It's been 17 years since the crash. Millions of tiny lights flash overhead, like the fireflies that used to inhabit the South and East. School children are still taught about stars, and constellations, even though no one has seen them in almost two decades. You can't make them out in the static.
There are still rumors about how it all happened. A math error, bad actors from a foreign government, an accident. All media speculation. I prefer the folk tales. Space became a haven for the wealthy. Private flights for their friends, and swarms of thousands of satellites, controlling the flow of information. So, we took it from them. Poisoned their well so to speak.
No one is saying exactly how it happened, not that it's important. It may have been more than one of us. Changed the course of a few, initiated a subtle burn. Someone hacked into the swarm, and turned them into their own demise.
Nothing, and no one, can go there anymore. People have tried. Missions have been launched to clean up the debris, but it just added to the problem. When a thousand satellites crash into a thousand more, the devastation at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour is immense. Nothing survives in low earth orbit, and the satellites at higher orbits are useless. Hard to get a signal through all that chaff. Like peering through the fog.
We don't mind though. The light show at night is kind of pretty. Occasionally you can catch a collision, flashes of yellow or white, the explosion of a thousand more shards.
The talking heads say it may be hundreds of years before it all falls to earth. No more launches, no more swarms, no more escape. They're trapped here, with us, as we read about extinct insects, and sleep through the warm winters. Waiting, for it all to come crashing down.
#shortstory #hypothetical #thoughtexercise #whatif #microfiction #flashfiction
