Deep Time

Deep Time

Scene: A rocky, wind-swept coastline in Scotland, Siccar Point. The year is 1788. JAMES HUTTON, a man in his 60s, rugged from years of exploration and study, stands at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the waves crashing below. His clothes are those of a gentleman scientist of the Enlightenment, but they are worn and stained with the earth from many expeditions. In his hand, he holds a walking stick, using it to point occasionally to the rock formations around him. He speaks as if to himself, lost in thought, his voice both reflective and awed by the revelation dawning upon him.

JAMES HUTTON:

(He kneels down and places his hand on the exposed rock face, feeling it with reverence.)

Here it is, the evidence beneath my fingers, silent yet louder than any clamour of man’s reason. Siccar Point—a simple name for what may be the most profound tale ever told. How long has the world been here? How old is this Earth? For centuries, man has thought in ages… epochs of kings and empires, the histories of human striving, rising and falling like the waves below. But now… now I see something beyond all that. I see the true age of the Earth, far beyond anything our minds have dared to comprehend.

(He stands and looks out over the water, letting the wind pull at his coat.)

It was here, with these rocks, that I first glimpsed time itself laid bare. We speak of time so carelessly, don’t we? As though we could hold it, measure it, limit it. But time is… endless. An abyss. These stones tell me that much.

I see patterns—patterns where others see only disorder, chaos. I don’t know why my eye is drawn to them, but it always has been. As a child, when I wandered the hills near Edinburgh, I marvelled at how the rivers carved their paths, at how the soil gathered and the rocks rested in curious shapes. I wondered why things lay where they did, how they came to be as they are. While others saw mere land, I saw history—written not in books but in the very bones of the Earth.

(He gestures with his walking stick to a jagged, vertical seam in the rocks.)

Look at this. A junction. Two different layers of rock, pressed together, one horizontal, the other steeply tilted. Here is where the story begins. The lower layers, these are ancient - sediments from seas long gone. They settled slowly, grain by grain, under water, building over untold millennia. But look how they are angled, pushed upwards. Some great force lifted them from the depths, raising what was once the bed of an ancient ocean toward the sky.

Yet, after all that upheaval, the story didn’t end. No, it continued. Time passed. Ages passed. Another sea formed. More sediment gathered. The surface was worn smooth, as though nature herself had forgotten the violence that tore these rocks apart. And then, on top of this ancient surface, a new layer of rock formed, this time horizontal—new sediment settling atop the old.

It is almost unimaginable… but I see it. I see the eons stretch out before me, an unbroken chain of events, one after the other, layer after layer. The rocks, once buried and forgotten, have been thrust upward, exposed to the elements. And here they stand now, for me to behold… for me to understand.

(His voice grows more animated, as if he’s been struck by the magnitude of his thoughts.)

What we are looking at is not the work of a few thousand years, as the learned men in Edinburgh would have us believe. Oh no. This is the work of… what can only be described as Deep Time. Time beyond measure! An age that stretches backward not for centuries, but for millions—nay, even billions—of years.

We humans are so small, aren’t we? We think of the world in our own terms, the span of our lifetimes, our civilizations. But nature? Nature is patient. It works with forces beyond our control, and it works over timescales that dwarf us. The Earth did not spring into being all at once. It was shaped slowly, gradually, over aeons. And all of it is here, written in these stones, if only we can learn to read the language.

(He bends down again, picking up a loose stone, turning it over in his hands.)

I see the patterns that others do not because I cannot help it. It is as if I were born with the ability to look beyond the surface and see the story hidden within. I have spent my life wondering about the forces that shaped this world, and now… now, here, I have my answer. The Earth is far older than we could have ever imagined. It is not static, not fixed. It moves, it changes. It is alive, in a way.

And we? We are but a blink. A moment in this endless span of time. The rocks I hold now were formed before the dawn of man. They will still be here long after we are gone. What is a century to a mountain? What is a thousand years to the rise and fall of continents?

(He stands, gazing out to the horizon, lost in thought for a moment, before speaking softly again.)

Deep Time… yes, that is what I shall call it. An ocean of time so vast that we are but specks upon its surface. I have glimpsed eternity today, standing here at Siccar Point, and I wonder if anyone will ever truly understand what this means. Will they believe me? Will they grasp the enormity of it all? This world was not made for us. We are but its briefest guests, here for an instant, then gone, while the Earth itself continues on.

(He smiles faintly, shaking his head in wonder.)

I see the patterns. And I understand. And that is enough.

(He turns, walks slowly away from the edge of the cliff, leaving the rocks and the waves behind him as the wind carries his final words.)

Time is deeper than we could ever have imagined. And it is in the rocks that the secret is kept.

(Blackout.)