“”Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.”
-Billy Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night”
We all thought that the phrase “there is no darkness but ignorance” was metaphor. Beautiful metaphor, perhaps; apt metaphor, as some of us think it, but metaphor nonetheless.
Until the lights started going out.
It began in the major cities, and we can’t speak to how quickly or where it spread. It began near sundown, and people thought it was a power outage. But electric stoves, toasters, even cars worked. But those who were driving them found, as it got darker, that the car lights were most certainly affected.
By the time it was Dark enough for the crashes to start, most people were already worried about other things.
It wasn’t the power grid. No-one knows quite what it is, not even your humble narrator.
….I mean, I know. It was ignorance. But why, after so many years of no particular proof of Magic or Worlds Outside or the appearance of Gods, this one particular phrase turned to be a truth of the Universe, not an idea, I have no clue.
(A cynic might say that, as often suggested, Gods and godlike powers are conferred by belief, and an increasing number of people view the World as a dark, unnavigable place. But that seems a bit of a mystical viewpoint; then again, how would one account for the lack of shining moon or even the needlepoint of stars?)
We searched the ‘net without even thinking about it (imagine all those monitoring servers, keeping connections clear, doing all the things involved in making the Internet work…all by the light of a few candles, which is all the Darkness would seem to permit! Heroic, all of them; but ultimately lost.)
Searching the Internet, though, seemed to deepen the Darkness. We know not why. Isn’t the Internet a repository of knowledge?
The more frenetic and frenzied the searching became, the deeper and deeper the gloom became, until you could feel it, like a pea-soup fog made of semi-tangible blackest velvet and coldest shadow.
The Earth began to freeze. Life began to die. Humans were unable to perform both everyday tasks and their day jobs; to do things large and small; to clean the catbox or do heart surgery. They just couldn’t see to make it happen.
No-one noticed. Their screens were dimmed, but worked, and so (as always) they fixed their eyes upon them, seeking answers. AI suggested many natural phenomena. The number of people who threw their phones against the wall at the tenth repetition of “are you really sure it’s not an eclipse” would be in the billions.
It got very cold, as the ineffective sunlight also provided every little heat. The glaciers melted.
I was in my little spaceship, dark itself but lightening as we left Earth, crying. I had liked humans.
I had hoped not to see another Great Flood in my lifetime. Hope is a fine thing; but it can’t prevent the World from being swallowed by the sea.
We hovered briefly near some survivalists on a mountain. “Write this down!” we urged them. “In stone! In stone! Stone lasts and you can chip it.”
We don’t know if they believed us or if they stopped to wonder who and what we were.
We merely left.
Your planet is beautiful, and a lovely place for swimming whilst your ship hovers right above the water.
It’s a gorgeous place to live, but it’s infested with Humans. Humans are good at many things; technology, science, philosophy.
And making the same mistakes, in the end, over and over again.
_____________
By Jeff Mach
Comments are closed.