Rolling out of bed and on shaking legs made it to the bathroom before losing my dinner. 2am time to get the deed done.
The chemo hits me harder some days more than others and the bumpy ride down on the creaking old 727 yesterday didn't help. Florida as usual was suffering from thunderstorms and the children in the cockpit found no way to avoid them.
I took the NASA tour yesterday and was as discouraged as usual. Rusting technological totem poles, empty gantries and the usual $50 dollar trinkets that anywhere, except Florida, would sell for about $10. Watching the people on the tour I was surprised most had the ability to turn on their cell phones much less understand what we, as a country have lost since the triumps of 1969. Well it's not my problem any longer. My problems are all over after tonight.
I walked down the stuffy hallway to the sauna they called an elevator and under the bare interoggation lights made it to the lobby. In my pocket was the knife I found on the beach yesterday. If the desk clerk had been awake I might even have said goodbye. Tomorrow he would claim he never saw me leave - it would be the truth, at least his version of the truth.
My legs barely supported me as I walked down the soft sand towards the launch facility. My idea was to have one last look of what had taken my life four decades earlier before I finished the job by my own hand. The fog rolling in took me by surprise. I had expected it to be cool but the fog was going to remove any chance I had of seeing the space center. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small switchblade. I had just flicked the blade open when I heard the noise. A deep humm that filled the air and drew my attention to the blue neon rectangle barely visible near the water's edge.
Curiousity, long since neutered returned and like the proverbial cat I headed towards the lights and sound.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The Beginning: September 2957
I've been told this all began in the far future. The best I've been able to discover is that it began with one old man. This is the prelude to what happened.
The old man sat in the bare room and cried. By twenty-first century humanities standards the room was bare. White marble like material formed the desk that surrounded the man, in a semi-circle while he shed his tears. The writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any science sufficiently advanced will appear to be magic." The image projected on the "desk" was that of Earth's solar system
A miniature sun, about the size of a giant beach ball, burned with a ferocity that would make one believe they could feel the heat. A small marble size rock that represented Mercury spun endless circles around the sun while tiny baseball sized planets that could only be Venus, Earth and Mars circle out past Mercury.
The tiny display was perfection itself and for a moment the man looked up as the display flickered and began again. There was a simple beauty as the planets tracked around the fiercy burning star and then the interloper appeared.
It was a planet as massive as Jupiter. It came out of the plane of the ecliptic and came crashing into the sun the effect was instantaneous as the sun leaped to greet the intruder with huge solar prominances that ended when the extra-solar planet exploded.
Mercury vanished with the suddeness of a flashbulb. Venus, a hellish world to begin with burned in an instant releasing it's mass as an orbital slag that vaporized and then the nova like blast struck Earth and Mars.
Earth burned with the intensity of a piece of charcoal as the atmosphere caught fire and the tiny oceans in the display boiled, turned to steam and then vanished leaving behind a molten iron ball. Mars suffered the same fate.
Jupiter then exploded from the heat pulse redoubling the damage throughout the solar system.
The man closed his eyes in pain from the image and remained that way for a long time.
Eventually, the soft chime of his implant reminded him that they were waiting. His eyes turned to the data displays that only he could see. There was no doubt. In less than three years the solar system would cease to exist.
"One hundred years," he said aloud. "One hundred years and now this."
his reverie was interuppted by his assistant, who quietly said, "They are waiting."
He nodded his understanding and followed the young man to the ship that would take them from Earth's moon, where the Challenger Observatory sat protected from Earth's light and noise pollution, back to the planet of his birth.
"The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction had been the catalyst for the extinction of the dinosaurs," he thought. "Would this be the event that signalled the end of humanity?"
The planetary leaders already knew something was wrong, but this was the type of event that required a personal visit. No one should receive this type of news by simple data transmission.
"Let's go home," he told his aid.
The old man sat in the bare room and cried. By twenty-first century humanities standards the room was bare. White marble like material formed the desk that surrounded the man, in a semi-circle while he shed his tears. The writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any science sufficiently advanced will appear to be magic." The image projected on the "desk" was that of Earth's solar system
A miniature sun, about the size of a giant beach ball, burned with a ferocity that would make one believe they could feel the heat. A small marble size rock that represented Mercury spun endless circles around the sun while tiny baseball sized planets that could only be Venus, Earth and Mars circle out past Mercury.
The tiny display was perfection itself and for a moment the man looked up as the display flickered and began again. There was a simple beauty as the planets tracked around the fiercy burning star and then the interloper appeared.
It was a planet as massive as Jupiter. It came out of the plane of the ecliptic and came crashing into the sun the effect was instantaneous as the sun leaped to greet the intruder with huge solar prominances that ended when the extra-solar planet exploded.
Mercury vanished with the suddeness of a flashbulb. Venus, a hellish world to begin with burned in an instant releasing it's mass as an orbital slag that vaporized and then the nova like blast struck Earth and Mars.
Earth burned with the intensity of a piece of charcoal as the atmosphere caught fire and the tiny oceans in the display boiled, turned to steam and then vanished leaving behind a molten iron ball. Mars suffered the same fate.
Jupiter then exploded from the heat pulse redoubling the damage throughout the solar system.
The man closed his eyes in pain from the image and remained that way for a long time.
Eventually, the soft chime of his implant reminded him that they were waiting. His eyes turned to the data displays that only he could see. There was no doubt. In less than three years the solar system would cease to exist.
"One hundred years," he said aloud. "One hundred years and now this."
his reverie was interuppted by his assistant, who quietly said, "They are waiting."
He nodded his understanding and followed the young man to the ship that would take them from Earth's moon, where the Challenger Observatory sat protected from Earth's light and noise pollution, back to the planet of his birth.
"The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction had been the catalyst for the extinction of the dinosaurs," he thought. "Would this be the event that signalled the end of humanity?"
The planetary leaders already knew something was wrong, but this was the type of event that required a personal visit. No one should receive this type of news by simple data transmission.
"Let's go home," he told his aid.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)