Satellite

by Nick Lake

  “they’d never let u,” he says. “u’re not an astronaut. u’re a kid. an experiment.”

  “i know 0 g better than any of those astronauts,” i say. “better than Soto. better than my own mother.”

  “yes,” says Libra. “but u don’t know how to pilot a rocket. they only send qualified people up. pilot & copilot. people who know what they’re doing.”

  Orion removes his mask again. a bit of color has returned to his ashen face. “anyway, u’d be stuck there,” he says. “all we ever wanted was to come down.”

  “maybe,” i say. “or maybe that was what everyone always told us we wanted.”

  Libra frowns. “come on, Leo. u’d be floating around in a tin can, till the end of ur days.”

  i think of the view of space, the earth below, turning fast. the moon. “yes,” i say.

  “u wouldn’t be able to have kids,” says Libra. “i mean, unless some crazy woman astronaut went up there with u or—”

  “i don’t think i’m going to have kids,” i say. the room seems to take a breath. “not…in the conventional manner anyway. so that’s not an issue.”

  silence.

  i meet Orion’s eyes. & for once i don’t turn away. he doesn’t either. something that has never been said has stepped onto the path in the scented night of the dome, is a presence in the space we occupy, almost standing between us, face in shadow.

  Libra is peering at me as if confused.

  “come on, this isn’t news to u,” i say.

  mask off. “no,” says Orion.

  “there’s still love, tho,” says Libra. “settling down. family.”

  “there’s love up there too,” i say.

  “ok,” says Libra, “what about a career? ambitions? u can’t just be in a space station till u die.”

  “other people train for decades to get the chance to go to the space station,” i say. “& anyway, what kind of career are u going to have, living in this dome?”

  she doesn’t answer.

  “sorry,” i say. “that was mean.”

  she shrugs. “it’s ok. i get it.”

  “we’re just as trapped here as we were up there,” i say. “only we’re trapped far away from home.”

  she fingers her locket, the earth she keeps there. “no,” she says. “this is home.” she stands, & then slowly kneels & touches her hand to the dirt. “this. here. the earth. where we’re meant to be.”

  pause.

  she turns to Orion. “& u?” she says.

  he inhales, then lifts the mask. “home is where u are,” he says. another whir as the chair spins. “& u,” he adds.

  but not quick enough.

  silence.

  “they still won’t let u,” says Libra. as if that settles it.

  “who says? have u asked them?”

  “no,” she says. “have u?”

  a moth lands on her wheelchair. she smiles at it, reaches her index finger & gently brushes it.

  huh.

  i walk into 1 of the conference rooms. anonymous seating around an anonymous table.

  Grandpa is standing with Boutros. they have been looking at blueprints, mission plans, or something. Grandpa seems to be getting back into the astronaut thing, here.

  “what is it u need?” says Boutros, focusing his attention on me.

  “i need u to send me back up there,” i say.

  he blinks. “where?”

  “to the space station. to Moon 2.”

  silence.

  “u want to train to be an astronaut? it’s a noble ambition but with ur health—”

  “no,” i say. “i want to go back now. i don’t want to stay here. i want to be up there.”

  “Leo…,” says my grandpa. but then he doesn’t seem to know how to follow it.

  Boutros doesn’t look sorry tho. he looks tired. “no,” he says.

  pause.

  i wait for him to add something, to qualify, to soften.

  he doesn’t.

  “just…no?” i say.

  he gives a curt nod. “just no. that’s my answer.”

  “but…”

  “u want reasons?”

  “yes.”

  he holds out his hand, taps his fingers as he counts them. “1/ it’s expensive—millions of dollars expensive; 2/ u have no training; 3/ u’re a kid & i’m not sending a kid into space; 4/ it would be a PR fucking disaster; & 5/ u’re a kid. did i mention u’re a kid?”

  “i was a kid when i was up there before,” i say.

  “that was different,” he says.

  pause.

  “listen,” says Boutros. “u want me to keep counting?” he holds out his other hand. “6/ it’s not a holiday camp up there—we need the space for astronauts, scientists, experiments; 7/…” but he has realized his mistake. his mouth closes.

  “i’m an experiment,” i say for him. “so there must be room for me.”

  Boutros raises his hands in a placating gesture. “no one’s calling u an—”

  “experiment? but it’s what i am.”

  he sighs. “Leo, look. we’re all trying our best here. but we can’t send u back up to the space station. it’s just…it’s just impossible. do u understand?”

  i turn away. i take my crutches & plant them & use them to carry myself over the floor & out of the room.

  i don’t say anything.

  that’s my answer.

  i am sitting with Libra in Orion’s room overlooking the valley. Orion is sleeping. it’s night: moonlight is reflecting on the snow of the glacier; glowing blue. clouds cover the moon, race past it, unveiling it again & again, an aperture thru the dark sky & into a universe of light.

  Libra & i are watching the Road Runner on her screen. it’s not even from this century & u’d think she’d have found something new by now but no. we are on a sofa that we have turned to the window, but we’re not looking out of the window; we’re looking at the vid.

  the coyote opens a box from Acme. it says BAT-MAN’S OUTFIT on it. maybe this is before Batman or before trademark law, i don’t know.

  he puts on the suit & it has wings that open out in ridged elegance on either side of him, a mask too. he looks rakish, like he might be going to a cocktail party—admittedly a strange kind of cocktail party.

  then he steps off the cliff—he wants to swoop down on the Road Runner, catch it. he folds his wings & drops, fast.

  he starts to flap his wings.

  nothing happens.

  he flaps more—desperate now. beating at the air, trying to get a degree of purchase on it.

  he keeps dropping.

  now we c sharp rocks beneath him, their triangular shapes like teeth.

  he drops…

  & then his wings catch, & he skims over the rocks & lofts up, into the sky. he folds his wings again, swooping upward, his downward fall revealed as merely the first part of a perfect arc, as he shoots up up up into the blue sky.

  he relaxes.

  he dances, on the air.

  he lifts up, hanging on it, reveling in the buoyancy, & then lets himself drop, then rises again. then he begins to fly in a leisurely way forward, slowly bringing his wings down & back, down & back, as he raises his head in a smug way, closing his eyes.

  he drifts, in a casual rhythm of wing beats, folding the air beneath himself, swish, swish, swish.

  then he hits a cliff face:

  smash.

  he sticks there for a moment.

  then he falls, & the camera pans up & over him, & we c that he is a tiny body falling into a huge, deep, exaggerated canyon.

  he dwindles.

  time seems to stretch.

  then a puff of dust, as he hits the ground, far, far below.

  “all of life,” says Libra. “just like i told u. all of life is in this.”

  “jeez,” i say. “i might go out & sit in the snow till i die. it would be less depressing than being in here.”

  she looks at me.

  pause.

  my
mouth cracks, at the side, into a smile.

  then she starts laughing, & i start laughing, & we laugh till our stomachs hurt.

  “next 1?” says Libra.

  “yes,” i say. “of course.”

  “he always gets back up again,” says Libra. “that’s life too.”

  i look at Orion. i look at her.

  now we’re not laughing.

  “i hope so,” i say.

  “open windows,” i say.

  the glass slides away, & the snow field directly outside is drawn into the room, almost; along with icy air, which rushes over my shoulders, making me shiver.

  i lower myself a little farther into the hot tub. a marvel, in 1 g. the simple miracle of being immersed in water.

  they say it’s good for us too. suspension: it takes the strain off our bones & joints. this is spring water from lower down the mountain, piped up here. they mix salt into it, to make us float even more, to make our bodies feel less dense to us. in the past it was used for astronauts who were in training, who needed to rest their muscles.

  it’s a relief actually: to hang in it for a while, in the enveloping warmth of the water, to feel some of that constant weight, that constant pull, fall away.

  i close my eyes.

  i am thinking that this is 1 of the small blessings of life on earth but then another thought chases it away, like a curtain opening, dispelling shadows: what makes this amazing is that it is something of space, here on earth.

  it is floating.

  it is weightlessness.

  the water is different on the skin but the fundamental sensation is 0 g: it’s hovering; it’s being pulled in no direction, being a still point in the universe.

  god. i miss space. a few days have passed since my conversation with Boutros & i’m still seething.

  “mind if i join u?”

  i look up. it’s Grandpa. he’s standing by the hot tub, dressed as always in boots & jeans & a button-down shirt.

  “in here?” i say.

  “yes.”

  “u’re not exactly dressed for it.”

  he shrugs. “they have plenty of clothes here,” he says. “& plenty of towels.”

  he takes off his boots. then he puts a hand down & crouches & lowers himself into the hot tub, all his clothes still on. i blow air thru my nose in amusement: ha.

  he stretches out, his arm almost going around me, almost but not quite.

  we sit there in silence for a while.

  sunlight sparkles on the snow outside. a long, long, long way away, & a long, long, long way down, smoke drifts over a forest.

  “he’s a glorified bureaucrat, u know,” says Grandpa. “Boutros. he doesn’t mean to be cruel. he’s just…trying to make the most of a difficult situation.”

  “i know,” i say. “he can still keep me here.”

  Grandpa nods.

  “i’m still a failed experiment. something to be hidden.”

  more silence.

  “how’s Comet?” i ask.

  “doing well, according to ur mother. much livelier, down there. eating properly again. running.”

  “oh,” i say. “good.” livelier down there, without me.

  “i didn’t mean…i mean, i’m sure he misses u.”

  more silence.

  then:

  “u ever hear about the discovery of the jet stream?” says Grandpa. he’s not looking at me; he’s looking out at the valley, the great sweep of it down to the hills & lowlands.

  i let my feet float up, lie my head back. “no.”

  “u know what it is?”

  i roll my eyes. “very fast channel of air, high altitude, runs west to east around the world.”

  he nods. “Japanese guy found out about it first. i forget the name. it doesn’t matter anyway. he sent pilot balloons up, from near Mount Fuji, noticed that they were moving faster than he expected. he published his results too—in a journal of meteorology. he wrote his paper in Esperanto. figured that way everyone would be able to read it.”

  “Esperanto?”

  “an invented language. the idea was that it would unite the world. simple to learn, etc. but no one ever really bothered with it. except this guy. result: no one read his paper. & no one outside Japan had any idea the jet stream existed.”

  pause.

  “so?” i say.

  “so a while later it’s WW2. the Japanese try to use the jet stream because they know about it & no one else does. they send helium balloons loaded with explosives over the Pacific to America, with the idea that they’ll land & explode here.”

  “huh.”

  “1 of them actually does explode. by accident really. it lands in Washington State, i think, somewhere in the woods. some hikers stumble on it & set it off, or some Boy Scouts, something like that. it kills a couple of people. the only fatalities on the American mainland in the war.”

  “wow,” i say.

  “anyway. the war goes on. toward the end, the Americans start to bomb Japan. we’re trying to make them surrender. my own grandfather was 1 of the bomber pilots. u know that?”

  “no.”

  “well, he was. flew a B-29. it was mostly because of him i wanted to be a pilot myself. he never dropped 1 of the nuclears, but he was part of the firebombing of Tokyo. & that’s when the jet stream comes in again. u c, our Bomber Command planned the bombing. November 1945. they worked out the altitudes, everything. 30,000 ft. they assigned targets: munitions factories, cottage industries making guns, that kind of thing. they wanted to destroy the ability of the Japanese to make sophisticated modern weapons.”

  pause.

  he takes in a lungful of mountain air.

  “but here’s the thing. the pilots go up—including my grandfather—& they fly to their designated targets & they open their bomb hatches &…the bombs miss, by miles. part of it’s the cloud cover messing with their accuracy but there’s also something weird going on with their speed. no one gets it. the instruments on the planes are saying 400, 500 miles an hour. but the bombs are landing way off target, like the planes were going 600, 700 miles an hour. none of it makes sense.”

  “it’s the jet stream,” i say.

  “yes. that’s what they eventually work out—there’s a current of air, or something like that—& it’s throwing off their calculations by a huge margin. which is 1 reason they change tactic—i mean, it’s war, there’s no time to spend months figuring out new equations, adapting the Norden bomb aimers they use. so this new guy LeMay comes in to lead the bombers & he decides they’re not going to go in at 30,000 ft.; they’re going to go in at 7,000.”

  silence.

  “&?”

  “& that’s what they do. they switch their bombs to M-69s, incendiary devices. low-altitude. they go in fast—there’s a much higher risk of flak, much higher risk of attack by enemy planes, much higher risk of being shot down—but on the other hand they can do a lot of damage, very quickly, & the Japanese fighters are waiting for them at 30,000 ft., so the Americans have the element of surprise.”

  pause.

  “they hit the major munitions factories, the cottage fabrication plants—they destroy 16 square miles of Tokyo. but a lot of Tokyo is made of wood. fires combine, create firestorms. hundreds of thousands of civilians are killed. burned to death. my grandfather would wake up screaming, & he never even saw it; he was up there in the clouds. he never really forgave himself, for what they did.”

  pause.

  “u c?” he says.

  i shake my head.

  “if the Japanese scientist had published in English, or even Japanese, everyone would have known about the jet stream. the US Air Force would have known. they’d have factored it into all their plans, from the beginning. would have known how to hit those military targets more accurately.”

  pause.

  “unintended consequences,” he says. “who could have predicted that the discovery going unnoticed could result in such tragedy for Tokyo? so many innocent civilians killed. all
because someone decided to write in Esperanto. or partly because anyway. i mean, the Americans might have decided to firebomb no matter what happened. those civilian deaths were not good for enemy morale, which was good for the Allies in the long run.”

  i sit up in the hot tub. a cloud has gone over the sun. i splash water on my face. “why do i have the feeling this is meant to relate to me?”

  he shrugs. “unintended consequences. the Company wasn’t like that Japanese scientist: the mistake they made was a moral 1, not a bad choice of language. only here’s the thing. they did something terrible, an experiment that never should have happened. but the consequence? the unintended consequence?”

  he looks at me.

  “yes?” i say.

  “the consequence was something beautiful.”

  pause.

  “the consequence was u.”

  his arm goes around me now.

  & i let it.

  “here he is,” says my mother. she is in the field in front of the house. on our screen, the world tilts & rushes at us, & then the view is down at grass level & Comet’s face fills the screen, his big shining eyes, his muzzle.

  “Comet!” i say.

  he barks back at me ecstatically, turning on the spot, then comes forward, & his tongue, huge & pink, licks the screen.

  “it’s nice to c u too, Comet,” i say. inside me is sunshine & rain, all mixed together; which is what makes things grow; i am Libra’s dome, made flesh.

  yap.

  my mother lifts the screen again & holds it at arm’s length, & i c that she’s wearing a thin sweater. there’s a clarity to the air around her, a crispness to the ranchhouse in the background, that also suggests cold. smoke is rising from the chimney into a pale blue sky & her hair is tied back & she looks…peaceful.

  weirdly, it’s quite nice to c her as well as Comet. Grandpa & i are sitting on the sofa in my room, morning painting the walls with its flat clear light. in the mountains u can almost tell the time of the day by the light; it’s not like light in space, which when it’s there is constant & colorless; here it gets thicker & warmer as the afternoon turns, goes buttery & almost liquid.

  “here,” she says. “watch.”

  she sets the screen down, & for a moment Grandpa & i are just looking at clover & blades of grass. then she picks it up again & her hand covers it, does a swiping multi-finger gesture & the picture goes black before a new view appears. now we’re looking down at the field from maybe 50 ft. up, my mother is a foreshortened figure below us & Comet is a dense patch of movement, circling her feet. the angle is wide enough that we can c the misty mountains in the distance, purple in the low, sideways, early-morning light.