Star Sailor

“Do you think there’ll come a time when we won’t be able to tell the difference between stars and satellites?”

She cringed. “Varun, we have to talk about this. I’m sorry for what I said. But we have to talk.”

I thought so too. “I was out for a smoke last night when the night watchman came around. He said when you run that shift for as many years as he has, you spend a lot of time looking at the sky.”

She murmured with half-hearted, half-defeated reproach. “You shouldn’t smoke.”

I kept my eyes on the sea of stars above me and continued. “He told me about a time he saw some kid in the park at, like, four in the morning, huddled over a computer. He goes over to check it out, and the kid says he’s tracking a space station that just got launched by NASA. This is, like, ’98.”

Her voice surprised me, rising to an I-can’t-play-along-with-whatever-this-is tone. “I know this has been hard for you. But it’s been hard for everyone. You can’t just keep distancing yourself from that. It’s a global fucking pandemic, and a depression and it’s not fair… but it’s happening. At some point you have to live with that reality.”

I didn’t know how to answer. I thought maybe, if I got far enough into the story, she’d be hooked and we could talk about that instead. “So he went and got a blanket and watched with the kid for a while. Ever since, he’s kept an eye on the station, can spot it right away on any clear night.”

“When I said you didn’t care I just meant you act that way. Maybe you do care but you have to start doing stuff. Mom and Dad are struggling and they’re scared. They don’t have much and they want to help you but they need help too. Who knows how long this is gonna last- what would they do if the rent went up? What would you do?”

I still couldn’t figure out what I had done to make her say it in the first place. I wondered if our old conversations would never come back. “I didn’t even know this but he told me Elon Musk got clearance last week to launch ten thousand SpaceX satellites.”

She breathed frustration. “Look, I know you love the science stuff, and it’s important to you and you’re good at it and honestly it’s amazing. It’s what I love about you. But there are so many other things you can do with that. Practical things. I mean, you can code, you can engineer or whatever…People will pay a shit ton for that type of stuff. Sci-Fi is great and you’re passionate about it, but…” She knew how to finish but didn’t.

“I thought it moments before he said it, and it seemed so insanely obvious that I truly could not believe I hadn’t thought of it a long time ago. But I hadn’t. He put it in my head for the first time. It’s honestly almost a definite thing - it might not be in our lifetime, but there will come a point where we can’t tell the difference.”

Her words poured out faster. “You have a talent and who knows, maybe you’ll get a big break one day. But maybe you won’t. And it might not even be fair. Maybe you’ll work and work and perfect your craft and deserve it more than anyone in the world but still not get it. Who knows? If it doesn’t happen, there’s nothing you can do. I don’t want to tell you not to follow your dream. But you need money. Our family needs money. The world is forcing us to prioritize that, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

She was always passionate about climate change. “Oh, you would love this. The other thing he pointed out to me that I couldn’t believe I’d never considered was how the blue of the sky natives saw from here hundreds of years ago was a color we’ll never know. All the pollution of the last century – our blue probably isn’t even in the same ballpark. And there’s no scientific way to know what that blue really looked like. Maybe they could reconstruct the physical nature of the color or something but there’s no way to replicate what it was like looking up at it back then. We’ve talked about the whole idea of Mary’s room, right?”

“Your whole life is ahead of you! You can write any time. Why can’t you take care of reality first? I hate this. I hate that I have to be the bad guy. I hate it but I have to, because someone has to, and Mom and Dad don’t know how to talk to you. Why are you doing this to me?” Her voice finally broke and never again would I let my sister or anyone I loved feel like I let them down. She was silent for a few moments, sniffing.

For the first time, I lowered my gaze and sought hers. I could almost make out glistening silver streaks on her cheeks in the moonlight. I breathed outward, coming back to earth. “I do care.”

That was the 42nd and final conversation I had with my sister in the years after her death. The first 41 were about the book I was working on.

~

Opinion

As Varun Tarra and Big Tech Fly, America’s Wings Melt

By The Editorial Board

July 24^th, 2080

           In 2019, the late Mark Zuckerberg said “You can be unethical and still legal. That’s the way I live my life.” He spoke them as a man with his finger on the planet’s social network and the power to sway elections, compromise national security and rewrite freedom of speech laws in his company’s terms and conditions. And yet, in 2019, it was amusing. In 2019, social justice was rampant, fast-moving, and enforced, and economic prosperity was infectious. It was before two decades of pandemics and cold wars and three decades of failed reconstruction efforts and resource scarcity-fueled hot wars.

           In 2080, his words are a chilling reminder of how 21^st century human power has outpaced human ethics. Last week, Congress struck down a bill that would have allocated 30% of all American generated EOS-42 for government spending, collected in taxes from the handful of companies currently holding an oligopoly on the now dominant cryptocurrency. The legal process was barely more than a formality, with more than half of voting representatives holding shares in Varun Tarra’s SpaceSailor, the company with the deepest pockets of the country’s leading crypto. The decision effectively eliminates chances of a revamped American welfare program any time soon, and is a victory for rising entrepreneurial tech leaders hungry to take SpaceSailor’s place as the next giant company to climb above political systems. The result also deals a major blow to hopes of reviving American humanitarian aid on the global stage for the first time in thirty years, as island genocide accelerates in the rising waters of the Pacific and civil war tears through the Iberian Peninsula.

           The bill’s death comes two years after reports first surfaced concerning SpaceSailor’s keystone dream-design product, Somnifix, and the sale of user data on subconscious anxieties to marketing agencies and, most likely, foreign governments. Varun Tarra’s team of lawyers earn their paycheck by keeping investigations at bay and stunting any political progress against the continued rise of SpaceSailor. Tarra himself views their work as a necessary evil. He has often spoken of his lack of faith in the American government and has cited his company’s progressive vision for entertainment, commerce, and telecommunication.

           In many ways, his vision bears merit. Since founding SpaceSailor in 2038, he has produced the most diverse workforce, in race, gender, socioeconomics and more, to ever achieve earth-shifting corporate size. SpaceSailor’s investment in and maintenance of a global information commons has facilitated an unprecedented age of intellectual free trade in cutting edge tech developments. Had less forward-thinking monoliths from the dawn of the century stayed the course, the global reality might well be bleaker.

           And yet the redeeming qualities of Tarra’s vision are almost irrelevant points. His unchanging belief that his company and his ideals are superior has eroded justice and due process in America. Millions of lives he’ll never see have paid the price and Billions more will. Tarra is by no means the first of his kind and he will not be the last. Perhaps he holds no true belief in his vision, no hope for a better world, and his true nature is what Zuckerberg openly proclaimed to be. Perhaps, in his reality, the existence of ethics is confined to the world of PR and empty mission statements. The public, and maybe Tarra himself, will never know. The impossibility of knowing that sincerity was surely part of the thought process behind founding a nation on laws of justice, abstracted beyond any one man, religion or institution. As Tarra’s America rises, that America falls.

~

           I lingered on the last words for a few moments. Then I waved a finger to close the article, and my screen was a wall of window again, revealing the sprawling tapestry of the sky. The night was cloudless enough that it was hard to make out downtown buildings, the San Francisco electrical grid dwarfed by the glow of the stage lights above. What a display! Today’s generation is far more conscious of aesthetics than we ever were – I guess it’s their best crack at ethical capitalism. I appreciate it. I spend most of my time in my observatory room these days, it’s good to know someone’s out there trying to direct a nice show. 

           Amazon’s latest batch caught my eye, a long, curved arrow of bright green flashes arcing across the sky from East to West. The shape felt distinctly American, like a 4^th of July firework stuck in celestial fly paper. I can’t remember why they did green. Something to do with whatever their latest “sustainable initiative” was. It was a slick look, but I felt it looked silly next to what Huawei put out three years ago. Their hundred thousand GEOs traced the petals and veins of a flowering peach blossom, holding shape like synchronous dancers. It was a bit of an abstract picture, of course, and the glowing red was less an aesthetic choice than a CCP mandate, but it was really a magnificent effort.

           The StarSailor fleet looked childish in comparison. There was no sense of intentionality let alone design to the amorphous cluster other than the fact that it moved in unison and each light shone the same distinct Carolina blue. Ten years after the fact, I can only laugh at the shameless millions I shelled out to nail that color – a caricature of American surplus. Funny, for an immigrant. When I did it, I knew exactly how disgustingly inefficient it was. But I was younger then, and yet to surfeit on pointless spending. And I’ve always loved that color, dating back to way before I ever went to Chapel Hill. It felt like mine. Plus, it really did pop against the layer of smaller models behind it, which glowed a dull bronze. I don’t know why I had even considered the fleet’s color in the first place. Surely even then I knew that its light would be drowned by that of bigger satellites in a matter of years. 

           I didn’t look back when I heard the door slide open behind me but I recognized the light step and bright clean smell of my granddaughter. 

           “Hi Dadu!” It was an uncomfortable word for her deeply American voice, but she knew I liked it, so she spoke it with earnest that touched me every time. In a way, it was a ritual for ritual’s sake to us both. I kept little of India, save a few old words and a chain around my neck.

           “Howdy space cowboy.” Her face scrunched, half grin half grimace. At eleven years old she simultaneously loved and hated sappy nicknames.

           “Let me get tea.” She set down her backpack by the coffee table in front of me and pattered off. She wouldn’t bring it to my attention, but I spotted a perfect score peeking out from the stack of papers within. I couldn’t tell which subject it was but it could have been any of them. She was omnicurious, and it made her the sweetest conversation partner. Whatever you wanted to talk about, she would engage with. She was like her great aunt that way. She returned quickly, poured the tea, and sat with me in silence for a while. She dangled her feet, which were well short of the ground when she sat, and tilted her head, which were her two big tells for wanting to say something but debating whether it was sayable.

           “I’m sorry about the article.”

           I smiled, still looking out the window. There were less and less things that I read which she didn’t. “Why?”

           She paused for a beat, unsure. “I didn’t really understand it. Well, not all of it. But I think it was mean.”

           “Sometimes mean things can be truthful, though.” I could feel her eyes fixed on me, overthinking the science behind how adults communicate with vague sentences.

           “Was this one being truthful?”

           “I’ve made some mistakes. So, in a way, yes.” I looked at her, smiling.

           She was silent for a long time, but not confused. “I can’t think of any mistake you’ve made.” She wasn’t sure if she was lying or not.

           “If I tell you one, will you promise to remember?” She nodded. I turned to the window and closed my eyes. “Before she died, my sister, your great aunt, once told me that you always have a choice - you can spend your life either showing the universe how great you are, or exploring how great the universe is.” I opened my tearing eyes and stared directly at the cluster of bright blue lights. “I think I forgot that at times. Promise me you won’t.”

           “I won’t.”

That was the 4,200th and final conversation I had with my granddaughter before my death. The first 4,399 were about the wrong things.