Luke squinted into the darkness and identified his old friend, Orion. There was the hunter’s belt, his broad shoulders, his knees. There were his club and shield, though to Luke, the armaments appeared more like a bow just after release. As his eyes repeatedly traced the points of light—what the ancients believed were pinholes in the firmament—he saw more details: Orion’s matted hair; the sinews of his taut, lean arms; the creases and furs of his pelt; his cruel, heartbroken eyes, as clear and sharp as glass. Luke could see his life, too: Orion the bastard prince, who walked across the Aegean Sea; Orion the libidinous drunk, who raped Princess Merope; Orion the blind, his eyes gouged out by Merope’s father.

Reflexively, Luke turned, trying to find Perseus, but of course, Orion followed him. Lost in these myths, he had forgotten his own kind of blindness. No matter which way he turned his head, there would be nothing but darkness and Orion at its center, forever watching the course of his arrow flying ever deeper into oblivion.

Lowering the little plastic canister, Luke blinked and readjusted his eyes to Earth. Incandescent white smog hid the sky and chewed the tall buildings. Skeletal, gray grass pried open cracks in the asphalt schoolyard. Luke’s cart of stars, his universe on wheels, stood glumly to his left, its plastic rack arrayed with little plastic caps labeled Sagittarius, Scorpius, Ursa Major (and separately, Big Dipper), and the black plastic canisters to which they attached. His young students, enjoying a class outside in spite of their clumsy respirator masks, stood with their heads craned back, looking up into the cylinders. Two or three giggled and prodded each other, bored now with gazing at fake stars.

The instruments, gayly dubbed “Can-Stellations,” were simple viewing devices perforated on either end: one hole at the bottom of the canister, through which one could look, and several more holes in the replaceable cap, perforated in the pattern of an asterism or constellation. By pointing the device into a source of light, one could observe a simulacrum of the celestial bodies. The Can-Stellations had been an essential tool for Astronomy classes for almost twenty years now, since even before the last direct observation of Sirius from the Earth’s surface. Luke had spent his year’s savings to attend the sighting on an auspicious day when unseasonal winds blown inland by converging hurricanes had cleared the smog long enough to see, as if through a screen, the ruins of the night sky. Only Sirius and Venus were visible. The emotional atmosphere, like the physical one, was contaminated with residue. Luke experienced none of the excitement he had at the eclipse parties and shuttle launches to which his mother brought him long ago. What he felt upon his last glimpse of Sirius—from Earth, the second-brightest star after our own Sun—reminded him more of her funeral.

Luke removed the Orion lens from his viewfinder, and returned it to the cart so the children could use it. Who was he to be sniffling about the fall of the stars? At least he had seen them with his own eyes. His young pupils never would. Even so, they didn’t seem to suffer for it. A world without a sky was as natural to them as a world without glaciers had been to himself. Stars and telescopes, like sextants and sailboats, like campfires, lawnmowers, convertibles, and outdoor swimming pools, were history. It was a simple matter of perspective. Luke and his students saw the same dying world from distinct vantages. The children, who could not even see the top of their school building through the haze enveloping them, had never had to mourn the Earth’s lost treasures. Their unlucky teacher, however, was part of the generation which had seen the universe go up in smoke. An astronomer in an age without stars, he coveted his students’ ignorance.

Parallax: Luke projected the ancient word on the classroom wall once they had returned. This was a difficult lesson for them, but one upon which he insisted teaching. To demonstrate, he hung a model Earth from the classroom ceiling. It was green and blue: an ostentatious antique.

“Look at me,” he said, standing against the wall and ignoring the glare of the projector in his eyes. “I am standing on one side of the Earth. Now go to the other corner of the room.” The children wove around their desks as they migrated from one side of the classroom to the other. “You’ll see me on its other side, even though I haven’t moved.”

Parallax: It was the theory by which the ancients had first measured the Earth’s distance to the stars and to other planets. The stars, Luke explained before the yawning, furrowing faces of his disciples, were not only used for determining one’s place in the world. Once, they had taught us the location of the world itself within the unbounded reaches of the universe. Without them, the Earth itself was lost like a ship in fog—like Orion, staggering over the stubborn Aegean waves, blinded for his rapacity.

But perhaps Luke had read the story wrong. Led to the horizon by the demigod Cedalion, Orion had begged Helios, the Sun god, to restore his vision. Incorrigible Orion sought revenge and found death. But all the same, he was laid to rest in the heavens, the very stars a tribute to his strength, insufficient though it was. Luke considered that this might be the fate and legacy of his own world: to disappear and be reborn amongst the stars. He had no reason to envy his students, after all. His eyes had drunk the light of Polaris, Mars, the hazy mane of Leo. The light of the gods had reached across the universe to touch his face. They called to him as they had called to his own mother, who had believed that our species’ legacy was not here on Earth, where dust comes to life effortlessly, carelessly—but amongst distant stars burning in a vacuum. She had been among those who designed the only escape craft, and though they had crashed in the Acropolis of derelict satellites and space stations crowning the Earthly kingdoms, the optimism of her endeavor continued to assure Luke even now that something more than their refuse would outlive them. It touched him to recall how she had cheered as her colleagues fired the rockets like arrows into space, seeking the heart of the immortal abyss, where they were destined, Luke was sure, to pierce holes in the firmament.

– Jonathan Howard Sonnenberg

Note: “The Parallax of Orion” was published in Progenitor Volume 60 (print and online).