Satellite Watching
“There’s one,” she whispered, pointing past a palm tree silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky, the water lapping gently against her shoulders.
He strained his eyes. The older he got, the harder it was. Then he spotted it: the faintest pinprick of light, silently hurrying past the emerging stars.
There had been protests, of course. Astronomers complaining about the growing problem of light streaks — a very twenty-first-century form of pollution. And the ever-present naysayers, always ready to rally against the latest disruption to how they believed things should be.
But he enjoyed watching the satellites. They reminded him of just how much the world had changed over his lifetime.
Together, they slowly drifted across the pool, tracking the satellite on its journey, the water buoying them up.
As a child in much colder, poorer times, he’d devoured science fiction, imagining futures where the edges of possibility became everyday reality. But they always felt out of reach. The stuff of tomorrow, never today.
Yet watching the satellites pass overhead, sharing a lifetime of intimacy in skin-warm pool on a sultry night, he was struck by how easy it is to miss the future that’s already here. And to become immune to the awe that it should, by rights, inspire.
The satellite passed out of sight, and in comfortable silence they drifted together, watching for the next reminder of the future that surrounded them.
Author’s Note
As you might guess, this is a short story that’s inspired by real life. My spouse and I grew up far from where we currently live, in a world where the mere possibility of skinny dipping under clear skies in a skin-warm water, while watching satellites pass overhead, was inconceivable. That this is now possible is something that constantly amazes and humbles me. And it’s a reminder that, much as we might question and push back against the technologies that are changing our lives, we live in quite unbelievable times. And that sometimes, just sometimes, this often-hidden future that we’re wrapped up in deserves a little awe and wonder.