John Nance - Orbit

His finger is over the delete button now as he thinks about all he’s written, two days of electronic scribbling for forty plus years of an unfinished, imperfect life. How many fellow humans have wished for a rewrite, he wonders. How many have wished for a chance to go back and do it all over again?

His index finger touches the delete key lightly, hovering there, waiting, knowing that if he presses it, all he’s highlighted will disappear. As if it never was. As if he’d never lived it, never married Lucy, let alone lost her, never been devastated by his son’s rejection because there will have been no son. One keystroke to do away with the lost years of obeying someone else’s flight plan of what life should be like, and suddenly the bile of resentment is rising in his throat, the recollection flooding back of the lifelong, aching feeling that something was missing from an equation that, by his dad’s book, was complete.

Two days to rewrite it all. Why not?

He pushes firmly, hearing the click, as over a hundred pages disappear into cyberspace.

Time to start over.

The limo headed for ABC’s local studios and the West Coast Good Morning America set will be ready in ten minutes, but Diana Ross is having trouble tearing herself away from her laptop. She knows she should have been sleeping, but it wasn’t possible. Deciding to shower and get put together by midnight, she’s worked the laptop ever since.

There is, she thinks , no other subject being discussed! It’s turned into an All Kip, All the Time Internet.

In New York, through Web connections, John Gambling and Don Imus and every other major radio host are shifting from backgrounders and interviews with Kip’s friends aired the day before, to open debates about sex and wifely duties and professional obligations versus time with your kids. Religious debates are raging on some of the national talk shows excoriating Dawson for accusing both Lutherans and Baptists of fostering guilt, some callers crying on the air, and a growing list of experts showing up to debate the deeper philosophical implications of a man turning away from organized religion, yet clearly embracing his Maker. Newspapers across the nation from Diana Ross’s own Washington Post and The New York Times through a galaxy of small-town papers fed by syndicates and wire services have special columns on Matt Coleman’s comments from last evening, the President’s order for NASA to launch a rescue mission, and details about an FBI raid in Tucson that netted a Vectra regional executive trying to steal the very evidence Kip Dawson revealed from space. Every electronic newspaper carrying the front pages above the fold deal with Dawson’s words and his ideas and impressions, and The New York Times has an entire transcript as a special section, as does The Wall Street Journal and USA Today . Instant books have been announced by a host of publishers in hopes of advance orders, and religious leaders from across the spectrum of faith are queuing up to enter their spin or engage in perceived damage control, the cleverest among them seeming to co-opt Kip’s views as their own, the message they’ve preached all their careers. Pastors and priests and rabbis across North America are working on special sermons and homilies and scheduling special services for Saturday, some of the more progressive dangling big-screen coverage of the NASA launch as an incentive.

Diana looks down at her coffee cup suddenly as if it’s betrayed her. She’s drained the contents without realizing it.

Look at this! The bloggers have gone mad as well!

A quick search of the advanced Google service turns up no fewer than forty-six thousand blog sites engaged in some discussion of, or use of, Kip Dawson’s name. And the number is growing by the minute.

Incredible!

She finds an unofficial estimate posted from some obscure department at the UN claiming that of the world’s six point five billion humans, fully one billion of whom have access to TV and many more to radio, that at least two billion people are following the story.

And in the United States, ABC is reporting, nearly eighty percent of the population are fully engaged, meaning an incredible number of children as well as adults.

It’s an advertiser’s wet dream! she thinks, wondering how fast the ad agencies are scrambling to figure out a way to leverage the coverage, and what the networks are charging.

On a whim, Diana types her name and that of Sharon Dawson in the search engine, startled that several hundred hits pop up instantly—as does an Instant Message from Richard DiFazio.

“You up?”

“Yes. You wanted me to do the morning shows, and they’re at seven a.m. Eastern.”

“Sorry. I was just looking at the international coverage on TV. From the BBC through Al-Jazeera to NHK in Tokyo it’s all the same thing. All Kip.”

“I’ve been seeing that.”

“Did you see the latest, Diana? About his divorce?”

“His what?”

“I just caught it on TV. He’s writing up his divorce filing. It just started.”

Kip pauses, wondering why lawyers have to use such convoluted words to say the simplest of things. Drafting his own divorce filing has been relatively easy so far, though he’s sure that it would disgust any lawyer. But there are no lawyers around Intrepid, and the process of creating a brand-new life simply has to begin with the gift of a conjugal pardon.

Once more he rereads the words, wondering if Sharon will even be alive by the time anyone actually sees what he’s composed.

To the Pima County Superior Court, Arizona:

Comes now Kip Dawson in the matter of the request for dissolution of the marriage of Kip Dawson and Sharon Summers Dawson. Due to irreconcilable differences, Kip Dawson hereby requests the court to dissolve the marriage between the petitioner and the respondent. All Petitioner’s personal property and all of Petitioner’s share of the marital community property are hereby transferred to Respondent with Petitioner’s blessing, inclusive of bank accounts, savings accounts, and all real or personal property of whatever kind wherever situated. Petitioner shall retain only his automobile, his father’s wicker chair, his filing cabinet and the contents thereof, and one half of his retirement account. Petitioner requests the immediate grant of this petition. Signed electronically and certified correct in the physical absence of any living notary at this location, I hereto affix my signature, Kip Dawson.

He adds the date and sits back, wondering if he should finalize the divorce before going out with anyone on a fantasy date in his new, re-created life.

Yeah. It would be unseemly otherwise without a final decree.

Pima County Superior Court, Arizona. In the matter of Dawson versus Dawson, Petitioner’s petition is granted in full as petitioned. By order of the court.

There! Now I’m truly free to start over.

Okay, now for the real story of my life.

I was born to a branch of the Rockefeller family and filthy rich from the get-go.

He stops, appalled by the flippant nature of the words against the truly serious intent. He backspaces to erase the sentence. This may be fun, but it’s deadly serious fun, if there is such a thing.

So, how do I want to have it start? How do I want to begin my ideal life?

Strange, he thinks. It should be so easy to figure out.

Air Force wives learn early that family dinners are uncertain events. Especially when the husband is a four-star general. Such men are married to the Air Force first, leaving the wives to feel at times like little more than mistresses with commissary privileges.