Venus had always been fascinated with the stars. When she was 6, her father took her to the observatory for the first time, because he thought she would be old enough to remember it. It was the one thing they could bond over. She did remember how upset her mom had been that her dad had taken her out of school to go early and make the two hour drive.

Now 17, the observatory was ending its 34 year run. She still had her interest in space, but she was more secretive about it. She always had to remind herself not to raise her hand in science too much, for fear of attracting attention.
Though she remained close to her father, things were different now that he was in Washington, working with NASA.  He always told her no matter where he was, they would always see the same moon. Her mom and herself had just moved into a more expensive house. There was a tree in her view of the sky from the window next to her bed, so sometimes she snuck out onto the roof so she could make sure that was still true.

The observatory had lost a lot of visitors over the years. Now that she had her license, she drove there as often as she could. Tonight, the last night the observatory would be open, didn't even have a line. She shook the door, and found it locked. They had closed up early.
With a sigh, she took a folding chair from the back of her suv, and sat it out in the big field of grass next to the observatory. She identified the constellations. The big dipper, the warrior. She heard a car turning, making its way on to the gravel driveway, and stop. She heard footsteps, and a timid voice say "is it closed?"
She looked up, and saw a timid girl, about her age, standing with her hands in her pockets.
"Mind if I join you?"
"By all means."
She returned to her car, pulled out a chair, and sat down a couple of feet away. They sat in silence for awhile, the only noise being the grasshopper occasional chirp. Finally, Venus asked
"So what's your name?"
"Pandora."
"Like, the app?"
"No, like the moon."
"Oh."
After a few seconds of silence, Pandora asked, "whats yours?"
"Venus."
"The Planet."
"No, the tennis player." She said, with a not very subtle hint of sarcasm.
"What brings you out here?"
"Just a mild obsession I have. What about you?"
"Curiosity."
"Oh?"
"Mind if I rant?"
"Go ahead."
"Theres just so much out there.
We're millions and millions of miles away from the sun and there's other planets there too and then really far away theres pluto and beyond that are other dwarf planets and theres all these stars that died a long time ago and thats the only reason we see them. and theres blackholes that have a bunch of nothing in them and everything would get destroyed going in to a black hole, but what happens when all that space stuff is at the very end of the black hole? we're just one of millions of galaxies and theres no way that there aren't other aliens like the rest of us out there, right? And like, believe they're in love and some of them are fighting and some are afraid of dying and we're not alone in the universe, just very, very far apart. It just gives me a hope in something, i guess. the infinite universe theorem states that whatever scenario you can think of is happening in another galaxy and i'd like to think that i'm a scenario to someone else, and that i'm a troubled yet good scenario, just happening in someone elses mind. That sounds so selfish, but like we're all just different people being imagined by different beings in a different galaxy and maybe we're one of the good scenarios that they dream, just waiting for our time to be thought of and i think that's beautiful."
"We are?"
"I don't mean we as in us, I just meant as a whole."
" do you think maybe some very boring life form out there is just thinking of a start to a very good friendship?"
"Yeah, maybe."
They sat looking at the stars in silence.