I Jumped

The world was being destroyed. Humanity was destroying itself, destroying the world. So I jumped, and just kept going, straight up, looking back to see the mushrooms sprouting out of the earth. Ironic, death is given such an unexpected face, a mushroom, poisonous yet peaceful. I guess when the mushrooms disappear there will be peace, only after the poisonous clouds wipe out remaining life.

So it was just me, in space, flying away, abandoning hope, while hoping. Hoping that I would reach another place, another chance. In my travels, I passed a probe, with a flag of the former United States painted on it. It just continued in a straight line, without a purpose. It probably would have brought valuable information hinting at hope of life on another planet, but now it travels in vain, one of the few remnants of civilization. Maybe the probe was a preemptive attempt to establish life somewhere else, and they knew that they couldn't stay on that planet much longer.

There were comets off in the distance, emanating beauty in a tail of elegance, as their icy body melted off gradually from the heat of the nearby stars. Eventually they too will meet the same fate as my former home, melting down to nothing, and being forgotten. But at that time, it dazzled anything that was blessed with its presence, even though I was the only one who could see them. I had no one to tell this to, no one to share this vision with, so I could only awe myself with it.

The giant belt of rocks I passed consisted of millions of giant boulders, the size of buildings, crashing into each other with force I had yet to witness. Every collision pulverized the participating rocks, and it seemed if let to go on forever, that they would eventually turn themselves into dust, and lose their quality of being the obstacle course of our mini-universe.

Up higher, I could see all the planets in our solar system, looking so insignificant. I was headed toward a larger light, more hopeful looking then others. As the days passed, it appeared larger and larger. I didn't even have days anymore. When you get far enough away from the blanket of the sun, it becomes out of reach, and time becomes your own.

Even higher, above the sky of our system, I reminisced about the days when I lived on what then was a not even visible speck in the vast expanse of my field of vision. I thought about my days as a teacher. I taught my students history of our civilization on the grounds that history repeats itself. Now I realize that that statement is only partially true. History does repeat itself, but each time it repeats, it repeats itself ten times more intensely.

The former generations were limited by the technology that they had, they could wreak havoc on themselves, but there was only so much you can do with clubs and sharpened bone. As projectiles were discovered, killing was much easier, and with each advance in technology, ease of killing advanced. Then one day we harnessed the power that until that point in time, only god, or whatever made everything, had been able to harness. We could split an atom, the quintessential unit of matter. We could split existence. Before long, the world's inhabitants had the power to make the world uninhabitable with a couple depressions of buttons. So, unavoidably, history repeated itself, except this time, when we tried to destroy each other, we were capable of it and succeeded.

As I got closer to my destination, the light in the center enticed me and everything around it into its grasp. Closer, closer, and my hope was suddenly shattered by a sudden realization. This hole was attracting everything inside of it, but nothing was coming out. I was already at the point of no return, but still I tried to swim against the judgement whirlpool's current desperately. Like a bug to a zapper, there was nothing I could do to fight it. Faster, I approached it, faster, with every unit of time.

Doom was inevitable. I couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of this colossal engine of ending. It looked so serene, and there was no noise coming from it. But I knew what it really was, the most violent device in the universe. My body began to stretch, and I could see everything else being swallowed into this garbage disposal to nowhere. I just closed my eyes again and waited for it to end. Eventually there was nothing.

Maybe the nature of the universe is inevitable ending. Things are created to be destroyed, and life is a catalyst. I question whether any one thing can coexist with another forever. From a super giant celestial whirlpool eating itself and everything around it, to humanity collapsing in on itself, it seems as though it can't. I don't think I ever had a chance to begin with, or if everything is just too competitive.

Just as something as minute as a virus, after being almost completely eliminated, can build resistance and reestablish itself, maybe the largest entity that I know of, the universe, will reach the same fate as everything in its domain, and eventually be sanded away by itself, and reestablish itself. If it does, then will history repeat itself and come to a violent end again? Or will the new universe have a more peaceful existence? Perhaps somewhere out there in space, there is a universe that lacks violence, and that began peacefully, unlike with the bang of our current universe. On that universe, history wouldn't repeat itself, it would just continue.