The Epsilon Eridani Trail (You Have Died of Space Dysentery)

I don't know what this is. It's a half baked post of an even less thoroughly baked idea, which popped into my head, for some reason, as I was watching Pulp Fiction. I really don't know what I'm doing. But you know what, it doesn't matter, because let me remind you once again, THAT I'M AN INTERNET HUNDREDAIRE NOW!

"There are no final goodbyes on this earth"
-3, Dive

I can't really say goodbye to anyone. This is not a psychological block or some kind of metaphorical statement about conditions specific to my life. None of us really can.

We've reached the point, at least in the Western World anyway, where the only final goodbye is dying.

Until very recently, you very easily fall off the grid without trying. Change your phone number, change your address, move to a new city, and it may be very difficult for anyone from your past to get in touch. And back before the interstate and railroads and clipper ships it was a long time to get anywhere, and if you were to leave for the Oregon Territory or the New World or the Holy Land or from the Tigris-Euphrates Delta to the Cedar Forests of Lebanon to slay the monster Humbaba, you may never be coming back, and let's just hope you were literate so you could send letters or a cuneiform tablet. (And odds are, you probably weren't.) You could still say the kind of goodbye to someone who would potentially live on for many years, and it would be the last thing you ever said to them.

Now I can find someone on facebook or ask the Google Monster. I can Skype with people on the other side of the planet. I can send a text or an email to any of my friends and if they're remotely near civilization, they'll get it. I cannot comprehend actually saying a final goodbye to someone unless they are dying. (Or I guess also if I were dying, but with advances in modern medicine cancelled out by all the miscellaneous radiation I'm absorbing, the expected time of that happening should still be hovering around 2065.) Because I know I'll always have a change to get in touch with them somewhere down the road, even if our physical paths never cross again.

And soon (on a historical scale) we're going to have to start comprehending those big goodbyes again. Because we (and when I say "we" I mean "our great-grandchildren") will be going to space. And in space, everything is really far away. Let's say you're best friend, let's call him Chromicron to give him a future-y sounding name, is packing up his life into a nano-fiber suitcase and taking a new job doing some kind of future job on Mars. He's not coming back for a long time. Because of planetary orbits and the cost of fuel, intrasystem travel won't be cheap or feasible, even with new, much faster forms of propulsion. Light lag between the Earth and Mars is about three minutes, give or take a few minutes for their relative orbital positions. This means with the added communication lag time, instant messaging becomes like texting, texting becomes like email becomes like olde-timey email when we still all used dial-up and it would be reasonable to expect to get your.name@mainstreamemail.com without tacking on numbers at the end that would give Rain Man a run for his money.* (The scary thing is that I really can't even remember a time when everyone had dial-up. Yes, I remember having a dial-up connection in our house growing up, but by the time I understood what dial-up actually was, we already had DSL.)

And what when we leave the solar system? Once we travel fast enough to really start feeling relativity, or, to truly separate ourselves from everything we know, get cryogenically frozen so we don't waste half our lives in transit to Epsilon Eridani. (Revelation Space, anyone? Anyone??? You're really not missing much.) Your friend leaves for another system and you will never see him or her again, unless you follow suit by turning yourself into a popsicle as well and getting shot millions of miles in a little metal tube. (And don't leave me a comment saying "actually being cryogenically frozen is less like being turned into a popsicle and more like being turned into freeze-dried chili-mac," because nobody likes a wise-ass. Actually, do comment, it will make me feel good about myself.)

But right now, we're at a point where the world is small, but not small enough that we want to leave yet, what with all the warmth and life sustaining oxygen we have down here and all the gamma rays and ice chunks they have whizzing around up there. And that's why I'm bad at goodbyes: because I have no idea what they actually are. It's supposed be the last thing you ever say to someone, leave a lasting impression of what they mean to you and hopefully give them something by which to remember you. All I ever say is something lame like "keep rockin in the free world!"  A goodbye used to mean something. And it will mean something again. But for now I can never say goodbye because I'll never really need to.


*This was originally a much more edgy joke about autism. Even I apparently have limits.

Let's Be History

The last known survivor of World War I died today.  His name was Frank W. Buckles, and he was 110.  The dude was born in a home without electricity and lived to have his own facebook page.  Perhaps this is not all that remarkable, because someone of my generation will pull off a similar feat.  They may say of the oldest surviving veteran of the War on Terror that he was born in a home without robot butlers and lived to have his consciousness uploaded into a massive orbital database.  But as far as we're concerned right now, that's impressive.

The ancient Greeks, pre-Herodotus believed that history was accurate until it was two generations removed from those who experienced it.  In other words, if I were to tell someone, on my deathbed, about Obama's election, and he, in turn, were to tell my account to someone else on his deathbed, that recipient's generation would be the last to have an accurate account of the story, before Obama turned into the son of Zeus and some unlucky rape victim, and won the presidency after slaying the minotaur.  Granted, this was back before they bothered to write things down, because no one could read and barbarians were constantly invading and using histories as toilet paper.

World War I was the destruction of an old world order, and lead to the formation of a new one, which, once again, has become obsolete.  With Buckle's death also comes the realization that World War I was not the start of the modern age.  The world has now gone from being bipolar - with the world aligned along the lines of the USA and the USSR - to being schizophrenic, with dozens of other nations becoming more economically powerful and getting better at basketball.  (Seriously, Lithuania?)  World War I has now faded into the background of history, something that none of us have experienced and something that can only be read about, never fully understood as it once was.

So, to everyone who reads this, I have a challenge for you.  Participate, somehow, in something that you think will be defining of our era.  That doesn't mean go out and enlist, or, conversely, strap on a vest of plastic explosives and run into a mosque pertaining to the other sect during Friday prayers.  (In fact, please don't do the second one.)  Go live in a tree in the rain forest before they're all wiped out, or fight some Japanese whalers.  Bring democracy to your military dictatorship nation.  Attend a gay wedding.  Get your life ruined by a social gaffe on facebook.  Or just, I don't know, catch Bieber Fever if you can't come up with anything cool to do.  You don't have to do it now, but when you do, make sure it pushes your comfort zone, and you walk away with a good story to tell.  And tell it to everyone who will listen.

I was going to post about something else (probably how sports are important) but then I read about Mr. Buckle's death, and I forgot what I was going to write about and wrote this instead.  Because I think it's important.  We're all going to be part of history someday.  It's said of Herodotus that, "if it isn't true, it ought to be," and I want to live in an era where what is true and what ought to be true are one in the same.

History/Mystery

History is a mystery because we are always sifting through the stories to find out whodunnit. Did the Indian really use every part of the buffalo? Or did they throw out some of the more awkward parts? Did the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock really befriend them like we are told in kindergarten when we learn about the first Thanksgiving? Or was it by coercion that the Pilgrims learned to plant fishcorn? All this sleuthing for artifacts and interrogations for primary source are all going to lead us to some spectacular, elementary-my-dear-Watson, it all makes sense now kind of denouement where we have figured everything out exactly as it happened and thereafter anyone who has a different interpretation is a revisionist asshole with an agenda and everything is absolute and there are never any unsettling questions to be asked, right? Unfortunately for those who want one version of the past that suits their station, the answers are fluid and slip thorugh our minds as time goes by, and we need to come crawling back to Baker Street, or maybe this time go to a more seedy, trench coat-clad private eye who will rough guys up for answers and sleep with some dame in the process. History is not simple. That doesn't suit you? Too bad. You're living it.