Morning

This night was like the others in the wrong time zone: sleep flayed from the night leaving islands of grotesque dreams. Naturally I was rag tired when it was time to get started—I think I remember a few of the morning readings, but things don’t stick well at that hour.

The sky over Geneva was high clouds, and the Alps beyond were outlined in red and yellow with their valleys illumined in faint blue haze. The sun rose behind the clouds so the mountains weren’t glared into flat monochrome, and the textured vision lasted for a long time.

The conversation over breakfast with colleagues was mostly of all the things we need to fix and how to arrange them with least risk (repressurizing the beam pipe and then pumping it down again later adds 6 weeks to the schedule), but my eyes kept straying to the morning mountains.

Now I sit at the window trying to fit sensor positions and watching hour-old webs of contrails sweep swiftly overhead. One of the contrails must be over half a mile wide—a grand signature of “I was here” written on the sky. It is an impressive lattice, but it must be perpetually renewed and in the end the human work leaves behind what was there before—the simple mystery of the air.