The monitor hangs too high everyone says so they don't understand from here it's Mission Control Coffee at seven forty systems at seven fifty-two hands behind my back at seven fifty-eight black screen at eight Nominal The nation never sent a man like me into the dark before patience technical suspicion and standards high standards Ground level never gave me the proper perspective too many meetings too many passwords too many people standing in the aisle Three hundred kilometres should be enough Low orbit high standards Earth below me beautiful mostly Oceans excessive mountains good Europe needs cable management From up here there are no borders no property lines no arguments no one saying let's circle back For thirty seconds I loved everyone Then I remembered airport security Low orbit high standards planet structurally sound cloud cover satisfactory North America overexplaining itself Australia confident Europe still too many cables Too many cables Then sunrise crawled across the atmosphere a line of blue thin enough to lose everything beneath it everyone I knew everyone I lost every stupid argument every word I saved for later later had poor availability Maybe this is all we are one small light carrying everything we forgot to say and everything we said too much No No No Mission Control Go ahead We have a situation Describe it Plumbing Have you tried turning it off and on again? Of course that's your answer Low orbit high standards eight billion people below and from up here everyone looks reasonably well behaved From here our borders disappear our differences look small and humanity must finally understand that— Hold What? We've lost the shot The camera is working Yes Then what's wrong? Could you move slightly to your left? Why? You're blocking the camera Three hundred kilometres from everybody and I'm still standing in someone's way Better? Perfect You judging me too? Fair enough And what about those fantasies?
