Peter was running late to work for the second day in a row. This never happened. Peter was a very punctual person but at the start of May, he started waking up exhausted. This exhaustion had settled so deeply into his bones that he felt heavy. There was the state of being sleepy, being tired, and being out of gas. Then there was exhaustion. Peter was experiencing exhaustion. He thought about the word exhaustion as he unlocked his Citybike from the rack in Bethesda where he lived and worked. Where he ate and slept. Where he would ride his bike and watch TV. Exhaustion; what a funny word.
A car exhaust has 4 main functions; control noise, fumigate passengers, improve engine control, and improve fuel consumption. Peter considered this and imagined himself as a car with an exhaust. If he was “exhausted” did that mean his exhaust was out of order? In a state of exhaustion, Peter would hear less noise. It took a lot to jolt him out of his own head in these spaces. Maybe his exhaust was in overdrive, alternatively. He could feel the exhaustion though; meaning, his exhaust was not fumigating anything. He was slipping into a gaseous state of dizziness. That’s what exhaustion felt like. He concluded his personal exhaust was going haywire.
Was the blockage of noise helping to improve his engine? Was the lack of fumigation making it so that he would consume higher quality fuel? How exactly did the human exhaust work? Like a pulley; he decided. When exhaust fumes enter and the noise quiets, fuel consumption and engine control quality goes up! Very unlike in a vehicle where all components work in synchronicity. Peter was not a car.
“Good morning, Peter!” Anna smiled at her boss as he entered the building.
“Good morning,” he said in her direction.
“Ah, Peter,” Bill had spotted him, “We have an issue with one of the codes for Satellite 156-2. It’s reception seems to be a bit wonky.”
“Walk with me,” Peter said as he continued to his office, listening to Bill drone on about Satellite 156-2.
“The receiver seems to be misfiring. We’re not receiving the same signals we’re transmitting and we’re worried something is off with its trajectory.”
“What was the last message you transmitted and what did you receive back?” Peter asked, entering his office space.
“It was a test transmission,” Bill explained, “We noticed reception was off so we tested it with a simple code and even that came back warped.”
“I’ll take a look,” Peter said, excusing Bill from his office.
Peter sat at his computer desk and opened the satellite program NASA used. It was a specific satellite program that only NASA employees had access to. It gave heaps of information when compared to the simple satellite apps civilians could use. Peter powered up his laptop and zeroed in on Satellite 156-2.
This was originally a test satellite itself, Peter recalled. They had Satellite 156 which was in orbit perfectly. 156-2 was its sister satellite. For the first time ever, about two weeks ago, Peter instructed a sister satellite to be sent up with the satellite they were launching. It was a test project where Peter had imagined the two satellites bouncing off each other and healing each other. He didn’t know how else to describe it. Fixing? Repairing? Healing would work just fine.
Peter lived amongst his satellites. Those were his friends. With each interaction, they would support him and encourage him. Every little satellite in orbit would mirror Peter’s work in a way where he could see it with clarity and without judgement. Satellite 156-2 seemed to be a bit of a rebel. Peter had used his own personal code to set up this satellite. It was a test code to begin with. A hypothesis.
Peter had theorized that if each Satellite had a sister satellite that followed it in orbit, healing and aiding in message transmission, that maybe something special would come back. Like mirrors. Peter had been thinking about mirrors when this idea was first launched in his head. He imagined all his outstanding satellites as space mirrors. What goes up, must come back down! What if you had two mirrors, facing each other, in orbit? This was the question Peter had, and the hypothesis that followed absolutely exhausted him.
Peter’s late wife had always warned him about placing mirrors opposite each other. She explained that the way light and energy bounces around between two mirrors creates chaos. He had always shot this idea down because of her choice to use the word “create.” Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Two mirrors could not “create” energy like that. He had ignored her warnings when setting up his sister satellite.
Peter noticed something strange in the code for 156-2. He had written the original code, and only he had access to change the original code. He had assigned coders to all other satellites but this sister satellite. This was his personal project. He opened up the software he created for the sister satellite and found the discrepancy.
About a third of the way through the code, there was an interruption. A blip. It should have meant the remaining 2/3rds of the code should have seized up. In theory, this kind of disruption would have meant the sister satellite was not responding to Earth’s gravitational pull. This was impossible.
Peter quickly combed through the rest of the code finding no more mistakes. He went back to the interruption in the code and wrote down the sequence in a notebook.
41.00.174.00
There wasn’t meant to be 0’s in the code. Not in conjunction like that. The absolute value of 0 could only be sequenced as a stand alone, or else the satellite function fails. This would explain the wonky messaging, but it didn’t explain that messages were being sent to begin with. Again, this was impossible.
The repeated 0 meant that nothing could be received from the satellite. The satellite could receive their transmission to it. This did not explain the weird messages. Peter noticed then that the intteruption in code looked very similar to coordinates on a map. Peter minimized the software screen and opened up his search engine. He typed in the code and sure enough, coordinates came up. Coordinates for New Zeal he could feel it in his body. The feeling of being very far away. From what? He wasn’t so sure. It was unsettling and thrilling at the same time. He did not plan on ever going back, seeing New Zealand as a one-stop adventure on a long list of destinations. He would not go back.
Peter thought of his trip then and some of the legends of the people of New Zealand that involved Māui. It was said that Māui had taken the great shark Māngōroa and threw him up into the sky creating the Milky Way. He hadn’t thought about that legend in a while. He considered how backwards it was in that moment. The Earth affecting the cosmos as opposed to the stars affecting the Earth. This made Peter think of his satellites; all his little Earth mirrors orbiting around the planet he called home. If his tiny space mirrors could reflect the insignificant test messages they transmitted, then why couldn’t he mirror himself back to the stars?
Maybe he could! He had never thought of this before. How the stars mirror us, and we mirror the stars. He had been so inside his satellite program he hadn’t considered it on a macro level. He considered himself a satellite and.
Peter had been to New Zealand before briefly. In his time there he had felt very insignificant. He knew he was somewhere remote andthen, orbiting around. Instead of a machine though, he was stardust. What happens when you mirror stardust? He thought of his late wife and concluded that the resulting event would be chaos. And maybe that explained the world.
Everyone was a satellite made of stardust walking around in the orbit of their lives, mirroring strangers as they went. These micro-interactions created little chaos parties here and there. And so, the world was one chaotic event after another, created by the tiny mirrors living on Earth. In the sky, there were more mirrors. Beyond that? Peter did not know. He focused on 156-2 again and realized something.
Chaos was rampant on Earth, and we were woefully out of control of it due to the interactions being so seemingly surface level. But tiny things add up to big things. Did Peter introduce chaos into space by sending up a sister satellite with Satellite 156? Surely, chaos existed in space without the aid of a silly, little human named Peter.
“Boss?” Bill said, sticking his head in the crack of the door, “Did you figure it out?”
“Yes and no,” he said, “We have two options.”
Peter explained his mirror theory and how the sister satellite must have created chaos resulting in wonky messages. Did they shut down Satellite 156-2 in order for 156 to survive without incident? Or did they continue on with this little experiment, opening up chaos portals in space just to see what sort of reception they got?
“Wow,” Bill said, “The scientist in me wants to keep her alive.”
“Me too,” Peter admitted, “But it’s an unknown variable. In space.”
“It would be negligent to leave her in orbit,” Bill concluded, and Peter nodded.
“One more day?” Peter goaded.
“One more day,” Bill agreed.
Peter sat at his laptop staring at the code for Satellite 156-2 when a feeling of deep inner peace washed over him. He wasn’t so exhausted anymore. He thought of the shark that made up the Milky Way, he thought of the sister Satellite, and he thought of his late wife. He had maybe just created new and exciting chaos in space. He didn’t know why this didn’t scare him. He figured, in the end, it would yield more answers than questions. Of course, he also knew this to be untrue of science. The more you know, the more questions you have.
Peter wondered what messages Satellite 156-2 would bring next. Either way, he felt hope. This seemingly innocent idea, born inside of his brain, had made an impact. He wasn’t sure he had ever impacted anything before. He was thinking too broadly. Did he only feel accomplished when he impacted things outside of Earth? Peter opened the trajectory software and watched as Satellite 156-2 followed behind Satellite 156. As he watched, he hoped. He hoped to find himself in the reflection of his space mirrors. Maybe then, he would feel one with the universe.
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