The total solar eclipse of twenty twenty-SNORE
History-making Total Solar Eclipse Was a Flop in the Eyes of Impatient Gen Alpha
One astronomer, whose sons are part of the pack of dopamine-hungry hyenas, is now planning for the future
Montréal, Québec – — Pascal Morin, 45, has always been fascinated by the stars.
Despite having a mother who frequently asked, “Whose job is space?”, a father who was suspicious of him having pictures of Carl Sagan on his bedroom walls instead of Mitsou, and brothers who cared more about hockey than the Hubble Telescope, Morin wasn’t discouraged. He earned a Physics and Astronomy degree and eventually joined the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium staff.
In 2013, when his and his wife’s children were born, he vowed to foster their interests. He entertained fantasies of his twin boys, Adélard and Amédée, morphing into mini versions of himself. He imagined a future where they’d take trips as a family to enjoy meteor showers.
Unfortunately, the twins were from a galaxy far, far away from their father’s. It became painfully clear as enthusiasm for April’s total solar eclipse reached a fever pitch.
“Pardon my corniness, but I was over the moon!” Morin tells us. “I joked with Noémie about it being more important than our wedding day. Montréal was in the zone of totality and was the only major urban centre in this zone with a perfect weather forecast! I felt abundantly blessed.”
On the morning of the eclipse, the Morin clan drove to one of the largest parks in the city. A party — dubbed the Eclipse of the Century party — was being hosted there. Thousands had descended on the greenery, and the atmosphere was electric.
“A man handed me a Jamaican patty. It was delicious, and I never learned the guy’s name.” Morin elaborates. “It was like Woodstock.”
Adélard and Amédée’s parents tried to impress the gravity of the situation upon them, but the boys remained lukewarm. Not the massive crowd, the palpable anticipation, or the gift of Caribbean pastry could sway them.
“I hoped for an attitude shift once the eclipse officially started,” confesses Morin. “We’d have a mutual experience of awe.”
As the moon gradually covered the sun, hopes dashed. The twins found themselves growing bored.
“It was so slow!” groans an exasperated Amédée, 11. “Dad had talked about it for weeks. He was so excited I asked Mom if he’d been snorting some fat lines of cocaina! She just got bitchy with me. ‘How do you know about fat lines of anything?’ and ‘Who’s been telling you about drugs?’ Blah, blah, blah!”
Amédée heaves a sigh and rolls his eyes before continuing. “We stayed in the park for hours. I did look at first, but it was the same for a million years! I took the glasses off and went back on my phone, but Dad was poking me five minutes later — ‘It’s happening, it’s happening!’. I looked again, but nothing was happening. Every time he made me take another look, it was a black spot barely moving — and I think something in the grass bit me!”
“Totality was cool — it reminded me of the portals from Avengers: Endgame,” states Adélard, 11. “But it was all done in a minute. We drove forever, and then we waited forever. Then it was cool, and then it was over. Then we were in traffic the entire way home!”
“Yeah, totality was pretty cool, but know what would’ve improved it?” Amédée counters. “Dad not crying.”
“Pascal did get misty-eyed during totality,” confirms Noémie, 44. “We were witnessing history! The beauty of it besieged him. As for the boys, well — they say empathy has to be learned, right?”
“They told me to stop simping for the eclipse.” frowns Morin. “Apart from being cruel, it didn’t even make any sense. My sons are my sons, and I love them, of course, but it won’t surprise you to hear I was disappointed. The bullying was a secondary issue, to be honest. What hurt most was the complete lack of patience for this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. The lack of reverence! A live streamer on Kick who licks toilet seats in public restrooms for money can hold their attention longer than an astronomical wonder that won’t be visible in our province again until 2106!”
“According to the twins, many of their schoolmates had similar opinions,” adds Noémie. “Totality was bussin’, but on the whole, the eclipse was too drawn-out.”
“My initial reaction to this news was incandescent rage,” Morin divulges. “It passed, though, and my Scientist Brain switched on — I began researching! Of everyone who reported treasuring memories from the eclipse, only 2% qualified as Gen Alpha. 15% of elder Alphas, with a median age of 8, claimed the total solar eclipse of 2024 was mid. It is an obvious travesty. However, if our goal is to get youth to appreciate what the cosmos offers, it will be far more conducive to try and tailor things to their tastes than to get angry at them.”
Morin’s mission now is to ensure governments of countries where the next total solar eclipse will be are going in prepared — prepared to keep tweens captivated.
“Summer 2026. These places have 2 years, 3 months, and 21 days to stick the landing,” Morin announces. “I can’t help them make the moon move any faster, but if they don’t ignore my entreaties, they can make a difference!”
Morin’s Hail Mary pass — which he insists he’d label another way because he’s been an atheist since he was younger than his sons — revolves around a prototype developed alongside Émile Daigle. Daigle, 46, is a professor of engineering and computer science who does a little hobby coding. He and Morin met while in university and briefly jammed in a band together.
“It’s a bit embarrassing!” Morin grins, not sounding embarrassed at all. “It was a Star Trek-themed band. We called ourselves Spock’s 7-Year Itch. In Star Trek lore, Vulcans get compelled to mate every 7 years, or they go mad. Or die! It’s known as Pon Farr.”
“When Pascal first mentioned the Pon Farr band to me, I suspected it was a silly project from when he was a teenager,” Noémie comments. “But no. He was 25.”
Morin has already contacted members of parliament, local event organizers, and celebrities in Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. His urgent emails implore these influential figures to invest in his and Daigle’s prototype and have it mass-produced. Once several thousand functioning devices are available, Morin wishes to have them strategically distributed. They’ll go to sites with a strong probability of attracting large numbers of eclipse tourists. Also prioritized will be those locations with a substantial percentage of kids between the ages of 2 and 13.
Morin shares a fragment of the email he wrote to Einar Þorsteinsson, the mayor of Reykjavík.
“HOW YOU CAN RAISE FUNDS TO SUPPLY ALL THE CHILDREN OF ICELAND WITH A GEN A-OK HEADSET — -
Introduce an Eclipse Tax, which you will collect during the lead-up to the total solar eclipse. Convince the public of the necessity by running personable ads, ideally featuring your children. Illustrate how the under-12s in America, Canada, and Mexico were unaffected by the rarity and significance of the 2024 eclipse. There’s no reason to believe Icelandic children will not be equally as cynical without intervention!
Auction off some of the more impressive specimens from your Phallological Museum. If you decide this measure is too extreme, specimens may be loaned temporarily to other museums for a considerable fee. I can almost guarantee there are hoards of people in Montréal who would pay to see a walrus penis in the flesh.
Appeal to prospering artists from in and around Iceland. If Björk denies she can contribute at least a million dollars to the cause, she’s a lying rat fink.”
“In the email addressed to Björk herself, I refrained from including the lying rat fink part.” Morin asserts. “I tweaked what I said depending on who was receiving the message. The core of the message went unchanged.”
The style of the prototype — the Gen A-OK — was based on the Apple Vision Pro. It’s a pair of futuristic goggles with an OLED screen, the bottom half of which is like any smartphone or TV and can display content from the internet. What’s unique is the upper half of the screen. It’s inlaid with a solar filter sheet made from black polymer.
“As with bifocal lenses, our prototype serves a dual purpose,” Morin discloses. “Those wearing the headset can safely observe an eclipse and, with access to Wifi, simultaneously absorb Tiktoks, YouTube reels, Minecraft gameplay — whatever is preferred. The Gen A-OK replicates the sensation of watching a split-screen video, subsequently putting Generation Alpha in the environment most natural to them. I’d compare it to releasing baby sea turtles into the ocean. What chaotic hyperstimulation is to us is standard fare for them. Émile and I have done our best to solve a modern problem with a modern solution, and there’s a bonus! The mass-produced Gen A-OKs need not go to waste after 2026 — they may get shipped to the myriad of nations across Africa, where yet another total solar eclipse is due on August 2, 2027! Let’s pay it forward!”
Seemingly, there you have it. The answer to saving forthcoming eclipses from the stranglehold of social media is to make them resemble social media as much as humanly possible.
“I dare you to hatch a better idea,” Morin shrugs. “I’m down to do whatever works, personally. I’m a huge simp for eclipses, after all.”
A big thanks to Andrew Rodwin for his input and verdict!
