Editorial
Three billion years.
Unfathomable, isn’t it?
Gord Crawford from Spur Valley raised an interesting question in his recent letter to the editor on how humankind is destroying the earth, leaving our grandchildren to inherit a dying paradise. Why did you do that, grandpa? Gulp!
The Pioneer edited a small piece of Crawford’s letter at the point where he asked what our great-grandchildren will be up to in three billion years. The question seemed odd since we and the earth may be long gone by that time or merely a wisp of floating gas particles.
Who knows . . . in three billion years Earth could be a dead planet inhabited only by mounds of old machinery and garbage, a derelict rock that our new civilization utilizes as a landfill station. Meanwhile, humans (or semi-humans) are living light years away on a planet in another galaxy continuing to experiment with time travel and teleportation theories. By then, we could be reliving past lives or moments in childhood in suspended time chambers or pods with the explicit warning: users run the risk of altering your future altogether. Change too much and you may face a world you no longer recognize.
By three billion years we could be an alien race according to a new form of primitive beings living on the fringes of the solar system. Our ships will be in a ‘Star Wars’ of their own with rival civilizations wanting to control the galaxy, not with weapons of mass destruction, but with humanity obliterators. Humanity could be all we have left to defend.
In three billion years, life may not be of a physical existence but more of an ethereal plane . . . or holograms of our former selves. We won’t feel physical pain, but a smidgen of our hearts could still harbor sadness from archived memories stored in solar data banks.
In three billion years, massive organisms (like the dinosaurs) could be roaming a steaming wasteland created by an explosion one million times more powerful than the Soviet’s ‘Tsar Bomba.’ Although officially off limits, the planet would be under review as a pseudo tourism destination for the mega-elite, with the caveat: your hologram may not survive.
In three billion years, all of humankind’s misdeeds and mistakes would be forgotten; their failure to save the world from climate change and destruction would be moot — a long lost history drowned in tears wept by countless grandchildren whose warnings went unheeded courtesy of progress and greed. By then, nothing will matter; new civilizations will be born while others will perish. Einstein’s theories will finally be put into practice, with new ones tested and exploited.
And what of love, the conqueror of all? Will it stand the test of three billion years? Will it even be an emotion? We can only hope.
Lyonel Doherty, editor
