Chapter Six

1

The subsequent era or age, dubbed the Archean by geologists, saw dramatic cooling of the Earth’s surface, and the dawn of life as we know it.  This life may have originated near hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the oceans, or it may have originated elsewhere.  There is speculation that terrestrial life may have extraterrestrial origins.  

This is a proposition that I want to assent to.  It is easier to think that we came from somewhere else, and that we never belonged here.  It is easier to think that way, and this hypothesis also makes it much easier to explain why we killed ourselves off in the end.  Metaphorically speaking.

        So however life got started, the remainder was left as an offering, if not as a thing offered to.  For a time, life was a short, brutal, and dark affair beneath the waves.  Trilobites quickly transformed themselves into fossils, and life inexorably made its way to the beaches for a better perspective on history.  Dinosaurs disassembled themselves for the sake of future Smithsonians, and for a time the world was populated by horrific creatures that spent inordinate amounts of time eating one another.  The world was pristine and untouched by human pollution, and as such resembled nothing more than Hell.

        Until another great rock came tumbling out of the sky, down into what would one day be Central America.  The monsters of the Earth choked in the nucleus of their winter, and were not heard from again.  They might have called out to invisible masters, beyond the stars.  Perhaps some of them were rescued, and live still lives apart from Earth.  Perhaps they were only allowed to leave their suicide notes, accusing her.

        And then the mammals rose from obscurity, and here was something we could all relate to.  Of course we were there the whole time, holding hands.  You told me that you loved me.  And we were obliged to see the little micelike creatures turn into monkeys, and the monkeys turn into ourselves.  This happened somewhere in Africa, though we were not black or white or yellow then.  We were still as we are now, or rather we have ceased being.  We might have built an Atlantis or a Mu in that place.  We might have built the pyramids.  We took notes before the ending of our world, for the sake of future bibles.  And I loved you.

        And one of us said this history does not exist, for there is no one to write it down.  It has been observed, but those observations die with us.  It might be communicated, but our words will be distorted, taken out of context.  Our story will mean one thing today and another tomorrow, and in the end we will not recognize ourselves.  We will be dead, and this history will have never happened.  Whatever the truth of a thing is, will only seem so through the reasoning of the ever-changing present.

        And she told him to be quiet, and listen.  They told her not to worry, because the truth is, like the story told, ever-changing.  And perhaps in the middle of that conversation we set up idols to our gods, and prayed, and feasted, and talked about what was good.

        Good and evil being at the beginning of the world, always.  They may have lived in trees, and only walked part of the time.  I might have seen you through the branches, grooming another’s fur.  They were just mammals after all.

        One chromosome is much like another.  Genes reflected monstrously in a hallway full of mirrors.  This was a story that we told at the beginning of a world that was always going to end.

2

“I can see a history of genes,” said Himself (or Herself), “Waging war over Too Long Ago.  We are even smaller than the smallest of these genes now, and traveling too fast to stop.”

3

But L. Ron was on drugs most of the time.  He invited us aboard, and you, always hungry for adventure at my expense, accepted the invitation.  I knew that The Other was also aboard that boat somewhere.  Your husband.  But I tried not to care.  

        L. Ron had a little chest that he carried around with him, and in this chest could be found all the fucking drugs in the world.  He brought his chest along when they had parties aboard The Freewind.  He showed his chest to rock stars and movie stars and people who were a little bit of both.  The faithful aboard the boat were never allowed to view the contents of the chest, because L. Ron still believed that he was the Commander of the Fleet, and that he had been a spy during the War, and that he had been on many adventures in the mysterious East.  L. Ron only showed the chest and the drugs to people he wanted to impress, to people who had money.  I don’t know why he wanted to show his chest to you.  

        If some alien or aliens have attempted to guide us toward some unquiet conclusion, they have to know by know that it is a lost cause.  Wherever we came from, wherever we are going, they have to know that we are bound for calamity, just as we are bound for destinations greater than any rational mind could ever comprehend.  Aboard the boat I glimpse a plesiosaur through the waves, and I cannot help but ask myself what you are doing, below decks, with Him.