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I sat on the porch, watching the spring Blue skies, green grass, yellow sun Birds, tulips, weeds I watched the trees--pale green newborn leaves All well with the world When suddenly The screen of my mind, the eye's projector Bent, buckled Twisted out of shape Without losing sharp focus Stretched, tore and rent apart And in the opening only blackness The green was pulled off the edges And I was left In the dark. My God! I cried. What happened? Where am I? I cannot see a thing! And a voice answered: "Yes, you can. Feel it!" Sharp, clear-cut. The void has no echoes No reverberations, either. And I saw where I was. Far in space The dark pierced by pinholes of stars More and still more, all around. And I felt: not much here Mostly emptiness Density oh point two atoms per cee cee (must be on the fringes) Point six gamma, magnetic And some high energy particle flux With assorted photons. Mostly, three degrees absolute And pretty isotropic, as far as I could sense. What is this? I cried. What sort of place? "You know quite well," He said Out among the stars Watching the universe. "And why?" I cried. I cannot see anyone On the radio bands all is noise No A-Em, no Eff-Em, no pulse code modulation Nothing. No spaceships either No spacewarp or supraluminous drive And no little green men. "There are no little green men" He said There is no life in the universe except On that little blue planet of yours. In other universes, yes But that's outside your dimension And there is no spacewarp You people will never get to this region Too far. "So why bring me here?" I said Just to show you what you are up against Cold, vacuum, empty vastness Not that you need them. You have A pretty good place Six days it took me to fix it up. Wasn't easy You have to get all the interaction constants just right Before you put it all together Or else it won't go. Then you must set it off Just in the proper way. Only your ignorant biologists can think life will start alone By itself, as soon as all ingredients are mixed. Really, it was quite a job. Six days And I got so tired That I took the seventh off. But it is a nice world And it's developing very well, just as it was meant to Unless you people burn it up Or use it up, in some foolish way. Every process has its latent instabilities Only your clueless philosophers can claim That everything is preordained. It isn't (I have made sure of it). Anyway, try keep it going Remember that it's yours And there are no spares. Now, to put you back He said, and round the rim of vision Shades of pale green came rushing from infinity Joining together, closing the gap Like a moving picture run backwards When you put in the cartridge upside down (As you can do on newer models). The trees straightened Found which way was up Quivered Twitched a bit And were back as they always have been. And my wife was looking at me strangely "I was wondering what has happened to you" She said "You were sitting there just staring into space And for a moment it seemed As if you just weren't there." David P. Stern 23 May 1972 |
Author and Curator: Dr. David P. Stern
Mail to Dr.Stern: david("at" symbol)phy6.org .
Last updated 4 August 2012