Ashes To Ashes

It was dark in the beginning; a neutrino sat suspended in a vast array of nothingness. All things of real matter were frozen in an inanimate void of space and time. It was impossible to explain this vacuum -'it simply was. Then again, what was impossible against an infinite expanse of possibilities? As slowly as time had stood still, everything suddenly exploded into a myriad of limitless particles. The neutrino attracted a neutron, the neutron became part of an atom and the atom set off on its journey into forever. Space dust billowed out as billions upon billions of specks reached out like countless, curious fingers probing into every imaginable cranny. The space dust turned into nurseries, the nurseries gave birth to stars, stellar factories at the origin of creation. The atom witnessed all of this with a stoical acceptance; a complete lack of emotion. The stars found their own way into this newest of Universes as the celestial map became littered with galaxies. Within these hothouses of creation, balls of rock became planets and moons and from the planets there came new life. It was on a particularly blue and white ball of mediocrity that the atom finally settled; a quiet situation from which it could continue to exist (except those volcanoes that didn't allow this for too long).

Aeons passed until finally the atom found itself as part of an amoeba. From stoicism to basic life, the atom continued to simply be without getting too excited. Time crawled by and the days turned to weeks. Weeks became years, years turned to centuries and centuries became millennia. The atom saw its amoeba become a fish, the fish begot an amphibian, the amphibian turned to reptile and the reptile became a mammal - all of this in a blink of the eye of God.

It was as a mammal that the atom first encountered man. Born into the continent of North America, the atom found itself as part of a conscious being that thought differently to anything it had ever been a part of. It wasn't all about what was next for dinner anymore. Creative sparks flew around the man's head, thoughts the atom could be curious at but not get overly bothered about. The man's arrogance bordered on that of the metaphorical Gods and creators by imagining himself to be immortal at times. It was an illusion formed by his power to build things of unimaginable, technical brilliance compared to anything that had gone before. The problem was his life span. In the merest flicker of time, it was already his time to die. The man lay down and closed his eyes. As his cells broke down, so electrical signals raced around his body, thumping into his brain generating an image of Heaven. The white lights softened the end, his thoughts tricked into imagining a new beginning. There was none apart from that original occurrence from the very start of time. The light of the world turned to dark and the sky filled with rain. As the atom carried on it might have noticed a never-ending chain of rainbows when the rain stopped and the sun still shone. As the life ebbed away from mortal man, a white dove flew into the sky and through the numerous rainbows. With its figure disappearing into the distance, the man's soul slipped away and his atoms dissipated once more into the surrounding ether.

Nothing had really changed; the atom was just a small, infinitesimal part of this Universe as it had always been. It had been there in the beginning and would be there at the end. In that, man can take comfort and not worry so about the finite aspect of an infinite canvas of black and whites. We are what we are and no more. We are merely atoms.