Ring

The river of time flowed unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity.

Maybe it’s time we humans abandoned our species-specific chauvinism—our petty outrage that the Universe has unfolded in a way that doesn’t suit us.

“But that’s insane,” Morrow protested.

Uvarov hissed, “No one ever said it wasn’t. We’re human beings. What do you expect?”

She tried, sometimes, to remember how it had been to be young. Or even, not quite so old.

Try to remember this lesson. It might keep you alive a little longer. The most precious thing to a human being is a mind-set: more precious than one’s own life, even. Human history has taught us that lesson time and again, with its endless parade of wars—human sacrifices en masse—thousands of deaths over the most trivial of differences of religious interpretation.

“You know, in principle, why our world is as it is. Isn’t that sufficient? Is it really necessary for you to understand every detail?”

But if I don’t understand, Morrow thought sourly, then you can control me. Arbitrarily. And that’s what I find hard to accept.

Empty. Barren. These were the true conditions of the Universe, she thought; life, and variety, and energy, were isolated aberrations.

“No,” Morrow said. “I can’t accept that. I don’t always agree with the Planners. But they aren’t killers.”

“You think not?” Uvarov laughed again. “The survivalists—your ‘Planners’—are psychotic. Of course. As I am. And you. We are a fundamentally flawed species. Most of humanity, for most of its history, has been driven by a series of mass psychotic delusions. The labels changed, but the nature of the delusions barely varied...”

Maybe we should gather a few more facts before wasting our time speculating.

It was too anthropomorphic to consider the lifecycle of a star as some analogy of human birth, life and death. A star was a construct of physical processes; the evolution it went through was simply a search for equilibrium stages between changing, opposing forces. There was no life or death involved, no loss or gain: just process.

Why shouldn’t it be beautiful?

Understanding is the key to turning anything from a threat into an opportunity.