Just for grins, I wrote this bit of speculative fiction over the weekend in honor of today’s solar eclipse.
The Eclipse Is Running Late
For some strange reason – a scheduling mix-up, or a meeting running long, or some other cosmic bureaucratic glitch – the eclipse is running late. The sun is furious and firing off solar flares in impotent rage as it awaits the tiny speck, the moon, to arrive for its moment in the sun, its five minutes of fame. This was to be a team effort. A well-orchestrated collaboration, like Lennon and McCartney or Rodgers and Hammerstein. On planet earth, clusters of humans from Mazatlán, in southwest Mexico, to Newfoundland, in eastern Canada, grow anxious, perturbed, nervous, frightened. They check their watches and smartphones, tap their feet, sigh heavily, and wonder why there is a delay. They had not planned for this. Hipsters and hippies who synced their carefully curated playlists to ensure Pink Floyd would play at just the right moment are agitated. The hoteliers, restaurateurs, bartenders and sommeliers along the path of totality, their customers, and all the AirBnB and Vrbo and bed and breakfast clients, the campers under clear blue skies, the gawkers who drove for hours and whose cars and pickup trucks and vans now line the sides of highways as they sit restless in their lawn chairs, the shop owners who closed early, the schoolchildren on playgrounds with their pinhole-camera science projects, their befuddled teachers and principals, the addled astrophysicists, the throngs of college students – all are angsty and disconcerted as the appointed time passes without the expected celestial spectacle. They fold their arms and pace and check their phones as they await the moon’s arrival across the sky, dancing in like Ginger Rogers, backward and in high heels. Any moment now, the moon will slide into view, all apologies – Sorry I’m late; the traffic was terrible! – but ready to get on with the show and erase the sunlight, to cast the earthlings’ puny strip of land into a deep purple darkness, to cause the birds to grow silent and the crickets to chirp, if only for five minutes, in the dark interregnum of the day.
Still, nothing.
The news media, with their satellite trucks crowding the streets and parking lots in Austin, Dallas, Mountain Home, Cape Girardeau, and points east, curse this disruption of their programming, frustrated by the lack of information to report. Podcasters and social media pundits and blue-check-verified influencers on Twitter (I mean X, but nobody calls it X) fling hot takes and reheated, repackaged conspiracy theories into the digital ether. Alien invasion? Deep State plot? A well-orchestrated distraction by the government? In Washington, D.C., the White House spokesperson addresses the press corps, expressing the government’s grave concern and issuing assurances that all appropriate federal agencies are investigating the matter. The head of NASA vows to get to the bottom of it, and one reporter in the gaggle asks if this could be the work of a hostile alien race. “Is Putin behind this?” asks another. The breaking news, as CNN and Fox and MSNBC all report, is that there is no news, no eclipse, as the millions staring blankly up at the blue sky along the path of totality are well aware, but the news anchors all assure viewers they are closely monitoring the situation, so please stay tuned for updates as their crews, and the crews of mid- and small-market stations, newspapers, and radio stations all along the band of totality shove microphones into the faces of eclipse gawkers-in-waiting, all wearing their NASA-approved protective eyewear (“Sir, we can’t interview you if you’re not wearing your glasses”), for their comment, their opinion, just something – anything – to fill air time or webpages or social media feeds while they wait, while we all wait, for the moon’s appearance – surely it will be any minute now – or for answers from somebody, whoever is supposed to be in charge, whoever is supposed to be accountable, as to why this great, hyped gig in the sky hasn’t happened yet, why it is not on schedule and why it is disrupting ours, and demandingly demand answers, as though the sun and the moon revolve around us.
Image: Marshall Space Flight Center employees view the August 21, 2017, solar eclipse at the center’s activities building. Photo via NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center.
