Finally, one year after the project had started, we finished uploading all of our photos to Flickr. We spent some time clicking through to make sure they were all there.
“OK,” Stewart said, “Looks good. We have taken a picture of everything.”
Someone wondered if we had a picture of Mount St. Helens, before it blew up. We did. Did we have a picture of the Appalachian Mountains, enshrouded in fog? Yes. We also had pictures of an attractive woman wearing a distressed t-shirt bearing the slogan “Maui ‘68,” a broken chair in the middle of the desert, a forest fire, and Miles Davis standing next to Ian Astbury.
“We have at least one picture of everything, ever,” Stewart said.
Everyone began cheering and congratulating each other. It had been a huge undertaking. They said it couldn’t be done! But look what humans can do, when they cooperate. Look at what people can accomplish on the internet.
Anil asked if there was a picture of the sunset from Aug. 22, 1998.
We checked.
There was not.
“There has to be,” Stewart said. “Are you sure? It’s there, it’s just tagged incorrectly.”
But no, it was not there.
“Well we’ve got the other sunsets,” Heather said. “We even have the ones from August 21st and 23rd of that year. Good enough, if you ask me.”
“Argh! We came so close, though,” Derek said.
“That was a great sunset, as I recall,” Jason said. “I think I wrote about it on my blog.”
“We’ve got all the others!” Heather said.
“Not the point, Heather,” Anil said.
“Oh, wait, I’ve got it,” Matt said. “Turns out I forgot to upload it. Sorry.”
He put the picture up and everyone took a look at it.
It was actually pretty nice.
All of this happened after we discovered the other planet.