I Saw a UFO and Cried

A night sky odyssey over Middle Earth

I’m on a red-eye flight from Toronto to San Fran for a pitstop before venturing off to Taiwan. The plane is Air Canada and the amenities are far from the labor-class luxury of most long-haul Asian airlines I’m accustomed to.

But what is often lacking on the fancier Asian planes is space, as in, I have the whole row to uncomfortably lay my six-foot frame into an optimal broken fetal position.

Now this was proletarian practicality with a dab of maple syrup, hold the PB&T.

I found myself self-flagellating my brain for the umpteenth time again, because, as is apparently a part of my personal boarding process, I have to stand for at least 5 minutes in front of one of those overpriced gift shops and stare at a $30 (plus tax) fluffy neck pillow pondering if I should purchase it or not.

Fiscal prudence prevails. My neck pays the price.

The second-hand chairback modified tablet acting as my entertainment for the evening was also failing to keep my interest. There’s only so many bottom-of-the-barrel movies the airline can show you with half a functional earbud crackling away against the competing hum of the engine.

But at least I had my Kindle. Sapiens isn’t a light read, but it is a good one, at least until the words start blurring away as the night beckons sleep.

Layover in Polyester Paradise

And so I find myself laying down in my polyester pallet and drifting off to sleep.

I wake up somewhere over the heartland and gaze out at the breathtaking night sky, the rhythmic mechanical purr keeping me in that sweet spot between dreams and reality, or as my parents might say, my approach to adulthood.

My face pressed against the stark coldness of the double-paned windows, a reminder of all that stood between my semi-comfortable cramped space and being sucked out into the vacuous upper atmosphere only to hurtle down below.

Remembering situational alternatives is a great way to make discount too-small-for-most-north-american seats seem a lot more comfortable than they should be.

The remoteness of the airborne craft also makes shakey boiled ramen cuppa noodles attain at least 0.5 Michelin stars—and are priced accordingly.

I repeated this little nappy game a few times.

I saw a thunderstorm off in the distance. Each crash pounding the lonely city lights below in a flash of white was somehow peaceful in my little air-conditioned airborne metal lightning rod.

And off to sleep again I’d go. It’s a nice way to pass the time.

The next wakeful part of this cycle was different.

First Contact?

I hazily gazed out the window, closed and wiped my eyes, and gazed out again, eye lids at full mast.

“No fucking way.”

I found myself smiling. A thousand thoughts of all the insane mockery of recent news talking about aliens and UFOs and congressional investigations and NASA reports and real totally-honest-to-goodness alien fossils being presented in the Mexican parliament.

And yet here I was, a cold grumpy sleepy passenger peering out into the night sky with a bunch of unidentified glowing objects staring back at me.

I could almost hear the conspiracy nuts screaming at me, “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!” in the sort of dialect only they can somehow possess on the internet, in any language.

With a sense of urgency known only to under-50s, I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and started snapping away.

As quickly as I looked at my new conspiratorial vindicative treasures on my device, the realization hit me.

“Gods dammit.”

It's not aliens. It's Elon Musk.

Well, not him personally, unless he’s moonlighting as a celestial body, which is a plausible theory given his infinite narcissism. Rather, it's his Starlink satellites, up there to beam down affordable Internet and ruin my dreams of making first contact.

I’ve read about them countless times. I even swore I saw them once or twice while gazing up into the night sky.

Yet here they were, almost touchable, just outside my window orbiting the Earth like a swarm of mechanical locusts, polluting our last remaining Eden of untouched sky.

A single tear escapes my eyepod.

Not the sorrowful, heartfelt, oh my god my cat just died kind of tear. No. This was a tear of utter disappointment trickling down my cheek.

Not just because I won't be the star witness in the most epic Congressional hearing ever, but because this was our last frontier. The final space unmarred by humanity’s unending expansionism and greed.

There it is, speckled with the ambitions of one man and his shiny space toys photobombing the universe.

The magic was gone.

I recline into my makeshift bed of polyester and quiet regret, lulled by the drone of turbofan engines, and the muffled sighs of a world—and a night sky—forever changed.

At least I got to see two UFOs inside the plane, though.

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JJ Pryor

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