Satellite
Chapter 1:
"I learnt something new today: the average cloud weighs, approximately, 1.1 million pounds.
And that got me thinking: how do they still float?
The solution has to do with the surface area of the cloud being much wider than the cloud is heavy, and the water particles, sometimes ice crystals, which make up the cloud, are so tiny that gravity has almost no effect on them; the cloud has virtually no fall velocity. Think of the old example of the feather and the pin – they weigh near enough the same amount, but their surface areas are drastically different, causing the feather to fall more slowly than the pin, when dropped. Birds use surface area to their advantage, stretching their wings out to glide when they get tired, like when you stop pedalling when riding down a hill on a bicycle.
An ant wouldn't perish from the fall, if it fell from an aircraft travelling at 30,000 feet.
Anyway, this got me thinking that maybe all the clouds are falling, but falling incredibly slowly.
But this thought was wrong. They aren't falling at all.
Warm air from the ground rises, the force of which is greater than the weight of the cloud being pulled down by gravity, keeping it floating instead of falling. If, on the other hand, the force of the warm air is lesser than the weight of the water particles being pulled down by gravity, it rains.
And this grew another thought into my head: do tears work in the same way? If the force of warmth from the heart is lesser than the force of sadness pushing the tears from your eyes, then you cry. If this were so, you could develop a formula to cure the world of crying sad tears. You would have to split the tears into microscopic pieces, then spread them, like butter, over an enormous surface area, while maintaining the warm air rising from your heart, somehow.
I do not understand when letters intertwine with calculations, so I'll not incorporate the math into this thought process, for lack of a better description.
I'm not sure if an illegitimate warmth would suffice, devoid of emotion, opaque; like if you ate a tonne of spicy food and gave yourself heartburn, I guess you could still cry – like when it rains in the Amazon. Just like clouds, I suspect people to carry around with them, approximately, 1.1 million pounds of tears; but most float by so effortlessly, no one would believe their masses. I also believe this to be true of clouds and people.
Clouds appear white because the light reaching our eyes is scattered evenly across the colour spectrum, making us perceive it as white. I wonder, if I could control the way light was fragmented and scattered, I could turn my stomach back to white, instead of reddened with marks. Or, at least, the perception would appear that way.
When clouds get larger, their internal water particles clump together; the sudden/gradual change of mass turns them grey. This reaction is due to the scattering of light over a much bigger area, and the thickening of the cloud makes it more difficult for the light to pass all the way through. I wonder if planes get soaked, when they fly through clouds; but even if they do, they leave soon thereafter – like people.
Satellites, like clouds before the warm air, and people, in the respect are in a constant state of falling. The Earth's orbit acts out the illusion, suspending the satellite in a constant state which resembles floating; like the warm air from its heart is greater than the weight of its tears pulling it down.
It's only falling. It has to do with the gravitational pull, or falling relatively, but I'm not at all bright, so I wouldn't be able to explain it well enough.
I always think it's strange how deserts can be unbearably hot during the daytime, yet fatally cold at night – like hearts which allow tears to fall, when you're, maybe, alone in bed at night.
Another thing I learnt today is that if someone, somehow, managed to extract all the gold from the inside of our planet, that same person could place a layer of it down over every centimetre of land of Earth, and it'd still reach up to your kneecaps. This made me immediately deduce that the sudden abundance of gold would decrease its value sharply, like saying "I love you" too much. People would walk on the gold ground and wish for grass, and propose with wedding bands made of trees.
If gold bars had hearts, they'd surely be helplessly cold; if they had tear ducts, they'd surely be overflowing, but they don't, leaving the weight of tears exponentially larger than the surface area. And they couldn't float, or fall in a floating illusion. They would just fall in the simplest possible way.
Perhaps that's how all the gold in the world became buried, so immovably so, inside of the Earth.
Perhaps it was happy before that.
If I managed to scatter the light evenly over gold and turn it white, maybe it would become lighter and grow wings, and fly into the falling orbit to 'float' forever.
There are more living organisms on a human body, like mine, than there are people on Earth. I'm sure this is true, yet surely, if it were true, would loneliness, like mine, exist, like it does? Maybe I was their 'Earth' and maybe there's gold inside of me, unreachable by any means. Maybe microscopic satellites orbited around my body, which orbited around the object of my affections, which orbited around not me. Maybe my old tears evaporate and condense in my upper atmosphere, turning into clouds – each weighing, on average, 1.1 million pounds – or rather, its weight in gold.
Do some of them regard me as a God, or am I too visible for that? Do I kill millions with every footstep, or are they safe on my bare feet inside my socks inside my shoes? Are they alive to begin with? What does it mean to live? Is it like loving, but with less warm air rising from the ground? And falling in love… Is that like falling, falling, like gold does? Or falling like a satellite?
I need to sleep soon; if I were a Southern Sea Otter, I'd utilise the skin flaps behind my forelegs as pockets, like they do, but I wouldn't carry rocks and food, like they do, I'd carry white gold and spicy food, like I would.
The astronauts who live, temporarily, on the International Space Station (falls like a satellite), strap themselves into bed when they sleep. But if they're forever falling, when they attempt to fall asleep do they ever get there? And like us here on Earth… We may feel strapped to our beds by gravity, but like the Earth itself is also falling like the ISS, which is falling like a satellite, which isn't falling the same way rain falls from a cloud when the warm air rising is lesser than the weight of its tears.
I hope you all float easily to sleep tonight, as naturally as our 1.1 million pound clouds. And I hope the warmth of your hearts is greater than the gravity pushing down the sadness of your tears. But if your sadness is greater, remember…
You don't need to scatter light differently for anyone, and you don't need to float like a satellite. And if you're already buried, like gold, remember: there are people who would do anything to rescue you, if only they knew how"
Delicate, self-concious scratch to his nose, Takuya Kanbara's sight line was filled only with a dense etching pattern, darkened with age inside the worn book. His fingertips tightened substantially, yet the bulk of pages, which guarded the sides, barely noticed the change in physical temperance, or ignored it in its entirety.
"Thank you, Takuya" A mature voice traveled between classroom chair legs invisibly; invisible as the scent of pencil lead. It rose and pulled itself apart, scattered at the sole point where natural light seered through glass, most strongly toward the insides of an uncomfortable teenager's ears, whose then relaxed as he was given permission to be seated.
Tanned skin of cheeks twisted a little in a conciously well-behaved grin, bright caramel eyes glanced around in a darting fashion, like firelies trapped in jars. Small lips giggled silently toward their friends, centred, particularly, upon the next unlucky victim having to read aloud to the class.