2 at the Dome : Black Box

Paul Westfield had left for the longest mission in NASA history, Magellan, the first manned mission past the orbit of Saturn and his son Casey was only ten years old. A mission long enough that internment into stasis was necessary. Shortly after the wake up call the Magellan mission went MIA, and Casey would be wondering what actually happened to his dad and that mission for a long time to come.

Now Casey has become an astronaut himself and thanks to the discovery of a chamber inside the face on Mars, he has been chosen by the United World Space Agency to go on the most prolific mission in human history. 80,000 light years to the other side of the galaxy, to visit a society that predates humans by well over a billion years.

With a tour guide to help, he has to remember as much as he can because it's a one time offer to exist in a completely alien world, and then return with all his experiences and information. Then an opportunity arises and Casey feels he should roll the dice. Everything is not quite what it seems though, and Casey must survive the court appearance of a lifetime, along with making a decision that could reduce the human race to a footnote in the galactic history log.

Dylan Beckerman grew up in a blue collar home in a conservative New England town with only 4 channels on tv. He soon turned to radio for an alternative entertainment, specifically night time AM radio. He discovered the seemingly endless selection of different stations and cities that could be sampled with the turn of a dial. The idea of catching audio glimpses of countless different people all doing their own thing very far from his little town, gave him the sense that in a way he was visiting these people in myriad different locations. Traveling across the nigh time am dial was like traveling around the world to a young boy, using his imagination to fill in what all these different people and places might look like. The feeling of never knowing what the next station might bring was mirrored in the original Star Trek series of the early 60's which is his favorite. It all fueled an imagination that was destined to manifest itself in a story of a populated galaxy, and the human interaction with it.