The Penelope Review

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T-MINUS FIVE MINUTES TO LAUNCH

Hi baby, the scalpel whispered as it licked against angry flesh trying to find you.

I watched it in reverent silence – knees locked and hands laid flat on the operating table – in my designated spot at the Guiana Space Centre. I couldn’t see your parents. I was separated from them by a tarp. By thousands of kilometres. But I did see you.

For a few glorious moments, I saw you, James Webb.

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T-PLUS TEN MINUTES POST LAUNCH

The surgeon warned me not to break sterile field as I pressed my face up against the monitor in mission control. 

You emerged swaddled by molten metal. Stained with blood. Soaked in your amnion of liquid nitrogen.

Left engine – check. 

Right lung – check.

At the union of water and gasoline, emitting aftershocks that knocked me off my feet, was you. James Webb. With the roar of the rocket reverberating in my ears, and the ground shaking at lift-off, I opened my eyes as wide as I could. 

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T-PLUS THIRTY MINUTES POST LAUNCH

The surgeon laid you out, belly against her arm. Mission control, say ‘hi’ to bub.

The surgeons were the rocket ships who carried you into orbit and I was the circuity that disengaged the payload. With trembling hands, I took the scissors and bit into the fleshy, sinewy cord that tied you to Earth.

Through the lens of the camera – through my hazy, dehydrated vision – we watched you stretch out to catch the sunlight. Your eyes opened. Your limbs thrashed. Your solar panels extended.

And you drifted out of reach of the Earth’s gravity. 

Palms wide, you reached towards a universe that held its arms out for you in expectant embrace. You are made of stardust, James Webb. You are meant to fly.

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T-PLUS THIRTY DAYS POST LAUNCH

Mission control will guide your voyage. They will sing to you. They will be there for your first steps – 344 single-point failures – as you stagger to your feet and dance a million miles away.

Your makers will be waiting on tenterhooks for your first word. Just like the world waited for the first glimpse into deep space that you gave us.

I will not be privy to your first word, or your first steps, James Webb. No one in that room, least of all you, will remember me. After all, there’s no longer any use for circuitry that has deployed the payload. 

But, as I continue along my orbit, I will think of you. 

I will think of you as you beam back images of deep space. You will image, in infrared, the thundering rivers of energy and matter that make up the universe. 

You will photograph nebulas – celestial nurseries – and I will think of that howl that brought the first breath.

You will photograph galaxies – colliding and cleaving – and I will think of ragged flesh leaking blood over the lip of the table.

You will photograph the Pillars of Creation – where the stars claw their way into existence through clouds of gas – and I will think of what I would have whispered to you if you had not usurped all the air in that operating theatre.

I would have told you a story of a supernova. 

Somewhere, sometime, there was a star that blew itself inside-out in order to seed you. 

If you are truly a time machine, seeing all the light from the past, then I hope you see that star’s blistering death. When you do, tell me what it’s like. But I already know that it can’t compare to what it was like watching you born. 

May your mission be successful, James Webb. May your life be long and happy.