This Oil Painting, by John Chapman, creator of Jonnie Rocket inspired me to write the following story:
The connection between Jonnie Rocket and his ship, Tycho 8, had always been an amazing, magical thing. That moment, as he powered down the hill on his bicycle, peddling so fast that he could barely keep up with himself…
…the moment the bicycle shifted beneath him, encompassed and embraced him, became one with him and in the blinking of an eye he, and the ship his bicycle had become, were gone, travelling through the atmosphere and the stars beyond at the speed of imagination.
Jonnie and Tycho 8 raced amongst the stars as quickly and as easily as a humming bird flits from flower to flower and yet Jonnie longed for something more, to see not individual suns and planets, wondrous though they were, but to see whole galaxies, to marvel at their magnitude and complexity.
As he had the thought the control stick of the rocket trembled in his hands, as if the ship sensed his desire and was keen to show off just what it was capable of.
“Come on then Tycho 8, let’s do it!” Jonnie shouted with glee as the stick suddenly came alive in his hand in a way he had never felt before.
The blackness of space, pricked with the blues and whites and oranges of 100 billion stars disappeared as the rocket and its pilot, whooping with joy, vanished in a swirl of blinding purple light, which enveloped the whole ship and made the cockpit screen hum as the energy from the light swirled and crackled over the dome.
Jonnie instinctively knew he was travelling beyond the normal dimensions of space and time as they were currently understood or imagined, for Tycho 8 could not achieve the young man’s desire if it allowed itself to be contained by such limitations.
The light outside the cockpit faded. The trembling of the stick ceased and Jonnie’s heart stopped thumping in his chest.
He looked out of the cockpit window. A beautiful alien world of yellow and orange deserts with vast blue oceans sailed majestically past and beyond that, a whole galaxy – a swirl of purple and white light – hung against the blackness of the seemingly infinite Universe.
Jonnie noticed his reflection in the inside of the cockpit screen, a pale ghost against the majesty that Tycho 8 had chosen to present him with. The reflection was both young and very old. It was a reflection of Jonnie’s whole life. It was a very strange thing to behold, but he wasn’t frightened, he was fascinated.
Through his reflection he stared at the galaxy before him, watching it take millions of years to slowly turn on its axis, and yet, he was ageless, and he knew, that in an instant, his rocket, Tycho 8, would have him home in time for tea.
