After the party

Ten years ago. It's after the party and I'm standing on the rocky shore of Maui. Night has fallen and I can't see if the little crabs that scuttle around the rocks in daytime are still there or not. I listen to the Pacific rolling in in a slow pulse. (All week I have waged a battle beyond visual range with the person cleaning my hotel room—every night when I return I turn off the air-conditioner and open the window to let the soft warm air in and hear the waves, every day when I'm out she closes the window and turns on the air-conditioner.)

I'm standing there alone, listening to the waves, looking at the stars. The crescent moon is lying at an unaccustomed angle, apparently the Earth is round. Through the night sky a set of blinking lights: a 747 on its way to Japan, too far away to be heard. On board passengers will be trying to sleep uncomfortably in their seats, cabin crew dozing or doing the neverending chores in the pentry, flight crew monitoring the plane as it flies itself, alone in the night, high above the seemingly endless ocean. I and the plane, both alone. And the stars; one day we will go there, our lights bravely blinking in the infinity.

The next day, simulations and demonstrations: the ground water is being used up faster than it is replenished, all the Hawai‘i islands will become uninhabitable within a few generations. Indigenous species only remain on the highest peaks, where they risk extinction every day. Tourists are physically eroding the islands, we are entreated not to take away any rocks. Yet I take home the dried-up exoskeleton of one of the little scuttling crabs, telling my conscience it isn't actually a rock.

Ten years later. Perhaps the party isn't quite over yet, but the catering staff have started to carry the dishes away. For those of us who were invited to the party, that is. Most people have not been allowed to go the other end of the Earth and watch the Moon from strange angles. Probably that will be the fate for all of us now. It is unlikely that humanity will die out outright, but the great expenditures of energy will be over, the time of great physical projects is gone, humanity will have to retreat, scrimp and save.

And there will never be blinking lights sailing away into infinity.