Title: Satellite (1/1)
Author: Laurel A.
Email: [email protected]
Rating :PG
Classification: Vignette
Spoilers: Nothing specific.
Summary Webb has a quiet night of
contemplation while gazing skyward
Inspired by the tune, "Satellite" by the Dave Matthews
Band (lyrics are at the end of the piece)
Disclaimer Not mine; Webb belongs to Donald
Bellisario, et al., and really to Steven Culp as well
The song "Satellite" belongs to Dave Matthews.
Notes: This is my first Webb fic - so be gentle! : ) Special note to say that I first heard the song "Satellite" as covered by another group, rather than by the Dave Matthews Band. I found the tune on Napster (back before it was illegal) erroneously attributed to the acappella group, Rockapella (of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" fame).
He stands alone next to his car, stopped along
a dirt road in a clearing among the trees. He knows he is miles
from anyone or nything. This is the way he likes it. This is his
private time, he thinks to himself, and he relishes it.It's only
at these times, alone in the dark night that he dares allow
himself the indulgence of introspection.
Scanning the sky, he marvels at the density of the stars as
hecatches sight of the object of his visual pursuit, and aims his
binoculars skyward.
As on other nights when he comes to this spot, he is searching
forthe single thing that gives him the kind of grounding he
doesn't get n his daily life.In his profession, a sense of
security is not something afforded to him by his superiors; and
it's a luxury he knows he can ill afford for himself.
There aren't many things he can count on, but this distant twinkling light traveling alone across the sky gives him a steadiness in hisheart.And as he follows it with his binoculars he perceives his body begin to relax.
This remote beacon steadily making its way across the sky makes him feel less alone, and yet completely lonely at the same time. He wants to be up there with his celestial companion, keeping it company and giving it comfort, the way it does those things for him.He feels they are kindred spirits, he and this distant satellite.
He is surprised at the force of the sigh he releases from his lungs and he realizes how just how tired he really is. Exhausted and worn from years of stress; years of not being able to ever fully let his guard down, never being able to truly relax. Fleeting images of those years skip through his mind - eager young student with dreams of doiing important things in the world, hard working trainee with goals set, junior agent on assignment finally out in the field, full agent with increasing responsibility climbing the ladder to the top of his profession.
He remembers learning with each new assignment the sometimes not sonoble methods necessary to negotiate his way in and out of precarious situations.Using the countless facts, truths, half-truths, and often lies, about friends and enemies he had gathered or invented. He marvels at how difficult it now is to remember exactly where the facts and truths ended and the lies began; or where the friends ended and the enemies began.
Fighting to control the urge to re-play in his mind a thousand situations in an effort to decipher which was which, he wonders what it was all for. All those years of training, dedication, and loyalty to his job have netted him is this - nights spent standing alone in the dark, looking up at the sky.
Other than this nocturnal ritual he performs when he has the time,there are few constants in his life.There is his mother and a handful he thinks he can call friends.But he has no true peers, no real contemporaries, and no confidantes.
He spends most of his life on the outside looking in.Observing situations, participating only when circumstances demand it, and rarely without the insulating and isolating necessity of pretense and disguise.
He silently wonders if it's who he *is* that led him to this line of work, or if his work has turned him into this person that is now so solitary; not quite attached to the world, not completely disconnected, but orbiting just like his satellite.
He remembers how things used to be so clear, and he knows that he's beginning to feel the years catch up with him. There was a time when he was willing to forgo the questions of right and wrong that gnawed at the edges of his conscience. But he's no longer young, nor so idealistic about what he does.
Now, millions of miles traveled, countless missions under his belt, and hundreds of close calls, he knows in his heart that right and wrong, good and evil, cannot be defined.
He thinks every good deed he's accomplished might have just as easily been replaced with an evil one, perpetuated by some counterpart to himself, thousands of miles away. Or even just as easily reversed by something he put into motion himself at a later time. Each act dictated by the necessity of the moment, but canceling each other out
none the less in an unending game of one-upsmanship.He smiles a half-smile that quickly turns bitter on his face. It hits him in an instant that if there were someone who knew him intimately, they would know that his half-grin betrayed the heaviness in his heart. His heart that is weighed down with the heft of knowledge and experience he's acquired over the years. He wishes for a moment that there were someone in his life who knew him with that kind of intimacy. Someone who could know what burdens he carries.
His burdens are the secrets he keeps about the kind of information he has access to; about the way politics and power are toyed with like a game; about some of the things he's done in the name of duty. These things used to make him feel proud, like he was a better man for knowing things the rest of the world never would.
They were things meant to be hidden from the public, and they made him feel powerful and important. He used to revel in knowing them,silently lording his power over people he passed on the street, the check out girl at the supermarket, the memory of the kids who teased him on the playground as a boy, the occasional female companion.
Now they serve as a constant reminder of what separates him from the closeness and intimacy he craves. And he wonders when that changed. When relationships and human contact began to matter so much to him.
The satellite he was watching disappears from his view, lost in the treetops at the edge of the clearing. He leans against the side of his car, letting the binoculars rest on his chest supported by their neck strap, and he tilts his head back, balancing it on the roof of the car. He finds himself feeling even more alone and empty.
Meditating for a moment on that feeling, he closes his eyes to the night sky and stars that are staring down on him. A small but genuine smile plays on his lips as he realizes the irony that it's not just he who does the watching and spying, but in turn he too is watched and spied on.
It calls to his mind the feeling of control he used to have, knowing now that it was just the illusion of control. He came to the conclusion some time ago that most things are out of his hands. His contacts and access can only wield so much power. And there are those with so much more power than he.
He's given up a lot to hold the few cards of politics, espionage, and national security in his hands that he does. He fears, more than ever on this evening, that the tiny pieces of good and light in his life are gone forever. He traded them away long ago for the illusion of power he so fervently desired.
Right now he is torn. He wants to be stripped of what power he has so that he can lead a simple and unburdened life - but he also so badly wants to give in to the temptation to grasp for more power so he can remain just ahead of the game for awhile longer.
But it comes into focus for him as he reflects on his life tonight -he is one person among many who wield so much more influence than he -and in the balance of power, he will always fall shorthanded. He knows that some things are beyond nearly anyone's reach.
He opens his eyes at last, just in time to spot another satellite making it's way through the night and he thinks if only he could be up there with it, he could be free.
His job and his life are all about control. Controlling information, re-working it, manipulating it, and in turn, *using it* to manipulate and control.He's carefully studied this art - controlling the information that controls the people, which enables him to control the situation; but above all this, he has learned to control himself.
He's taught himself to keep tabs on his impulses, desires, and emotions. He's done it so many times and for so long, it's become natural to feel numb, to turn off his feelings. He tries to envision himself with out this job, with no missions to perform, no real reason to maintain those restraints.
Would he be able to release himself from those controls? With no restrictions on his emotions or impulses, what senses would awaken within him?
He takes a deep breath and hopes that he still has the capacity to revive those sensations and feelings that seem so elusive to him now.
Watching and admiring the satellite in its freedom, he knows that it's not truly free. Like him, the satellite is under tight control, it's actions and movements are always carefully orchestrated and planned. There is no spontaneity, no reacting to its basic sensory needs; emotions are not allowed for the satellite either.
He closes his eyes again, not bothering to pull the binoculars away because he wants the extra illusion of privacy. He tries to maintain the image of the unrestrained satellite as long as possible, as he imagines himself feeling that free and uninhibited.
Too soon, the illusion is broken. He puts the binoculars down and walks away from his car to stretch his legs. He wonders about other courses his life might have taken. Although, given his both of his parent's careers, he supposes that there is something to be said about "nature" over "nurture."
He's afraid it's too late for him to leave the life he's chosen. He knows what happened to the British SOE agents during World War Two - they were told it was too late. The policy of "once in, forever in" forced agents who wanted out to spend the remainder of the war in a secluded and seemingly inescapable village in Scotland. They knew too much, and were no longer fit to live as ordinary citizens
He wonders if he too is past the point of no return. Is now impossible to start over, to re-build himself? He wonders if he'll ever know a normal life. And it worries him that he's not even sure what normal means anymore, if he ever did.
Taking in a deep breath of the now chilled night air, he thinks about the all too common sleepless nights. He is almost embarrassed, even out here alone, to admit that he sometimes lays awake questioning and waffling in his loyalties.
He knows he's not always comfortable with the methods of his employers. He is in a dirty business and the way to doing he "right" thing is rarely a clear-cut path.
More often than not he has to work quickly in ambiguous and unstructured situations. There are no guidelines, just overriding directives. So far, he has been willing, or at least able, to make the sacrifices to get the job done. Sacrificing personal pleasure and preference, sacrificing individual interests for the greater
good, even sacrificing lives.
He pictures his heart and his soul, with small pieces missing.Each sacrifice has demanded the payment of a little bit of himself. And those missing pieces are eating away at the structure of who he is.
He shakes his head and thinks he's probably over dramatizing things. But, in his heart, which struggles to remain intact, he knows that each sacrifice, symbolized by those missing pieces, takes a heavy toll.
His used to pride himself on personal integrity. But tonight he is trying desperately to remember on what that integrity was based.What were his own beliefs before he was told what his values and convictions should be? What truly belonged to him, before he was molded into who he is today?
Trying not to dwell too long on any one moment, on any one act in his career, he reminds himself that he has always tried to do his job in a way that gave him some peace of mind at the end of the day. That no matter what the deed or sacrifice, he tried to at least forge some good out of it. That is what has kept him going; kept his sanity and humanity intact.
Things seemed to make so much more sense to him years ago.But he can't tell right now if it's he who has changed or the world that's been altered around him.
He shakes his head thinking that people would have thought him insane if he'd told them back in the early 1980's that someday they'd miss the Cold War.
And he thinks about Sputnik; how that small orb circling the earth every 90 minutes struck such trepidation into the hearts of so many. Sputnik marked the beginning of an era. It wasn't just a symbol of
Soviet scientific advancements, but a messenger from them to us, boasting in our predicted defeat at the hands of the enemy with it's static-y blips carrying across the miles.
Sputnik is a joke now.An antiquated technology that we now know was capable of doing nothing but orbiting and transmitting its automated blip signal.
It concerns him that he might someday, sooner than he'd like, be a joke too. Will he be considered antiquated and outdated, surpassed n necessity by technology and younger, more eager and less jaded recruits?
Part of the prospect appeals to him because on these private sojourns to the woods, he thinks about his future and wonders how he will know when to retire - if the job doesn't kill him first.But he doesn't know what it will be like to not work, to no longer be needed. He takes in his surroundings and realizes that he's walked much farther away from his car than he had intended. Finding himself in complete darkness and around a bend in the road from his vehicle, he panics for a moment.
For an instant he's tempted to reach down for his weapon. Instead he straightens his stance and shakes off the feeling of paranoia with an audible grunt and reminds himself that he is probably safer out here than in his own home and that these nights serve for him to relax.
As he finds his way in the dark, his path lit only by the stars and the Milky Way, he looks up just in time to see one more satellite disappear behind the trees.
"Goodbye," he whispers to it.
He takes a deep breath and exhales it completely before getting into his car and driving away, silently promising to the satellite to meet again, because he knows that at least for now, these satellites serve as the surrogate lovers and confidantes missing from his life, whose company he can only find on these rare quiet nights in the woods.
THE END
Check out what Sputnik sounded like as it orbited the earth in 1957:
http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/sputnik.wav
"Satellite"
Satellite in my eyes
Like a diamond in the sky
How I wonder
Satellite strung from the moon
And the world your balloon
Peeping Tom for the mother station
Winter's cold, spring erases
And the calm away by the storm is chasing
Everything good needs replacing
Look up, look down all around, hey satellite
Satellite, headlines read
Someone's secrets you've seen
Eyes and ears have been
Satellite dish in my yard
Tell me more, tell me more
Who's the king of your satellite castle?
Winter's cold, spring erases
And the calm away by the storm is chasing
Everything good needs replacing
Look up, look down all around, hey satellite
Rest high above the clouds no restrictions
Television we bounce 'round the world
And while I spend these hours
Five senses reeling,
I laugh about this weatherman's satellite eyes
Satellite in my eyes
Like a diamond in the sky
How I wonder
Satellite strung from the moon
And the world your balloon
Peeping tom for the mother station
Winter's cold, spring erases
And the calm away by the storm is chasing
Everything good needs replacing
Look up, look down all around, hey satellite
Rest high above the clouds no restrictions
Television you bounce from the world
And while I spend these hours
Five senses reeling
I laugh about this world in my satellite eyes