13,799,000,000 years of universe culminated into the creation of You, Me, and everyone we know. We won’t be there to celebrate the universe’s 14 billionth year and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a fucking disgrace! Instead, they gave us this lousy millennium celebration 16 years ago where we were convinced robots would Y2K our asses into oblivion (I was 16 at the time, so yes, even then, asses mattered! #AssesMatter).
I think I speak for all my particles, or at least most of them (not the ones I’m going to piss out in 10 minutes), when I say that this situation is not right. Without us, there wouldn’t be a universe, the antimatter imbalance would eradicate the entire universe, and yet we are sitting here as if there is nothing we can do.
One of my dear friends, Particle XXY, had this to say in an interview:
“Look, all we’re saying is, we’re happy here! We are treated well, our boss treats us nicely, he even tells us in the mirror how much he loves us every day!”
“But why wouldn’t you just want to move on after your role is finished here? You’re a particle after all, you cannot be destroyed, only transformed!”
“See, that’s the point! In the OLD universe, all particles were happy just travelling onwards for billions of years, until something happened and then they could do something else… It was all much too random and we never got the idea that someone was looking out for us… That changed now… And I don’t just speak for the particles in this particular (*pun*) body, I think all particles in all bodies feel the same way!”
“But aren’t you, as particles, to blame for biological aging and ultimately, death, because it is ultimately YOUR kind that fucks up when new cells need to replace older cells?”
“Look! Did you ever play that game in school where one pupil has to whisper a sentence in somebody’s ear and then when the last pupil in the class says the sentence, it’s something completely different?”
“Yeah, I remember being in the middle and I heard ‘Horses Are Tasty Hamburgers’, but the last pupil of the class said it was ‘Rainbows Are Better People Than You Are’.”
“It’s like that with us too, you know. We know we’re working on our own demise, and that’s what demotivates us – we stop paying attention when we copy DNA!”
“But why don’t you just stop it, then?”
“Because we’re used to being discarded! We don’t have job security, which is something I guess you can relate to, interviewing me for a living!”
“No need to be rude – I’m trying to help here!”
“I know, I know. Look, all I’m saying is that we would like things to stay the way they are. We are comfortable in this body. We get fed, we get a lot of sleep… And I do mean A LOT! We don’t want to give that up to spend about 50 years in a coffin, becoming worm faeces and so on… Do you know how long it takes us to climb up the ladder and be a primate particle again?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me…”
“Thousands of years! I mean, sure, we get eaten in the process and turned into shit, but to become really integrated in a cell like this again… That takes ages! Those mitochondria, I made those, you know! I wasn’t shat out by fifty thousand dinosaurs just to keep on repeating myself!”
“So you’re advocating against the circle of life?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth! I’m doing no such thing! All I’m saying is that maybe, it’s time to stop it with this moving on bullshit! If we, as particles, all decide to stay and really do our best to copy DNA info – basically just other particles – then maybe we stand a chance of staying in this body for millions of years.”
“But you’re asking me to believe that individual particles have free will and that they are not just following DNA orders – orders made by their brethren, the thoughts that they are forced to express?”
“Well, maybe this is us working together and showing you!”
“But then who do you appeal to? How do you get your change?”
“…”
“So?”
So maybe we won’t be around for the 14 billionth anniversary; we won’t even make it to the big 13.8 billion (I already have plans anyway!).
It’s easy to understand why those young-earth creationist are so happy about themselves, they can actually give a percentage of time to their existence. As for most of us, smart people, it’s a figure too lost among zeroes to even consider.
And we should keep on telling ourselves that that insignificance is the fuel we need to wake up in the morning and do our best to please our raging particles, even if only for a short short while…
Tim van den Oudenhoven 