“witnessing the extinction of humanity which ruins your appetite”.

Interesting extracting light from the darkness of possible earth endings. Could also be morphed into some kind of ‘Elon’s first Mars pilgrimage, how that worked’.

The whole stark light-dark theme that pokes up in the story reminded me of something completely not related, I think.

Here goes, Several decades ago we were on one of those father-son camping trips heading up to Glacier Natl. park and other destinations, our excuse besides it would be good for us, the girls were on some international junket so naturally, we had to do something about that! On the road, as we were running out of mental gas we pulled into a dive looking motel north of Billings Montana, which by any calculation was at a lower bar than any motel 6, I mean it was essentially some double wides strung together to give the appearance of some motel look, but elevated like double wides usually are elevated. All units had one sliding window plus all had a small window opening with a tiny AC unit installed up near the ceiling, plus prefabbed steps for each unit’s plastic door. Also adding to the festive ambiance were the walls decked out with old 70’s style dark paneling, (kind of a dark on dark theme throughout), and some kind of pervasive dinge embedded in the structure much like going into a white room exposed to decades of cigarette smoke-totally yellowing every surface along with that distinctive ashtray smell. This was 1994 I believe. So the AC units were there but the functioning definition of Air Conditioning here was more like cooling the thickly polluted air coming from the humongous petrol refinery right across the highway to our west and naturally the prevailing winds…… There was going to be no escaping this shroud of implied death that would be circulating in our lungs all night long. Further, going out to the car for some treat supplies after twilight had passed revealed the extent of the refinery that operated 24/7/365, that place was so brilliantly lighted up at night that the stark light hurt the eyes enough to make me wish I was wearing shades, at night. If we were across the highway in the refinery it would easily match daylight. Weird. So the pervasive stench, weird endless noises, hissings, and other all-night continuous undertones were one of those travel experiences one never forgets, ever.

Anyway, us boys had a great camping trip hitting several national parks before returning to cow country here in the midwest.