SCIENCE!
by Ryan Brosmer
We could have gone to the moon. I mean, of course we could have, and we really should have. I was a fool.
The auto-motorcoach was a wonderful invention, but no actual progress was made there. The motorcoach was steam powered, which meant it was already an artifact upon its inception and it only helped get us off of the predestined paths provided for us by the railroad companies. Though, we ended up restrained by the state’s municipal roadways just the same. That took all of the adventure out of pioneering. By the time you reached the end of the road somebody else had already been there, or else the road would not have ever been completed.
Now the submersible, that was cause for excitement for the frontiersman in all of us. Under the sea, the bottom of the oceans, there was a land still ripe for exploration. No country had yet laid claim. Of course, the waterways, the trade routes, those were controlled by the individual nations, or ruthless individuals, but the sea floor was a free-for-all of potential discoveries. The fish and the flora: new species, more expensive delicacies and more luxurious travel destinations.
The first undersea hotel was…well, it was a bit of a disaster, but the second and most certainly the third, yes, and by the third we had it down to a real science and science was what they called it. Profit, revenue, new tariffs and licensing fees were what they really had meant to say.
The ocean became polluted after only a few decades. What they did to that vast blue beauty was quite a travesty indeed. They tried to lay the blame upon me, for being the one who invented the means of taking men below the crests of the waves in the first place, but I created the submersible with science truly at the forefront. My intentions were noble, my thirst for knowledge my only true incentive. I had no moneymen whispering sweet nothings of monetizing the murky deep into my ears. I had my own plans to publish a series of guides, for the layperson, on the mysteries of the deep. My own Brittanica, but of the briny deep. “MacAllister’s Encyclopaedia Ocenia.”
Yes, a twelve-volume collection is what I had imagine. From “A-Anemone “ to “Z-Zebra Tilapia”. I had typed up the manuscripts, but it was too late. The oceans were dead and everything I had written about no longer existed. I knew that if I had published my work it would become known as myth. It wouldn’t be long before children grew up with no knowledge that life had ever existed beneath the depressing grey of the once proud, azure water. I could have tried to carry on the legacy of these creatures, but I decided to stop while I was ahead and go down as a man of intelligence and integrity, rather than a mad prophet telling wild tales of a wonderland beneath the waves.
I left those manuscripts buried in the bottom of the trunk at the foot of my bed and went on to a new venture: the rocket ship. It was really quite simple once I figured out the power source—something more modern than steam and much cleaner than coal. Coal had been out of the question for all of my devices and it’s long continued use still confounds me. It was dirty to use, too difficult to produce and too bloody expensive. I needed something more efficient and humane. Constantly renewable. And it came to me in an epiphany as if a glowing orb had all of a sudden introduced the glowing warmth of knowledge into my cranium. I of course speak of our lovely sun. It was he brightest shining star in all of the solar system. I discovered that little fact following the invention of my telescoping looking glass, perhaps my greatest invention even amongst the mechanical wonders of things such as the auto-motorcoach and the submersible. It allowed discoveries before they could be threatened by our physical interferences. Only molested by the prying eye. But such tools have become the toys of child’s play. It became time to take a closer look and I was determined to be the first to get such a glimpse.
Defeating the grasp of gravity wasn’t the problem so much as sustaining flight. And I don’t mean simply gaining lift by means of hot air balloon or helium or some more mordern form of DaVinci’s flying machine. No, we had already soundly defeated the laws of gravity by pure virtue of science. By we I mean my lab partners and I, Grady, O’Neil and Purdue. They have all left now, but at the time when these discoveries were just that, being discovered, those three gentlemen were always by my side and had their own intellects imbedded deeply within all works that are normally credited solely to my name. I hereby condemn any such attempts at misinformation.
We four, all of us together, had found the exact opposing force to gravity, that, when applied to an object, created an equal amount of push against the Earth’s own pull. We never got very far off of the ground. For, as lofty as our goals were, we were only able to lift ourselves a few feet from the ground. We needed to boost this new energy we had found, give it a bit of extra oomph. Our “anti-gravity” as we called it, quite simply I admit, was only enough to match the force of gravity itself exactly, and, for as powerful as we perceive gravity to be, its hold on our bodies is really quite weak, we have just been made weaker through ages of acceptance that its grip would never be loosened But the Earth, and it’s gravitational pull, were obviously not all powerful or else the rest of the celestial bodies would have been pulled towards our lonely planet long ago, and this obviously was not the case because we have yet to be crushed beneath the weight of the rest of our heavenly neighbors. I personally always been a follower and stark believer in old Copernicus and his Helio-centric theory, and if the sun is powerful enough to keep Earth and all of her peers in place then I had to assume that the sun is where the source of ultimate lies in the heavens.
Ha! Listen to me talk of the heavens as if I were trying to reach for God. No, don’t be confused by any mention of “heaven”. I am not searching for any higher power in a religious sense. No, I am searching for power in a purely scientific meaning of the word; I am searching for a higher energy. This energy I was searching for, I found in the sun. I used specially calibrated solar devices to capture the power of the sun. This “solar heat” was combined wit ha special blend of minerals, specifically a certain black powder found only in the local mountainsides, to create a burst of energy enough to ignite the air for 100 yards in all directions and lift an object above the mountaintops. Even I was, and am still, unsure of the exact way in which it works, but it surely does work and it was the start of my era of rocket-powered exploration.
I learned to control the amount of lift gained by the different reactions between the captured energy of the sun and differing amounts of my black powder. You might recall my early advancements in expanding weather prediction. These early high altitude experiments quickly put to shame the publishers of more than a few almanacks popular at the time. Quite unfortunate really. Many of them were friends of mine who at the time fancied themselves intellectuals with true ties to the scientific community. I fear I may have painted them as no more than the mad prophets, which I aimed to avoid becoming myself. But these weather projects for the governments were the ticket to bank rolling my future plans of reaching well above the clouds and to the stars. And, as is already well known, I succeeded, and it became more of a disaster than the underwater explorations and paved the way to the end of our world. Like one of those aforementioned municipal roads, except I was in charge of making sure it has a start and more importantly an ending clear of the debris the entire way.
It was difficult to keep the launching of a rocket ship a covert matter. The light was visible in the sky for miles around, and its arching path in the sky was recorded by people across the ocean using my own invention, the pictograph box. The whole ordeal made headlines across the globe for the next week. Man had not only conquered gravity, but now the last boundaries of Earth had been breached.
It wasn’t long before acts of espionage revealed my secrets to the world. I blamed Purdue.
First the mountainsides were stripped of all precious minerals. The price of common black powder went to the highest levels since the last war. This was seen as the breaking down of the barrier between Heaven and Earth. It became a holy crusade. I pleaded with the public, and with the governments of the world that this was really quite serious scientific work and that to turn it into a search for God really was to miss the true point of my achievement. They didn’t see them as my achievements so much as a sign from God that he was ready for us to ascent to the heavens and come in search of Him and our final salvation. Of course, there was dispute over how this should be done, which god it was calling out to us and who should be the ones to first greet Him. I stayed out of it all. My own personal missions took precedence for me. I continued my studies as the rest of humanity tore itself apparent truing to fine the meaning it its existence through petty arguments and dubious stakes in different sectors of outer space where each country or religion or individual believed God resided.
I eventually wrote my Encylopaedia. It was one of the stars and planets. It ranged from A-asteroid to…well, U-Uranus. I never was able to come up with fitting subjects for the remained of the alphabet. “V”, “W”, “X”, “Y” and “Z” seemed like they would be quite fitting for “outer space”, but at the same time, the tail end of the alphabet seemed to insignificant for the naming of such magnificent bodies.
As soon as I released my Encyclopaedia and the names I had come up with seemed to click with the general public, the marketing of “outer space” began. Tourism took over, and it was a lucrative business—one that I was offered a part in on myriad occasions—because the Earth had become a terrible place for man to live, with nobody to thank but himself. Therefore the moon, our moon, Luna, she became the next stop for most of humanity. Colonization began, cities sprang up and Earth was forgotten. All of this was mostly thanks to my innovations in the synthesis of Earth’s natural atmosphere. I used it first in the submersible and later in my very first low-orbit rocket ship expeditions. The moon, while incapable of hosting plan life on its own surface, was made fertile thanks to the false atmosphere. This ability to cultivate food on the moon put the nail in Earth’s proverbial coffin. A self-replenishing eco-system was started, complete with a rainy season. There was plenty of room for everyone on the surface. While the moon was much smaller than Earth there were no pesky bodies of water taking up space. Soon the surface would be developed until the artificial light glowing from the lunar cities rivaled that of the sun’s mighty natural force. They had illuminated the dark side of the moon!
I stopped my explorations after finishing my final volume of the encyclopaedia and I returned to Earth indefinitely. I saw the salvation of our planet as the more pressing matter facing the scientific community and most of that community had left for new frontiers. The people had left their dying planet to be closer to God, but it was science, and only science that could save Earth. But yesterday the sun died.
The source of energy for the rocket ships, the black powdered combined with the captured energy of the sun, had taken too much of a toll on old Sol. Everyone was afraid. It was too cold on the moon. There was no geothermal activity, so that without the sun, there was no source of warmth, much less power. Everyone wanted to return to Earth. Her core was still very much alive and full of the heat of life. But none of the rocket ships could work. There was no fuel and they were stranded. They were all stuck on the moon and we were the last people on Earth, unable to reach them to perhaps help determine a way out of this conundrum. Oh, and by we I mean myself and the son of my former partner Grady. He had accompanied me on my last voyage and had returned to Earth in search of the glory he was sure would be attached to my name once I healed Earth. Now we were stuck because I had held onto hope in the face of an entire population of hopeless fools. I was the fool now, and if I were a religious man, I would be prying. I would pray that my final days would be peaceful, but starvation is not a peaceful way to die. Will Grady survive longer than I? Will I bed that he kill me and use me as the last bit of sustenance in the last cold days of his life? Will I beg him to kill me, both do that I don’t have to see him die and so that I might die thinking that my last act in life was noble? Will he refuse and instead kill himself before I can convince him to do me in? Will we be rescued? Is there any chance? Might the rocket ships on the moon be functioning? It would go against all reason, but perhaps! It might just take a few more days for them to realize that we’re still down here!
Oh, if I had just given into old age and gone to the moon with the rest of them we wouldn’t be stuck here like this. I have damned the younger Grady to a horrible fate after his father gave his whole life to helping me. I could have studied the Earth from the moon, the telescoping lenses work just fine! It would have been just as I had studied the moon from the Earth for so long. And then this catastrophe would have struck and we would have been among our fellow men, able to help them in this, our greatest time of need. I’m sure together we could have found a solution, but nobody else has the knowledge I do! I would have shared but they were never interested, and now I have no the manpower or the material for any such feat of scientific strength.
I wonder what they think of their God now. Do they finally pray together? Or do they fight once more over who is to blame for the damning of their souls?
