“Ashes
to Ashes. Dust to Dust”
19 October 2004
1. If he had only known when he wiped the piece of "sand", "dirt", from his eye that it was the complete encapsulated knowledge of an ancient civilization, long since disappeared from the universe, he might not have simply tossed the tissue in the trash. But he did and no one even noticed.
2. “They”
might have thought it ironic, or sad, or whatever emotions they might be
capable of, if their instruments had even noticed when the small space probe hit
their ship, but to them, their instruments, the probe was nothing more than space
dust.
And
so the last artifact of a universe evolution on a small planet, long since
consumed by its sun, was gone.
Ashes
to ashes. Dust to dust.
Sad
in a way. Billions of years for
atoms to combine and recombine and recombine again in some mysterious way or
via mysterious forces until men walked on the moon, built buildings which reached tall into the
sky, learned secrets of the universe and finally built one last space probe, only to have it all disappear
forever, without a trace on a windshield.
The cosmos sure is a funny place.