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the-meta-terran · 4 months

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I never wanted to be an astronaut.

It’s unusual, I know, for a child who admires the stars not to aspire to join them. It did not appeal to me even in my most ambitious and least realistic years. To me you are no more among the stars in a ship than a figure confined to a snow globe is among us. How would it be any more real through the window of a ship than the window of my car? I can promise the relative difference in distance is negligible. Besides, everything on Earth made me motion sick. Not a great attribute for the child of two truck drivers with one car and no babysitter. I was content to admire the stars from the ground, and I had a lot of opportunities to do so.

On one of many late-night journeys, either to or from the truck yard, I admired the busy sky. On night trips like this, regardless of season, I would crank the back window down as far as it would go and, leaning my face away from the scent of mildew and decay, search the sky. I was too carsick to sleep, and already a budding insomniac. It seemed rude anyway, encounters with Orion are precious at northern latitudes with cloudy winter skies. I tried to count the stars, wondering how far they went in scale and scope of my vision — how far could I look and still see stars and not… whatever else I see. It was so crowded that night the stars went so far that they blended into my vision.

But our trip was long, and the stars soon clouded over, and with the clouds came the usual “Meta Terran, roll up the window!” before we drove into the rain I could not see. I wondered how astronauts tolerated being confined with no fresh air. I would definitely go mad up there, I thought, as the stars disappeared behind the clouds.

A little-known barrier to interplanetary travel — astronauts have long been plagued with insomnia. Even less known is that it’s not just a circadian rhythm issue — but being outside of Earth’s magnetospheric protection. Apparently, the sunrise is not the only aurora we need to sleep.

“In space I see things that are not there. Flashes in my eye, like luminous dancing fairies, give a subtle display of light that is easy to overlook when I’m consumed by normal tasks. But in the dark confines of my sleep station, with the droopy eyelids of pending sleep, I see flashing fairies. As I drift off I wonder how many can dance on the head of an orbital pin.” — Pettit

Astronauts that leave the protection of Earth are often inundated with visual disturbances. Many didn't notice until it was pointed out, and the form of the disturbances varies. Most descriptions I’ve come across match Pettit’s. As hazy and unclear as the collective picture of these shared varied visions, one thing does remain clear — these are not hallucinations. The culprit, or among the culprits, are cosmic rays that make the optic nerve say “I have no idea what this is and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. Here, have some light.” Lights you can’t close your eyes to do not make for good sleep. This particular drawback wouldn’t have swayed me either way, for a number of reasons. I was a nocturnal child of truckers, who spent many sleepless nights similar to the one I describe.

After the windows were closed for a while I began to get carsick — sick from and sick of the car. My eyes wandered, looking for something to divert my attention away from the motion. I became fixated on the leather armrest of the door and studied the mottled leather and the dust so settled into the crevices that it had become part of it. I traced along the rest and wondered why the dust was so fused it did not come off with my touch. Why I couldn’t feel the dust or make out the individual grains like you can with the newer dust that’s whisked into the air when disturbed? And I wondered when the dust ended and the stars began.

What even are the stars? I thought. What are they called?

“Mom," I called from the backseat. "What are the stars called? The ones that are everywhere?”

“What?” She ever so slightly turned her head towards me, keeping one eye on the road.

“You know, the dots that are everywhere. Like TV static but smaller. What’s it called?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She said for probably the third time that week. “The static. You know, the tiny lights everywhere.” Duh.

“Oh, you mean floaters. It happens if you stare at lights. Stop staring at lights. They’ll go away.” She turned her attention back to the dark road and her country music. I looked around, the car was dark. Had I been staring at a light? Am I just always staring at lights? I wondered. I let it go and tried to sleep. I just wish they’d go away when I close my eyes. It’s so annoying when you’re trying to sleep and the lights won’t shut up.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned what I was seeing, what I see, are not floaters. I wish I would say it all the pieces came together in an explosive revelation. But the truth is, it was a creeping realization that started when I was sitting around bored during lockdown, looking at my last remaining blank wall and deciding to start another mural to mask the annoying static that always shows itself more on blank surfaces. Walls, paper, and the sleep side of eyelids.

I had a vague memory of reading about cosmic rays and astronauts years before and another more recent of a solar storm on the MIR station. The phenomenon became so intense to one astronaut that he went as far as to hide behind lead batteries in hopes of respite from the lights, so unable to sleep. It was insufficient. The rays penetrate the hull, the batteries, and the eyelids. But it’s not only the human eye subject to what it can’t understand. Computers and cameras see them too. Over time the pixels become distorted to reflect the chaos of the incursions. The computers can be fixed, but the camera’s vision is forever altered.

“After about a year, the images they produce look like they are covered with electronic snow.” — Pettit

Wait a second, I thought with growing suspicion. Something weird is going on here again. I must investigate.

“What’s the difference between the static we see on earth and the one astronauts see?” I asked Google.

“That is a nonsense boomer search, Meta Terran. Simplify your question, I expect better from you,” said Google in Google language.

“Okay then what is the static we see?”

“Visual snow, also known as visual static, is an uncommon neurological condition in which the affected individuals see white, black, transparent, or coloured dots across the whole visual fields. The condition is typically always present and has no known cure” said Google parroting Wikipedia.

“The fuck?!” I decided to move from questioning to interrogation. “Okay Google, tell me the difference between what you’re supposed to see and what this visual snow is.”

The following is a translation of Google’s response: “Well Meta Terran, it’s normal for many people to see some visual noise when it’s really dark, but you probably shouldn’t be seeing so much static all the time that you paint complex images on your walls to drown it out, can’t tell if it’s raining, and failed a class because the walls were too white and another because the textbook was too glossy. Probably should have been a giveaway, dummy.”

“I take the highest offence at this cosmic… injustice. So what is it though?”

“An uncommon neurological con—”

“No Google, what is it, what I see. Like, when I was a kid before I was told they were floaters, part of me just assumed it was human eyes failing to see atoms or something, like our eyes, are trying to focus but our image quality isn’t good enough, and that’s how we knew about atoms.”

Wait, then how did we know about atoms?

Nevermind.

“The science is inconclusive, but the current consensus is that it’s not a hallucination, but the retina or possibly the optical nerve directly being triggered by… something.”

“Wow, so helpful. Okay, but here’s the thing. How did people know about atoms before we could detect them if not the static? Why was it a given in so many cultures that the universe was built out of imperceivably smaller pieces, if not for the constant visual reminder that forces beyond our perception? I can’t help but wonder what else casts the shadows that lurk in the periphery of our dull human senses.”

“Plato—”

“Google, I swear if you bring up that damn pretentious, first-year philosophy-bro cave metaphor I will switch to DuckDuckGo right now. I will not abide this repetitive, western-centric take on the noumena v phenomena discourse.” As I predicted. Google had no reply. I still later switched to DuckDuckGo.

I brought the question up again when I met a friend for an afternoon walk around a park. “Hey, you know that static you see all the time, everywhere that’s really annoying?” I asked like I was confident she saw it too.

She narrowed her eyes. “...umm… sure…”

“You know, the dots that are everywhere when you focus.”

“I… I guess?” I could see her questioning herself, and I realized this might not be the thing to pull on someone who needs glasses just to find her keys.

I dropped the bit. “Turns out you’re not supposed to see it!”

Her face relaxed for a second in relief for herself before shifting into a concerned look I did not appreciate, but she redeemed herself later in the conversation.

“The thing that bothers me,” I repeated to a human this time, “is how did we decide atoms existed then?”

She considered for a moment. “It was probably other people with visual snow. They were like — yep, tiny things everywhere, beyond our senses. Really confidently. And people were like, well if they can see it, I guess.” I realized I totally could have convinced her she was supposed to see static if I were meaner. Or convinced my version of the world is the only version.

“Oh. That makes sense.”

— The Meta Terran

Sources:

Pettit, Don. Flashes of Reality. 19 April 2012. 1 November 2022.

Wikipedia. Visual Snow Syndrome via "What is the static we see". n.d. 01 November 2022.

#writing #personal essay #personal experience #visual snow #visual snow syndrome #neurodivergent #neurodiversity

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