The Room
von Jacques Pinard Brown (Copyright)
In a very large room sits a very old man with a very long white beard.
This extremely large room is sparsely furnished. It has a bed, a chair and a closet. Some volumes of ancient books line the walls. In the center of the room stands a very large wooden table. Upon this table stand several large round translucent globes. They are all filled with darkness but faintly illuminated by millions of pinpricks of light. In a way discernable only by the old man with the beard, they are all interconnected.
The old man removes an instrument from underneath his garments and inspects one of the dark globes on the table with it. He presses one end of the macgafter against the side of a globe, and positions his one eye onto the other end. The other eye closes as he focuses. He mumbles words only coherent to himself as he peers into the globe.
Inside the globe he sees past suns and moons and planets. He sees galaxies and milky ways. He sees star storms and cosmic clouds. He looks into the center, to the very origin of it all. Here the star clouds and clusters are thick and micro organic life flourishes. He prides himself momentarily on the wonders of his creation. Beautiful, beautiful star people. From the great primeval biological monsters that roam on some scarcely developed worlds, up to the highest evolved creatures, that transplore this little universe on lovely cosmic wings, glinting in the sunlight. They fly freely on the power of their glorious little souls, through the vast reaches of this microcosmic universe. Primitive spacecraft crawl through space, where these creatures fly at great speed.
Then the old man focuses on a little insignificant solar system on the edge of it all. He seeks out its only life giving planet; a little blue-green orb, with his eye. He looks at the little planet bound folk in their suits and automobiles, choking themselves to death with the fumes. They are always struggling, as they had their whole existence, to free themselves of the limitations of their little world, and their little mortal lives. Ever struggling to be free, but unable to free themselves of the constraints of their minds.
And the old man looks at all these billions of tiny humans and he smiles. He smiles because he knows that each one of them, from the greatest to the least, is pondering the mysteries of the universe, and the meaning of life. Each one of these millions of minions ponders the meaning of existence.
The white-bearded old man sits back in his chair and smiles to himself. That these little mortals should ponder and seek out that which is greater than they, that to him is the most precious thing of all.
And, unbeknownst to him, he is also being watched in the same way by a white bearded old man from far away, who is wondering the same thing about him, and so on, ad infinitum.