October 24, 2009

God is an Astronaut

Music in my head: Opeth - A Fair Judgement
Today's weather: In the armpit of the world.


I had lost all contact with humanity. The Mass Effect Drives had approximately one chance in a million of malfunctioning, and evidently, I was the lucky winner. I was drifting through uncharted space. I had put my crew in Stasis, almost zero metabolism, in the hope that we might stretch our resources until, well until a fool’s wildest dream triumphs over the tenets of Rationalism. The powerful Navigation Systems on board The Normandy had been engaged on full power for as long as I could remember, in vain. The SOS beacon atop the hull had been lit, and walked around my ship one last time.
I had been sitting with my eyes closed, contemplating the gravity of the situation, when the shrill Alarm of the NavSys broke my reverie. It had homed in on a foreign object within communication range. I ran to the deck, where the first images of this object were being rendered on the Comm. Panel. And then everything went black.
When I opened my eyes, I was blinded at first by sharp white light. After my eyes got accustomed to the light, the staggering sight paralyzed me for a moment. Inanimate bodies stretched as far as the eye could see. I would have mistaken them for dead had I not accidentally noticed the almost imperceptible breathing- characteristic of Stasis. I began to notice that they were waking up from Stasis one by one. As my eyes grew more and more accustomed to the ambience, the sight that greeted me made me jump out of my skin. These were not people- they had no hair on the head, no eyebrows, no ears. And then I looked at my own hands. I almost passed out from shock. I was as hairless as an 18th century portrayal of an angel. I felt my face- no eyebrows, no cranial hair, and no ears. I saw that the rest of the people who had awoken mirrored my feelings, with some actually dropping to the floor, unconscious from such a humungous surprise.
Then, as if guided by a voice, I started walking, along with the rest of the multitude, now awake from hibernation. I do not know for how long we walked, and I do not know how much distance we covered. All I could see were these, these humanoids in all directions, stretching to the horizons. Slowly, the crowd began to thin. I could see that I was walking on a green pasture, with holes leading underground, and people disappearing into them one by one. I walked on, led by this omnipresent yet invisible Force.
Just then, I had the strongest urge to look up towards the sky. With great strength of will, I forced myself to look heavenwards. There it was- our magnificent Sun, and a blue sky, and birds, and clouds. All around us were the same trees, herds of antelope, butterflies and bees. We were on Earth. But Earth was not the same, and neither were we. All our traces of humanity ever having existed were wiped off the surface of the planet, and humanity was replaced by us- rid of all its vestiges and inefficiencies. We were the next step in evolution, except that evolution turned out to be a hoax.
As I walked into my hole, I realized that all those religious fanatics were right. God exists, but He is not a Flying Spaghetti Monster, He is an astronaut.

No comments: