The engineer took some notes with a little pencil.
“Wait!” said the impatient billionaire. “Is this mirror going to burn up the whole planet? Don’t just ‘yes’ me on everything, really think about it: a mirror that big, reflecting the sun, facing us? I do not want to burn up the planet. I do not want to be ‘that guy.’ ”
“No, that should be okay,” said the head engineer. “We should be able to come up with a material that reflects plenty of light but not a meaningful amount of heat. Let me talk with the team.”
The engineers talked numbers and said they could probably have something up in eighteen months.
“Why not six?” asked the impatient billionaire, trying to force into his eyes the rogue, intoxicating glimmer that he knew had served him well in life so far.
Eighteen, said the engineering team.
Fine, said the impatient billionaire. If you can really guarantee eighteen months, fine.
We can, said the engineering team.
Thirty-five months and two weeks later—more than a year late and seven hundred million dollars over budget—the Mirror for Earth finally went up into the sky.
But nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end.
And in the end, the mirror was magnificent.
After a very short amount of time, the Mirror for Earth became one of those things that people couldn’t ever imagine not existing.
When people caught sight of themselves in the mirror—individually and as a species—they thought twice about how they looked doing whatever they were doing. Crime disappeared. Wars evaporated. Meanness declined dramatically.
The mirror changed everything, forever, for the better.
Besides all that, the thing was, quite simply, beautiful.
One summer night a few years later, the impatient billionaire couldn’t sleep. The air-conditioning in his master bedroom was broken, and even an impatient billionaire didn’t have a way to get an air conditioner fixed in the middle of the night without waking up a wife who was asleep in the same room.
The impatient billionaire’s mind started running through all of the projects he had in the works, none of which was going as fast as it should be—you’d think the man who put up the Mirror for Earth would attract the best and brightest and most resourceful people, but apparently not, he thought to himself.
Impatient for nothing in particular, the impatient billionaire wandered outside to his bedroom balcony and picked up a pair of binoculars that had been a gift from the head engineer, but that he had never actually used.
After a couple of minutes spent searching and focusing, he found what he thought to be himself up in the sky and made some specific gestures with his arms to confirm that he really was staring at himself, and not at one of his neighbors who might just happen to have a similar pair of pajamas and late-night impulse.
Yes, that was him.
That was him, waving widely. That was him, the little figure in red, jutting out into the endless black.
And then, after the impatient billionaire had established that it was definitely, certainly him up there in the sky, he made a few more funny gestures anyway, just for fun.
What a cool thing he had made.
Missed Connection: Grocery spill at 21st and 6th 2:30 pm on Wednesday