Day 217 - Junk Story

Junk Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Edward tried to complete forty laps every morning, but couldn’t always make it. He knew it was good for his health, but there were days where he just couldn’t find the motivation to push himself. He had good days and bad days and lazy days and lack of time days. Some days the water was too cold. Some days his muscles were too sore. And some days he just didn’t care. That was how things worked. He just didn’t care. But he would then make himself a deal. He told himself that the next day he’d make up for it by pushing himself into doing more. That didn’t happen very often, but every once in a while he actually tried. Mostly, he was happy if he completed some of the laps, most every day. Routine was its own achievement.

Edward mixed up the number of laps and the style of swimming. He knew that was important. Variation. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast. He wanted a full body workout. During his younger days he had torn his rotator cuff and shredded his left knee pretty badly trying to perform needless motor cycle stunts. He wasn’t a brave man, but he had been a foolish young man. His middle aged body was quite bitter. The water was supposed to help. The low impact exercise was supposed to work the muscles and have a gentle soothing effect on his joints. He knew it helped. He didn’t know how much, but he knew it helped.

The moon was still out. The water was cold and he could still see the moon. He wasn’t swimming any earlier, but the season was starting to shift and so the moon was still out. Soon it would be too cold to swim in the morning and Edward would have to switch to the afternoon.

There were streaks in the sky. There had been streaks in the sky for several days. Edward didn’t know what it was, but he assumed it was something burning up in the atmosphere. He had seen images of the space junk that circled the planet and had read that sometimes satellites hit other satellites creating a wide spread of new space junk. There were supposedly hundreds of thousands of bits of debris floating around in orbit, making it hard for new launches not to hit something. Edward wondered how dangerous it was for the astronauts that had to navigate the space junk. It was funny that even with infinite space mankind had somehow managed to fill it all up already.

After a few days Edward stopped noticing the space streaks. He focused on his forty laps. He pushed himself, trying to add an extra ten. His shoulders were feeling good and he was sure he could handle it. He wanted to build his cardiovascular system. He wanted to be healthier.

Most space junk ended up being relatively small. Most of it was less that a centimeter in size. Most of it would burn up in the atmosphere. Not all, but most of it anyway.

Edward pushed himself to fifty laps. He never knew what hit him.