User blog:Garr9988/Spindrift

Chapter 1
Thousands of feet in the clear and twilit sky at hundreds of miles an hour, a large, metallic object hurtled towards the Earth below.

GREENBELT, MARYLAND - GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

A woman at her desk yawned and rubbed her eyes in an attempt to ease the aching from her blaring screen. Windows of codes, commands, and controls completely covered her computer desktop.

The man next to her glanced her way, a small headset that matched her own covering his ears. “You holdin’ up there?”

She stretched. “Barely,” she replied through a yawn. “We’ve been here all day. Thank God we’re almost done tonight.”

The man smiled and pulled a small energy drink bottle from a nearby bag and handed it to his neighbor. She thanked him and shook her head - if she downed it now she wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.

At the front of the room full of long desks topped with many, many computers, a collection of larger television screens were mounted on the wall with various images of a satellite - some were digital recreations of its exterior, some were live feeds from its multiple cameras.

“We’re reentering.” Announced a voice from the back of the room. All heads turned towards the screens up front as the live feeds of stars or rolling earth were immediately replaced with bright, flaming orange.

“Finally,” she sighed. Now she could take off her headset, lean back, maybe stretch her shoulders, and feast her eyes on something other than forest green binary on a black background.

Everyone else in the control room mimicked her as their satellite, pun unintended, rocketed towards its oblivion.

One by one, each live feed on the screens flicked from fire to snow as the cameras were destroyed by the heat or being broken apart. Soon enough, all but a few were left.

In minutes, the room was filled with applause as the satellite, now a collection of blazing metallic masses that would have looked quite beautiful, if not a bit frightening from the outside, splashed into the ocean. Instantly, a few more camera feeds cut off.

The woman high fived the man next to her, both excited for a perfectly executed reentry and the definitive signal that they could finally go home and climb in bed.

“Oh, hey, one’s still on.” Someone across the room said, diverting everyone’s attention back to the big screens.

True enough, one screen was still receiving a signal from a camera on the satellite - it was blurry, but definitely on.

Everyone watched the screen, now filled with blurry, staticy blue, which quickly gave way to black.

After a few more minutes of nothing but darkness, the woman and several others employees stood up and began to pack up their things. If she was going to be seeing nothing but black, she’d rather it be from the back of her eyelids.

As she hiked her purse over her shoulder and waved her neighbor goodbye, a loud, metallic CLANG made the whole room jump. At the same time, the camera feed turned momentarily static in a much sharper, momentary way than before. Almost like the satellite had hit something. The sea floor maybe?

Another clang, then a series of bangs of various volumes and pitches, as if it were colliding with many different things in rapid succession. That definitely wasn’t the sea floor.

“What the hell?” Her neighbor muttered, watching the screen with mouth agape.

More banging and tumbling, until finally the satellite, with one last deep and resounding CLONG, hit a stable surface. The ocean floor.

No more sound but swirling water.

The room watched the now still feed for several moments, some shaken more than others. The woman had one hand on her keyboard, ready to log off, but she was simply too stunned to press the button.

Just as she and everyone else were easing back into calmness, something small and white blipped from the left side of the screen to the right. A static line?

It darted across the screen again in the opposite direction, slightly bigger, more noticeable. Then a few more criss-crossed the screen in distinct, slightly diagonal patterns, growing larger and brighter, and blurry around the edges.

Not a static line.

The satellite’s camera was finally beginning to succumb to the heat, collisions, and deep sea pressure, its feed fading in and out of static and lessening clarity. The strange white dots swam ever closer still.

One came down from above to the center of the screen and stayed there, where it grew larger and larger every second.

Like it was getting closer.

As the other dots flew back in and surrounded the central dot, and the faint outline of something was beginning to appear below it, the feed faded to static and stayed there, a click coming from the speakers signalling that the satellite was finally, completely cut off.

“...You guys saw that too, right?” The woman’s neighbor broke the tense silence.

She stared at the static, simultaneously hoping the camera would and wouldn’t come back online.

At least she wasn’t tired anymore.