In the summer of 2019, I was visiting Bir, helping out at Hillhacks. It’s great fun - you talk tech, art and policy in the day, and sit next to a campfire in the night, perhaps with some peppered-up rice mead.
One night, while lying alone in the grass, next to a campfire that I was failing to ignite, I noticed a bright dot in the sky, moving across the horizon.
I was a big airplane nerd at this point in life. I knew this was no airplane. The color was wrong. This light was too bright. There was no blink. There were no trails. The lights were too high up for the elevation I was at. Maybe military jets? Unlikely.
I was also a budding space nerd. Perhaps this was a satellite – I hadn’t seen one yet, but I knew that in the right place at the right time, you could see satellites – as their solar panels reflect sunlight back to earth. Maybe this is me witnessing my first satellite.
Tidbit: The correct time is just after sunset, or just before sunrise. The correct place is a place with very little light pollution.
It only took me 5 seconds to go through all those thoughts—when I noticed another bright dot following the first dot. Then another. Then another.
Within 30 seconds, there were 20+ bright dots channelling across the sky. In a perfect line with perfectly even spacing.
This is it. I am here. It’s happening. The world is going to be different from this moment. Everything we knew is going to change. Everything we care about is going to be different. Humanity’s next adventure starts now, and I am here for it.
I go to google news straight up, expecting this to be the first story. Nothing.
Ok, this has just happened, maybe under a minute ago. Give people a chance to write it first, and then for Google News to pick it up.
But Twitter is instant news, isn’t it? I go to Twitter, and search ‘ALIENS’. Nothing.
WTF?
I search ‘Sky’. Nothing.
I search ‘Space’.
Something.
SpaceX launches 60 Starlink satellites, begins constellation buildout
Fuck you Elon.
This was written as a writing exercise at IndieWebClub Blr. The original title, as per the prompt, was My Impossible Bucket List, but I got distracted with telling this story in my first item titled ‘Witness first contact with Aliens’.