It was late and the hotel was still surrounded by a huge number of vehicles, some official, some news, a few from fans who somehow managed to receive a special permit to be there. Multiple TV trucks lined up in the front. They were all covering the take-off and although it was already late into the night their cameras and lighting were still set-up, some still rolling as a few lonely late night correspondents delivered their run downs of day’s events. Some were live presenters while other networks opted for a hologram. (He never understood the needed to record a hologram in real environment as if they couldn’t just superimpose the hologram over the background plate.) The past four days were a media maraton for everyone on the crew. The news agencies rented multiple rooms on the twelfth floor of the hotel and set up their interview spaces there. Like sheep herded into the pans for shearing, they all went into one room after another almost universally asked the same set of questions. With time they struggled to answer the memorised formulas with any conviction. He wondered if those interviewers knew, or even care how unoriginal their questions were. One of the interviewers grimacing at the questions confining that she’s not in charge – the questions were all pre-determined by the machine running the network computing the most obvious questions all the network’s viewers might want to ask. Yet the machine never considered that all other networks using similar algorithms reach the exactly same conclusions thus also asking the very same questions across all networks. This creates a cacophony of sameness where one channel repeats another. “Why are you going?”, “What do you hope to find on the planet?”, “Do you think we have anything to fear from the Aliens?” (The networks barely used the official term: the Others, even though within the Agency we only refer to them as such. “Aliens” implied both the others but also created possibility of confrontation and networks love a good fight.).

Sometimes smaller networks and media outlets slipped through the cracks of the machine that grants access and those would usually ask more original questions. Not really because people working at those small unaffiliated medias were more unique but rather because often they had no direct access to the omnipresent commanding force of the machine. The questions made them stop their internal autopilot and answer both with genuinity but also certain fear as all the sudden they were outside of parameters of comfort. They were so media managed that answers to questions unrehearsed ahead of time seemed false even though those answers were the most genuine. Sometimes he caught himself laughing at the internal desire for perfection and general inability to accept personal humanity. He represented a system that appears perfect only through its own manipulation of its image. He encountered another system – the news media – that also strives for perfection though fiction. In those seemingly valiant struggles for excellence something profound was lost: everyone have become afraid of being outside of the machine’s directive. Each action was meticulously calculated – not only by the the system but also by themselves. This resulted in their inaction due to overwhelming number of forces to consider for a full analysis. This passivity created a spiritual longing for grand ideas that didn’t need this complex vetting. Those ideas were outside personal questioning. Paradoxically, the validity of the idea wasn’t considered anymore, it was the size of the following – number of people subscribing to the idea – that gave it its validity. And thus searching for a perfection they’ve reached an irrationality. The media thus had to deal with this irrationality by adjusting their algorithms. Those adjusted algorithms produced questions that normally would be considered not only irrational but downright mad. Sprinkled among that avalanche of obvious questions that they were asked over and over were such gems as “name top 3 reasons to travel” (as if they were producing a brochure for travel destinations); or “describe what you expect to see” (as if they’ve already gone and saw)… They were forced to indulge those because, as they were told, this was what people really want. And so he played his part, internally cringing at the mass’ platitude and the interviewer’s acceptance of the status quo, quietly counting off the days that he could leave forever severing any links to the crowd of the stupid, uninformed, bland, uninspired and self-centered (yet absolutely devoid of any personal understanding). His contempt for people grew and yet, in a strange twist, he also needed those people. If not for a concept of humanity, he wouldn’t sacrifice his life. He needed to believe in the people – that deep down they are worthy beings. He needed to love them for his sacrifice to make sense.

He knew much of the memories will be wiped during prolonged sleep and yet he wanted to be among people who in some way are oblivious to the takeoff. There was a train station near the hotel and he headed there. He was collecting scraps of memories to fill his mind with textures – not specific memories that he know will be lost but patterns of feelings. Those memories will exist only until tomorrow’s take off and then will be wiped from history. The trivial nature of this moment elevated the melancholy that made him enjoy this brevity of relaxation that much more. None of what he’s experiencing now will have much meaning and this made the situation that much more worthy.