VP113

He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms behind his head, yawning and rubbing his face as he did so, before sitting forward with a determined resignation. On the desk in front of him was an array of papers and charts depicting the solar system with empirical detachment, a laptop open on the Wikipedia page for ‘mythology’ and a half empty mug of coffee. It was only a few years ago that Aaron would have considered that coffee half full.

Aaron had first discovered his passion for astronomy when he was very young. His father would take him camping and they would spend the evening lying outside their tent on their sleeping bags gazing up at the dark as the stars winked at them, and his father explained what it was winking at them, and why. The magnitude, and the idea of it instantly interested him. His mind grew with the thought of the universe growing; each as infinite and complicated as the other. From then on Aaron was dedicated to discovering everything about the unknowable outer space. So when, five years ago, he got the job offer from the International Astronomical Union he jumped in enthusiastically, leaving his friends and family behind and moving to a new city.

Aaron only accepted the low level job as a temporary way of making ends meet when he left university, in the hope that he would progress into higher positions. The problem was that the ends that he had envisioned meeting never introduced themselves. These ends had just passed each other by with nothing but a glance and a polite nod, oblivious that they had been destined to meet. Therefore Aaron had carried on working there, stuck permanently in his temporary means to an end. The job he had dreamed of his entire life was in no way what he had imagined and consisted more of archiving and editing old documents than anything close to star-gazing. His underground office was a sorrowful place for anyone to spend time, never mind someone with obsessions with the infinite. Bright artificial lights, which were always on, illuminated the small, square, concrete room entirely occupied by two obtrusive desks, and some filing cabinets. The small office didn’t even have a single window. The office was so definitively finite that it was challenging for Aaron to maintain his previous enthusiasm for the job. Spending every day in this office meant that he actually saw much less of the solar system than before. He technically saw much less of anything than before, but it was the sky he missed.

The only time he regained any of his former enthusiasm was when he got home at night. He would lie on his own bed and gaze through his skylight at the immeasurable immensity of the universe and the smallest sigh would escape him. He would fall asleep comparing his tiny sigh to the infinite abyss, his problems with people and work suddenly insignificant. Aaron continuously woke up the next morning optimistic with the small hope that his enthusiasm might last this time, despite the proof of the past.

Aaron’s office did not seem to appreciate his good mood. It would be as obvious and claustrophobic as possible and within an hour it had crushed all of Aaron’s optimism, compressing it into a more familiar pessimistic shape. It was just as his office was, once again, succeeding in this never-ending battle that the phone rang. Aaron had been unwillingly engrossed in editing some recently disproven data about some asteroids in a neighbouring system. The endless clicking of the mouse had been his only companion for the last hour so the sudden change was slightly shocking. It was also the first time the office had received a phone call. Aaron glanced around trying to find the source of the noise, eventually unearthing it in an otherwise empty drawer in his desk’s twin.

‘Hello?’ he answered hesitantly.

‘Is this Archives?’ said the voice.

‘Emm, yeah?’ replied Aaron, still completely shaken by this disturbance to his routine.

‘Please come to my office immediately’ demanded the voice. ‘Room three, floor twenty.’

And before Aaron cold react the line went dead. Aaron stared at the wall still holding the phone to his ear. He slowly lowered it and stood up.

The journey upstairs was more complicated than it needed to be as Aaron had only been upstairs once before, for his interview many years ago. He couldn’t find any elevators from his basement level so he took the stairs, but as the floors weren’t numbered he had to count. He ended up on the wrong floor, twice. He eventually managed to find the correct place and quietly knocked on the door uncertain what to expect. He waited to get called in before entering suspiciously.

The office he found himself in could not have been more different to his own. It was spacious, with a huge rug leading from the door from which Aaron had entered to an equally huge desk, silhouetted by a wall sized window revealing the blue sky outside. A man was sitting at the desk and he did not look up when Aaron came in.

‘We found a planet!’ he said bluntly, addressing the paper he was editing.

Aaron, assuming this comment was for his benefit, as he was the only one there, took a second to think of a response. He had no idea who this man actually was but he assumed by his casual authority that he was a boss. Whether it was his boss or not, Aaron thought it best not to question him.

‘Oh. Emm, okay. Eh, Where?’ mumbled Aaron still feeling very much out of his comfort zone. He couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad.

‘In the observatory of course.’

‘Oh, I see. Em, where about in the universe, I mean.’ Aaron affirmed.

‘Oh, I don’t know, somewhere behind Pluto or something. Anyway, I need you to name it. Everyone else has better things to be doing so it’ll have to be you,’ said the man still huddled over his desk.

‘Emmm, I don’t know if I’m qualified…’

‘Sure you are. The name has to come from mythology, be easily pronounced and inoffensive. That’s not hard is it?’ Aaron was so overcome with the situation that he just stood there as his brain tried to catch up. The unconfirmed man glanced up from his desk, seemingly surprised by Aaron’s lack of not being there. ‘You can go.’

Half a cup of coffee later Aaron found himself in his office with all the information needed to try and name a planet. It was temporarily being referred to as VP113; not a name anyone should call anything. Exciting discoveries like this were the exact reason he loved astronomy but he still found it hard to muster any inspiration. It was hard to consider a sufficient name for an entire planet when he was stuck in a room that restricted him from opening a door and drawer at the same time. The rules he had been given were of no help. Something from mythology was rather vague. Something pronounceable was awfully ambiguous, although he guessed it couldn’t be worse than VP113. And he was fairly certain that it was impossible not to offend anyone. Inoffensive he thought I wonder how Uranus sneaked through that crack. He glanced again at the research materials he had before him and decided it was impossible and that he would just pick something at random. He wrote down the name on the current Wikipedia page and left his office.

He lay in bed several hours later, looking up through his skylight, surveying the sky and thinking of his planet. His mind wandered back to the last sentence he had read on the page:

‘The major stories about him are centred on his ability to charm all living things’

His eye was caught by a particularly bright star and as he drifted off to sleep, he smiled.

Orpheus.