Erasing the Trail
Dale stood in the middle of his lawn, surrounded by lawnchairs and dandelions, and looked up at the sky. The sun was beating down, cooking the small yellow flowers hiding in the cracks of the concrete. Dale’s focus was what was not in the sky overhead.
“It’s so blue today,” Dale grunted, feeling a bit of personal offense.
“It’s a very nice day,” Chloe flicked through news articles on her phone, sitting in one of the chairs under a large umbrella. A fly buzzed back and forth across her face.
“It’s wrong,” Dale’s scoff was sharp. “I haven’t seen a single trail all week. It’s not normal.”
Chloe bit the inside of her cheek, trying to gather up all her energy to be patient. She had tried this conversation before and it didn’t go well. But she felt a responsibility to try bridging the gap between them.
“It’s the new program that uses atmospheric forecasting to predict where a contrail might form. It’s just when the water vapor of a jet freezes around soot particles. It only forms when the air is super cold and humid.”
“I know what they are,” Dale interrupted. He didn’t look over at her, but at the phone in her hand. “But what’s their game? What are they trying to do to the sky?”
“The contrails trap heat,” Chloe continued, trying her best to avoid getting defensive. “Atmospheric predictive routing just tells planes to change their altitude a bit to avoid those pockets. It helps them save on fuel too.”
Dale stared at the screen as if it was a massive bug. Chloe could see his breathing get shallower, as if the information was a threat.
“So they’re not even hiding it. They’re putting it right there on the screen,” Dale murmured. His eyes were growing more frantic. He was digging even deeper.
“Dad, what are you talking about?” Chloe asked innocently.
“Don’t you see?” Dale spoke with great excitement. “They didn’t want us to connect the dots. They don’t want us to look up anymore. They’ve moved onto phase 2, making the aerosols completely invisible.”
Dale started pacing back and forth, crushing the small budding dandelions back into the ground. “They want you to think the trails are gone, but they’re just trying to misdirect us.”
“Dad, that doesn’t make sense,” Chloe sighed, dropping her phone into her lap as her hope drained out of her.
“Of course it does,” he shot back. “They’ve got a new formula to dissipate the trails before we can even see them. Or... maybe they’re not even using aerosols anymore. They’ve got tiny nanobots... that blend in with the sky. All this,” he gestured to the sky. “It’s them covering up their tracks. You can’t just use aluminum foil to block their mind-control waves. They’ve got something new.”
Chloe looked at her father’s wild eyes and then up at the sky. It was just a sky. Big and blue. Her body sank into the chair as her motivation for a conversation vanished. Her father hated the sky and there was no way she could change that.
Dale’s enthusiasm faded as he saw the wall go up in her eyes. She was shutting down again, unwilling to listen. He walked over to the rusty cooler sitting on the back stoop and pulled out a Bud Light. He wiped the condensation from the can and the drops of water on the concrete immediately started evaporating.
With a Pssht-fizz, he cracked the can open and started to drink it.
The two of them sat in silence, still unable to connect. Neither of them would change their mind, yet were forced to spend another bright, warm day together.