And So it Was
A man said to the Universe:
“Sir, I exist”!
“However,” replied the Universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”
Stephen Crane
In the beginning, the young stripling would occasionally glance at the night sky with no curiosity about what was above him. His life was hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering and fending off his predators and enemies. That dark chasm offered nothing he needed for his survival. Wearing only a blood-stained animal hide around his loins, his eyes would return to the task at hand - butchering that day’s prey.
Growing strong in body and alert in mind, he learned to domesticate animals, grow grain and toil efficiently on the fecund and abundant piece of earth he now declared as his own. No longer nomadic, his advancement offered time unto himself. He did not have to spend every waking hour struggling to survive. So, he began to create the instruments of hand and mind that would improve his work, enhance his life and bring him leisure. Tools, fire, art, music, rationale, curiosity all gradually dawned into his cosmos.
One night while seated among his cluster, the man, still dimly aware of his potential, looked upwards. This time, he gazed with curiosity at what the twinkling lights might be. Sparks from their fire? No, the sparks are too near, then vanish, these are far away and remain in place. He was thinking, he was evolving.
As he matured, the man’s curiosity grew into inspiration. He endeavored to devise a way to reach what was discernable by eye, but not in reach of his hands. He created a means by which he could measure distance and map stars and planets. And so, math, science and technology emerged slowly into existence. And he recorded it all for sons and students.
The man had become wise; the doyen within his tribe. Nonetheless, what was once curiosity had transcended into hubris. He scrutinized all that was above him as now within his dominion. He could peer into the vast darkness – count stars and give them names, identify celestial bodies and give them character. He built crafts that would take him even closer – to the illusion of his supremacy. Through the millennia, unbeknownst to him, the Universe looked back upon the human race and regarded it as nothing more than larvae toiling to survive in a puddle of brackish water.
Witnessing falling stars and soaring meteors, the man, now elderly and pedagogic, asked his community why one of those interstellar objects had never struck Earth and sent us to oblivion. God is why said those who had come to discover God. He is the kingdom, the power and the glory of all that is the Universe. He spares Earth from devastation because we are his beloved children.
This self-anointed patriarch of the people seethed with contempt believing it was a matter of his calculus, not Divinity. Garbed in embroidered robes cut from the finest textiles, he affirmed his grandeur and omnipotence over man and made known the world had become his kingdom. His wisdom was the true and only salvation of mankind. To him, such pagan idolatry was mortal rubbish. By fiat, he ostracized as enemies the believers and rewarded as disciples his followers. There would be no tolerance for any word other than his own. He believed he ruled Earth, now he must prove he ruled the Universe as well. This once humble creature had become a tyrant.
God watched patiently while the man turned away from all that He had proscribed. Men became slaves to men. He appointed the most devout followers to be his wicked minions and ordered them to bring the religious faithful under his yoke of subservience. Soldiers outnumbered scientists. Prostitutes indulged fathers and sons. The wealthy greedily consumed land, goods and capital at the expense of God’s flock. God condemned this yet set out to redeem the man. As punishment, but not eternal damnation, God set upon the land a succession of fire, storm, plague and pestilence. It was not enough to quell the man’s vanity for he did not believe this was God’s will, he believed these calamities to be of nature’s provenance. He would eradicate these scourges and blights through science, not through obedience to an unseen God. In all God had witnessed of the man and the world he had made for himself, God wondered if this was His folly. Exasperated and weary, God deliberated over the fate of the man.
After a long contemplation and much lament, God resolved that the time had come to cast final judgment unto the man. Not even the angels in Heaven would know the hour or the day. It was once written how The Revelation would come about, but God defied scripture and chose a cataclysmic event unknown to mankind. To affect the final demise, God summoned the Universe, His very creation which had no sense of obligation for the existence of the human race. The Universe would act as executioner.
The day arrived when the sun was dark from dawn to dusk. That night, the moon did not shine, the stars in Heaven began to swirl slowly. Six days and nights passed, the darkness remained, the stars spiraled faster and faster until they shaped into a funnel. The believers watched with patient anticipation for they knew the end of days was upon them, and they rejoiced in their deliverance. Through all this, the man remained awake. Loosening his tie and rolling up the sleeves of his pinpoint Oxford shirt, he calculated, measured, drew assumptions, but found no answer for what was coming to pass above him. In the pitch dark of the seventh day, the rapier tip of a swirling vortex sped down toward a helpless world, striking it with quaking force and blinding light. In his final moment on Earth, the man crumpled to his knees, wailed and wept in an impotent voice: “All that I have done for my fellow man and this world, math, science, technology, reasoning, all have forsaken me”.
And so it was; the man and Earth vanished into eternity.
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