Leaving the Light
By: Christine Schnell
Preface
Life has gotten rather boring now that people know who and what
we are. All disease have been wiped out, and we have advanced
so far that we can go out in the sun without worrying that our
skin will scorch, so need for research especially in medicine is
not needed. We can cross the galaxy nearly in the blink of an
eye and so we are at a limit at how much more we can do with our
technology. We have made peace with all mankind and alien kind
for that matter and so diplomats are as obsolete as the weapons
created for war. Who needs tailors, or butchers or any other
job requiring labor when you can get a computer to do all the
work for you? There aren't even any business men selling their
wares now that you can just go up and press a button on a wall
and the thing you desire will appear right before your eyes.
What kind of society would be so cruel to do this to their
people, to make them utterly useless? Human kind, of course
that is the only answer. Humans wanted to improve themselves so
much to make their lives easier, and so they did, too easy, so
easy it's one monotonous boring day of sitting around doing
nothing after another. There are those that pretend to be
scholars learning new things, but there are no new things to
learn, even all the alien races have given us as much
information as they could about themselves, so that now even
children know twenty different languages and nearly everything
about every living culture. What more is there for humanity
after it has overreached it's grasp of knowledge?
I wish I could answer, even as the leader of my world I have
nothing to do, for what society needs leading when they have no
where to go? It is the one scenario of the apocalypse that no
one had anticipated, the end of the universe would not come in
the form of a God destroying us, or an asteroid crashing into
the surface of the planet, or the Big Crash. The Big Crash the
opposite of the Big Bang, what a joke! It's still trillions of
years away, hell some scientists have already calculated the
time it will happen to within a few years. It doesn't matter
though because we'll all be dead long before then. This true
apocalypse came from within our own minds, we have destroyed
ourselves by learning everything there is. Even people such as
myself who were supposed to be superior to the normal humans
have reached their limit of what we call life. And every day
you find one more person dead on the street, weather by suicide
or shear ennui.
Yet it wasn't always so, it has only been like this for the
past hundred years or so and our population has reduced by more
than a half, I had seen the signs that this was coming even
before it officially began. Of course I have seen many things
over the years and I had tried to tell them, but what was there
for me to do? How could I stop people from learning, I could
stop them no more than I could stop myself? I the all powerful
Queen, yeah right, that's a bigger joke than the Big Crash.
Humans believed that once they learned as much as they could
they would evolve. I have seen no such evolution. I, being who
I am, had "evolved" once, and at times I believe that to be more
of a curse than a blessing. My evolution was forced on me, I
was never considered evolved, no matter how many people saw my
wonderful powers that I had taken away from those that made me
what I am. They considered me a monster, a freak, someone... no
something to be feared, not awed by the conversion I had gone
through. From that time on I made it my duty to learn and
understand other cultures, so that they could understand and
respect me. It took several hundred years, but I had done it.
That one thing was the challenge that drove my life, and one
hundred years ago when that understanding came I knew my life as
I knew it was over, and I watched as quickly everything around
me began to deteriorate, with one thing learned the next was
grasped easily, and the next more so than the first, soon people
understood all, for the universe was full of knowledge, and the
people about me were full of the universe.
Oh now, how I long for those days when I didn't understand
people's resentment of me, how I long for war over land and sky
and space, for disease and pestilence, for prejudice, ignorance,
hatred, for some antagonist other than boredom which I could
reach out and grasp! This monotony that you hear and are no
doubt tiring of is my everyday life, at least it is now. The
excitement of having to run at the first sight of daylight, of
fighting for one's life and right to live, the lying and
cheating of tourists as they came to see the mysterious and
supposedly legendary monsters, all of this is left in the past.
A memory left to torment me, for there is nothing left to learn
from it. Or is there? Have you not heard my tale? How can
that be, in a universe that everyone knows all? But yet I read
in your thoughts that you indeed do not know what I'm talking
about. Oh joyous day! Someone who has yet something to learn!
Perhaps the end of the universe has not come yet, if there is
but one person who has something to learn there is hope left,
and you my friend will hear what I have to say, then you may
make your own conclusions and perhaps be able to grow beyond
what even I am, but do not make them hastily for one who takes
knowledge in too fast will be bored later, believe me on this, I
know, hell I know everything for that matter.
