Isle of Sodor is not a person. Nor is it an island. It is a desolate rock floating light years beyond the Oort cloud, collecting dense matter and planetismals to form into a supergiant. Goshen is star stuff — as Carl Sagan put it, the particles that make up all of us. We are all connected by the Big Bang, each born from the cosmic dust and icy gases that continue to expand. But we’ll get lost if we focus on never-ending expansion, worlds that not even our grandchildren’s grandchildren are likely to experience. But that little shard of frozen oblong rock that hovers just outside of the Milky Way? That’s what matters. It captures the last gasps of the solar wind, vacuuming up debris into its condensed form. It grows hot, as hydrogen and helium begin the earliest stages of nuclear fusion. Goshen begins to glow, sending its beacon toward all inhabited worlds. It has just reached the view of Earth, a new star in the night horizon. It’s taken billions of years for it to reach us. Isle of Sodor has been manifesting itself well ahead of our comprehension. Although it’s brand new from our perch, it’s as old as time from its lofty confines. But we’re glad it has arrived in all its galactic glory; to be a planet rotating around Goshen, to see its yellowed photosphere from a new habitation zone. Only John Elliott has made the journey, and not even he is speaking of its wonder.
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