🔮 Victoria, BC

Total Collapse

The great sky machines, like black clouds, descended on human space. Slim beams of blinding orange light, brighter than Zeus’ lightning, bored in seconds through the brittle crust of the concrete cities. The pavement, which patterned the ground like snowflakes, was dug up like topsoil. On the army bases, humans scrambled in the churned-up soil.

The nuclear bombs the humans sent to meet them were specks, pinpricks of white lint beneath the falling orange towers of light that cut through flesh and concrete, teeth and iron tower with equal ease. It made Tokyo in 1945 look like a dress rehearsal.

Those who hoped the universe would turn out to be benevolent to humankind (or at least more benevolent than humankind had been to it) were disappointed, to say the least. Yet few of these philosophers had time to reconcile themselves to this new twist of Fate.

News of Total Collapse reached their computers and smart phones, yet they had little time to ponder the ironies of sending out Voyager or believing in the Resurrection. They did, however, quickly wonder why we had so blithely sent out greetings to aliens, sending them our languages, our art, even our DNA and exact co-ordinates. Little did they know that these things had no effect whatsoever. What did have an effect, however, were two images of the Madonna and Child.

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The Baulians were thankful for the two silly images that ended up in the data banks of the bumbling Lactaris. These images proved that humans were infecting faraway planets in their universe, sending out garbagey inducements to bow to Mother Mary — rather than to act in the name of Mother Earth. The images, combined with the nuclear insanity of their geopolitics and the avidity of their corporate masters, gave the Baulians the green light to proceed with their plans.

Glontar the Rebel might be saddened to learn that his theories about extraterrestrials did in fact foretell the subjugation of his people, yet he would be happy to learn that his theory about the Sacred Waters of Earth was not an illusion. And he would be happy to learn that the Sacred Waters would be protected from the human vermin that had, by blind luck, evolved to dominate that heavenly planet. Glontar’s spirit at last found peace in its amber suspension chamber, which now hung beneath the altar of the Great Temple on Baulis Prime.

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Frame by Frame

As the orange beams descended on their planet, some humans had time to wonder why they’d put their faith in a kind Sky Father. They quickly re-imagined the traditional Doomsday scenario as if it were three triptychs by Hieronymous Bosch. The first triptych offered an optimistic view of the universe, with the forces of good managing to balance and dominate the forces of evil. In the second triptych, however, the light evaporated. In the third, everything went black.

Others retained, at least momentarily, a desperate optimism. Hoping that the blinding streaks of orange light signalled the Rapture, they look upward with holy yearning in their eyes. Straining to see what they wanted to see, they spied the Gentle Lamb that would defeat the brute power of the horsemen.

Yet the Lamb, who was haloed by gold and rainbow, and who was walking on water in the general direction of the Good Book, was soon swallowed in the general contagion of darkness. All that was left in the flame-burnt shadows were the slings and arrows, the javelins and battle-axes of outrageous fortune.

A chosen few were able to cling onto their grand hopes, to their prime directives of science and religion, while others gave them up for pipe dreams the moment the pavement around them shook, split, and they fell headlong into the abyss.

Some, of decadent artistic bent, thought they saw a God who had something of the Borg yet also something of a new kind of Deity, like the figure on the back of Aubrey Beardsley's tarot cards: 

This enigmatic God dealt the light of deliverance or the darkness of destruction, all depending on reasons that remained locked within its mysterious, and very decorative, head. 

Others approached the imminent doom more philosophically. Agnostic doomsayers had already pondered the ontological implications of an apocalypse, suggesting that it doesn’t really matter if the world goes up in flames. They called their argument, Either/Or. EITHER there’s no God and we’ll die one day in any case. Oblivion is the enduring result, so what does it matter when it comes? OR there’s a God and no matter how we die this God will do what He, She, or It pleases with our selves, be they eternal souls or lumps of clay destined for the grand bin of has-beens.

Those of a more Romantic bent felt that this was dark thinking indeed, especially since it sidelined the fact of living. They argued (quickly, in their final blogs) that the fact that we don’t know our ultimate nature or destination should only force us to conclude that the meaning of the moment is multiplied by as many moments of experience that make life worth living. All the more reason to seize the day, not equate it with night. They agreed with the ancient philosopher Zhuangzi, who argued that our bodies are like logs: after they are burnt, we can’t say where the heat goes. The Romantic poets added that what matters — and what gives our lives meaning — isn’t so much the logs burning as the tree living. What we should focus on is the life of the seedling bursting up from the soil, the growing trunk finding its place between a rock and a rivulet of water and air, the branches reaching toward the blue sky, the leaves dripping sweet rain to the roots, and the flowers bursting in colour into the eye of the beholder. 

But of course, this line of thinking was excessively optimistic: the forests were burning, and the logs were lifting their ashes to the sky.

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