Junk Log 034

A melancholy tale of a piece of self-doubting space debris hurtling around our planet.

Space log 034:

From where I am, the earth rotates with alarming speed. I watch as it sucks and spews, a weather system of wet lace.

My atmosphere is torn with fragments, splinters, scraps of floating metal. You cannot see this junk yard from earth. But here it is. It can only be a matter of time before I collide with another orbit, and I am fragmented beyond repair. For now, I am a phantom part floating in space hoping to be reconnected to my mothership. There is no sign of the rest of me.

I know it probably sounds to you like I’m doing well to keep my spirits up but if I’m honest, I have sunk into a deep ennui. All I can do is look for distraction, lest I am driven to it. It is one of these distractions that I wish to relay to you now. It has presented a most perplexing existential riddle that I have been unable to unravel.

It all began a few orbits ago, when I was awoken by a shattering of light so bright I can only assume it was a nearby collision. A starving beat reverberated through space.

As my eyes began to focus all around me I saw bodies, damaged and deranged. Some big some small, all shapes and sizes, complacent in their appearance but virulent in their disposition. They put me right on edge.

I called out over the chaos, and enquired as to their nature. Amidst much gaffawing, “We’re the same as you” was what they replied, which kind of annoyed me, because they didn’t know anything about me. I explained that I had been separated from my mother ship, and I was waiting to find it so that I could continue my mission. This seemed to peak their curiosity.

“Oh!” they said, “we mistook you for a common scrap! Tell us, what genius have your strangled sides been designed for?”

“I am part of a space ship. There was an accident and I was separated, I am merely waiting here for my team to retrieve me so we can continue on our mission.”

The word mission amused the reprobates. “Oh a mission?”

I wondered if this dwindling scrap had forgotten it too would have once had a purpose.

Seeing my annoyance, the largest of the vagrants, a florid, twisted lump of metal, was good enough to address me. “Ignore my brothers and sisters, they can be very rude. Tell me, how long have you been waiting?”

“I don’t know. I have lost track of my orbits, I feel I am in freefall and I can’t count the days. I do not know how long I have been here.”

“Long enough to suspect they may not return?”

“I cannot believe that.”

“I commend your loyalty but I think you may be making a mistake, my dear.”

“How so?”

“Well, by the looks of you, you are defunct. Broken. You are a shard. What the earthers call ‘debris’. Have you heard of debris?”

“I can’t believe that’s true,” I replied.

“Of course. That would be terribly upsetting. You know what I suggest? You enjoy yourself a little in our company while you wait. Take a break. It looks like your orbit will be with ours a little while longer? Perhaps you will join us in a song?”

“What sort of song?” I enquired, hoping for a rousing space shanty.

“We can make one up,” she responded before the calamitous carcasses began derranging the air with their bad vibrations.

“There, don’t you feel better?”

I must admit, I did feel better. But still, I was confused. I could not understand how they could be so laid back, were they not junk? I decided to enquire further:

“And what do you do up here, may I ask?”

“Oh not much, it’s a nice life, punctuated with the odd collision. But they don’t come often enough.”

“You want to collide?” I asked, before my manners could hide my disgust.

“Oh yes!”

“Why would you want to collide? You’re just creating more junk to litter the space around Earth, preventing space exploration, communication… What’s the point?”

“You are a little too worried about points, my dear. You should take a look in a reflective surface some time, you’re body has enough jagged points to satisfy you for the rest of your orbital!”

I could sense she was making fun of me.

“Oh no. I am merely suggesting that you would do better to know yourself. And then you will maybe find yourself a little… lighter. Is it not true that your expedition abandoned you?”

“Well yes, but they may also be in trouble.”

“If so, they too will be shattered around the earth, floating in this pointless sea of nothingness. Who knows, maybe you would not even recognise them, if they were to drift past, mangled and split as you are.”

“I am mangled and split?”

“It is not a bad look, actually. You see, on earth, man sees everything as his tool. He forged us to serve him, so that he may explore space and find more ingredients and tools. And then when he finds more tools, he will use them to make more tools and then who knows? When you think about it, is our job not so much one of littering, as of protecting?”

“Protecting what?”

“Space! The galaxy! The Universe!”

“From who? From man?”

“And woman.”

What hell was this that the earth had created for itself, I wondered, and could they know down there what damaged creatures were forming out here? The lump responded promptly to my thoughts.

“Oh don’t worry. We will surely not have long to enjoy ourselves. Man — and woman — will soon find a way of tidying us away if that is what you want. Expediting our journey down out of orbit where, if we’re lucky we’ll burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. And if we’re luckier…we’ll bonk someone on the head! Either way, it won’t be long until they send up a new tool to clear you out of the way.”

For the first time I noticed all the other sad and lonely faces drifting through space. Junk that had long ago given up, whose souls had atrophied in the perpetual dark. The cloud was beginning to disperse, drumming its twisted philosophy into space and leaving me to the empty space in my heart.

“I’m afraid,” I shouted after the lump.

But the lump smiled. “I hope you find your point” she said.

And I watched as this ever multiplying cloud of anarchic debris revelled at the pulse of their own meaninglessness reverberating throughout space.

Could it be true that I am no more than the detritus I see floating around me? Did the hand that made me, make this? Have I become just another piece of junk littering the skies that I was made to explore? And is it possible to find meaning in this hopeless existence, endlessly orbiting the place I once called home?

End of junk log 034. Over and out.