’s how I’m getting the property abutting the selfie drone HQ,”

The guy who knew a guy tried to think about this, but the more he thought the less he understood: Boyfriend? Hot tub? Husband? Property? Stacy said: “I’d like a 51-49 split of all the goodies. Beau-Zeau already has his bundle, so I get the 51. It’s my idea. Fair is fair.”