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flashing galaxies. Everything ordered and neatly tucked away until I release the universe, its edges blurring above us, the Star Room becoming the same size as the cosmos. Becoming the cosmos. I take us through an entire day in two minutes. The children’s T-shirts burn with fluorescence. Yellow, blue, green spill from the Dallas skyscrapers, then flicker and quit. The bad wiring. My jaw clenches. I want my city bright and safe. Measured, with clear and manageable paths.
    As the sun winks out, a poetic fragment—Baudelaire—skitters through my mind: declining daystar, glorious, without heat and full of melancholy . The children gasp at the blackness, then “ooh” as they start to perceive the stars, which are about the size of nail heads. I’m always light-headed at this point, aware that the sky is being cast from below, onto a solid barrier above, then I lose myself in the illusion.
    I think of the boxes of Joseph Cornell. I have a book at home, with pictures of his lovely, dizzying art. Toward the “Blue Peninsula ” is a simple white container filled with wire mesh. Behind the wire, a tiny window opens onto startling blue sky—a glimpse of infinity in a claustrophobic space. Cassiopeia # 1 , only fourteen inches wide, its inner walls plastered with star charts—heaven folded into the equivalent of a cigar box. But most delightful is the Solar Set , a box featuring sketches of the sun, and of Earth’s orbit around it, behind five fluted glasses, each holding clear yellow or shadowy blue marbles—phase of the moon. Glass on glass. The delicacy of Order. Totality, held like a caught breath inside a small, sealed case.
    Somber whole notes. Minor chords. “Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere,” I say softly into the mike. I’ll bet Zero is smiling in the dark. He brought me this Pascal quote, and I always use it when he’s here. “I’m your host, Adam Post.” I fade in the moon. A fictitious evening. Time governed by my sure, pale hand. “The planetarium is a vision generator. There is nothing it cannot demonstrate. So sit back, relax, and enjoy Existence.”
    The kids squirm. I show them the major constellations, tell them the story of Aries. I give them dimensions, sizes, distances. Explain the ecliptic, magnitude, orbits. Retrograde motion.
    â€œExcuse me,” Backpack says. “What’s magnitude?”
    â€œIntensity of light-the way we measure it.”
    Someone pops a gum bubble.
    I show them the planets as they’ll appear tonight in the sky. “The ancient Maya of Central America had no telescopes, but they tracked stellar movements,” I say. Cue Venus. “What we often call the evening star is really the planet Venus, and the Maya based their 584-day calendar on the time it takes this bright sister of the earth to cycle around the sky. The Maya associated Venus with the god of rain. At their latitude, the planet’s absence was shortest in the dry season, longest during showers.
    â€œNow, many of you have probably memorized the phrase ‘My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles’ as a mnemonic device—that is, as a way of remembering the names of the nine planets in our solar system. If you take the first letter of each word in that sentence, you can recall the planets in the order of their orbits around the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.” Pause. “Recently, scientists have debated the nature of Pluto, and many now contend that it’s not a planet at all. They say it’s composed of ice rather than gas or rock.”
    Faint stirrings. My eyes have adjusted. I see Zero stiffen.
    â€œThis links Pluto with a ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper belt.”
    â€œBut that’s not fair,” Anna says quietly.
    â€œAnna?” says Ms. Pickett, with