Entropy

The sky up above glowed a bright and pretty blue in the night as a man sits in the middle of the desert. He has no one with him; the land around is bare, except for his black Toyota, which he is sitting on the hood of. He wishes he could have someone by his side, but he finds himself at least content with the lightshow he gets to see on his final day. It will be the first and last time he gets to see a comet in the sky. The great destroyer.

The man loves space so much that he finds it quite ironic that he has never witnessed a comet before. At least he gets to see one in all of its glory like this before the end though, he thinks. He tries to consider ways humanity could have stopped this comet but stops without much thought; the Universe set this comet towards them and even in all of humanity’s great achievements it would be irrational to think humans above such a fundamental power.

The man supposes this is the way it was always going to end. Humankind had no hand in this; it was simply that the Universe decided it was time for man to go, and that was that. It would land and they would be gone and all would be equal again. It was the Universe’s natural tendency to strive towards that cold equilibrium that marks the end of all things; there was always going to be an end to humanity that was unstoppable. It makes the man think that none of this really mattered in the first place.

That final conclusion makes the man think more; why did he work so much to live if it was never to matter in the first place? Just a month ago he was scrambling to close a sale of a house and in a few hours there would be no more house to speak of. All of that work and blood and sweat is to be wiped out forever and it was to change nothing.

Around him, the quaint desert sits in silence. A line of mountains mark the horizon to his west; they mark the world as if a signature of God on his greatest creation. No sounds of animals could be heard; they have receded into the soil of the Earth to live out their final moments. Unfortunate for them that they cannot see the great view above us all, the man thinks, and at that he comes to a realization.

Perhaps there was no changing the ending but in all of our obsession with it we failed to realize it was never about the ending at all. The ending was always death but there is no peaceful death for those who never lived. It is a life of creating, of helping others, of making something better that lets us look at Death seeing all we have done and not all that we haven’t; and that final infinitesimal moment is the only moment we get to spite the constant strive towards entropy that defines the Universe. It is the only time we get to be greater.

The comet is closer now, but the man can still see the stars beyond. They blanket the sky in such numbers that he would be unable to count them all before his death, each of them surrounded by great planets like his own, and perhaps those planets hold people like his own, people who spite the will of the Universe every day they decide to live. They create things in direct opposition to the way things ought to be, and there is nothing more beautiful than that. And when they meet their end, in a great fire or biting cold, they can move on knowing that there was a time they had lived and experienced all the greatness that the world had on display.

The man can only wait now, accompanied by the emptiness around him, but it gives him all the time he could ever ask for to remember why he ever lived in the first place. The sky grew brighter and brighter and then there was a thunderous boom and then there was nothing.

Once, there was a boy that sat by the side of the lake with a fishing rod in his hand. He had been there to fish for trout but now he observed the nature around him while his grandfather went back to the car to fetch more bait. Many fish swam in the lake and the boy could see them flowing through the water below like they knew how to do nothing else. On occasion a bass or catfish would break the water’s surface and create waves of the same vermiculate patterns that defined the scales of their skin. The trees waved slightly with the wind and the boy felt that everything was as it should be.

His grandfather came back after some time with a box of earthworms ready to meet their end in service of the two. He held his own fishing rod in his hand and sat down next to the boy, who still fixated his attention on the world around.

Ready to fish more, son? The grandfather asked. The boy did not respond. The grandfather realized what captivated the boy and his smile grew a little before he gave the boy a tap on the shoulder.

Huh? The boy gasped.

Ready to fish? The grandfather repeated. 

Yes, sir, I am! The boy repeated enthusiastically. The grandfather attached a worm to the boy’s tackle and then his own before they casted their lines out to the lake once more. The two did not speak again as they waited for their catch. The grandfather wanted to marinate in the peace of the woods with his grandson and the boy felt the same. The two lived for these moments of serenity and neither of the two would have it any other way. The great lake reflected the blue sky above, undisturbed, like the veil for some great mystery that would remain unseen through all of time.