The entity soared above Earth, the home of one of the sentient species of the universe. They had primitive technology and grand ideas about their importance in the Universe. They still believed in deities and miracles. There was so much suffering. Yet Earth was one of the most beautiful inhabited planets out there. There was lots of joy, small incidents that warmed his heart analogue. He could see millions crying, millions laughing, life of all shapes and sizes scurrying about following its’ own beat or the routine constructed through the dawn of early civilization.
Seeing everything and feeling everything these humans felt was overwhelming for the entity. He had to shut down his empathy filters. There was so much heartache, hunger and disease. The abundance of joy, of wonder, of the beauty of romance discovered and rediscovered was as unbearable to his sensory apparatus as the aforementioned suffering.
He wondered what would happen to them as eons passed. He did not have to wonder, he just skipped ahead in the reel. He saw battles, decimated towns, he saw the dawn of eternal peace in the realms. The slowing down of entropy of the dominant life form’s organ systems or ageing as it was termed here. Enlightened thinking, first contact with another sentient species, unraveling of irrelevant social taboos, freedom becoming an acceptable solution to all.
He saw every death, every tear, every smile, every heartbreak; and insanity seemed like a real threat even with his empathy filters off. There was so much senseless killing. Oftentimes over land masses as large as an atom in the scheme of things as far as the universe was concerned. Over petty misunderstandings, due to posturing by so called leaders, due to personal ambitions and greed, due to dwindling resources; they fought like creatures that feed on carrion, and set their world on fire. So much collateral suffering.
He went to an abandoned planet to cool off and perhaps preserve his sanity. Earth was a perverse yet beautiful paradox. It was an extraordinary milieu, of saints and philosophers, of ambitious leaders and generals,of selfless people working anonymously for the greater good, of selfish people working for only a self serving agenda , of the quintessential average man, spending a life time seeking joy in the mundane, making the mundane extraordinary at times. Some whose existence was confined to possibilities outside their own control. Such a beautiful world condemned to millennia of suffering before utopia or its nearest possible equilibrium was created.
Well his job was only to observe and report. Humans and all the myriad life forms on Earth were worth preserving he reported; the thousands of years where they would reach a semblance of enlightenment notwithstanding. So the meteor that would have wiped out dear old earth in AD 3578 was averted. Some hailed it as a miracle; others spotted the energies behind the event and thus was made the first contact with another sentient species.
By- Aseem Mahajan
