Disclaimer: The following is a fictional #story written by me. While the mentioned figures and some of the concepts are real, the text takes on literary and fictional creativity in anachronistically weaving together such figures, historical and contemporary concepts.

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Have you ever heard of Kessler Syndrome? The orbital chaos scenario is credited to Donald Kessler in 1978. However, this story dates back all the way to the 17th century, with Franz Kessler, an alchemist and inventor during the Roman Empire.

Back when he was still a sane person, Franz Kessler was working on his new invention, the Rotierende Lampe — literally "revolving lamp" — with his associates, Daniel Stolz von Stolzenberg and Michael Mayer, both alchemists from the lands of Bohemia, as well as Heinrich Khunrath, another prominent alchemist who traveled 500 km to Cologne — his soon-to-be deathbed — invited by Kessler himself.

The enormous apparatus consisted of several oil lamps clumped together, strapped to a large water wheel. The rotation allowed Kessler to transmit messages through light, but that was only part of the experiment. Kessler and his associates were also trying to discover the Sechsteselemente, an unknown element they thought to complete the five already known: fire, water, earth, air, and ether.

Kessler was so excited that day, feeling that they were going to finally discover something. He spun the wheel very, very fast, so much so that he startled Stolzberg, who shouted “Kessler, fürsicht!”.

Stolzberg’s scream was no louder than the explosion that followed: the entire wheel began to glow hot as it accelerated, startling the team. Knocked to the ground and dazed, they slowly got up, finding something they had never seen in their lives: a rift had just opened where the apparatus had been. The lamps were gone, and so was the entire wheel. The rift, floating in the air, resembled a large lens, distorting the light as they looked through it.

They looked at each other, fear giving way to curiosity, until Kessler decided to approach the thing. He walked around it, carefully observing how strange it was. He couldn't help but notice how his body reacted to its proximity, as something inside him told him to try to "enter".

"Das sechste Element ist im Inneren" (the sixth element is inside), Kessler said to his associates before walking towards it. As soon as his body touched the rift, he disappeared in a puff of light. The remaining alchemists were too afraid to do the same, despite their insatiable curiosity.

A few minutes passed, and Stolzenberg was beginning to feel the need to enter the rift, "maybe Kessler needs help", he thought. Before he could even think about starting to walk towards it, another puff of light appeared, bringing back an older and frightened Kessler, lying on the ground. The associates were able to recognize him, but they noticed how Kessler had aged several years. Kessler tried to speak, stuttering with fear.

Stolzenberg approached to help him up, noticing how Kessler was truly overcome by a very deep fear, a fear so intense that they had never felt it before, so he tried his best to calm him down. Words began to come out of Kessler's mouth, but many of them were completely unfamiliar words, as if Kessler was speaking another language: "Satellit", "Computer", "Internet", "Drohnen", "Quantenalgorithmen"... The team began to ask him what each of these words meant, but there was too much to explain.

They came to the unquestionable conclusion that Kessler had gone mad. Their attitude towards Kessler did not help Kessler recover from his unconscious time travel, as he began to become even more insane, realizing how all those years — which had happened in mere minutes — had made him so distant from his original reality, from his experiments, from his associates.

Suddenly, Kessler snapped and shouted in English, “The world has ended”, then ran toward the rift again, quickly being consumed by the rift. Khunrath finally tried to walk toward it, only to be partially consumed when the rift itself disappeared in a final puff of light. This accident damaged part of his psyche, which would lead to his death in 1605.

Unbeknownst to them, Kessler reappeared somewhere else in Cologne, in the middle of a cornfield, far from the team. His second endeavor nearly killed him: he spent several days inside an abandoned metallic apparatus that floated in a dark veil, and all he could see was a huge blue marble, engulfed in endless fire and explosions.

Unbeknownst to Kessler, he was inside what was left of the International Space Station, abandoned in 2026, as the blue marble was the theatrical stage for the last year of human existence and arrogance, a spectacle that ended in disaster. The orbital mayhem, unfolding due to those unmanned and now abandoned satellites colliding with each other, finally brought down the grand old ISS, which, like Earth, became devoid of life just as Kessler was lucky enough to reach the rift again, returning to his 17th century.

Unfortunately for him, he became irreparably insane, as any other time traveler, before and after him, brave enough to jump through their rifts, inevitably become, when they see the dusk of the mundane future with their own eyes. They'll never be understood.