SRF Heavy Industries

This one time a flaming yellow snarling thing came down out of the sky and quenched itself in the e. colerific river I can see from the fire escape. When it hit, there wasn’t the big buckets of steam I was expecting — just the “splunk” of dropping a huge rock into a bucket of water and the return to what counts as darkness in this city.

The snarling kept going for a while but I don’t remember when it stopped, or why. In fact it just seemed associated, really. I don’t know anymore. A hundred years of Hollywood has taught us that all spectacles need sound effects.

I stared for a while at the hole in the water where there should have been a hole in the water, if you take my meaning. And then I put out my cigarette and climbed back inside.

What the hell. Was it a meteorite? Something that fell off a plane? Some space junk? And what do you do about it? Call 911? Call a couple of friends and see if the usual suspects of drunks and stoners know anything about it? In the cheesy science fiction movies, some housewife in curlers calls the university or the mysterious research lab on the edge of town that was probably to blame to begin with.

The only university I’ve ever had a connection with made it plain they never wanted to hear from me again, and the mysterious labs on the edge of town are all preoccupied with meth and whatever the latest new thing is. I don’t call those numbers anymore and I break the fingers of people at those numbers who call me. The cops and I have a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

I opened a bottle of beer and poured it down the sink, which is what I do these days instead of drinking it. I don’t do that very often, but what else can you do when the moment calls for a drink and you don’t drink anymore?

I rinsed out the bottle, turned out the light in the kitchen, sat down on the sofa, and decided that if it was important, it would eventually be in the news. And then I forgot all about it.

We see a zillion things a day that are more important, maybe less of a spectacle, and don’t do anything with it because we just don’t have the tools in our heads to process, to do anything with what we saw, to make a connection.

What can you do?

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