Monday, September 13, 2010

Ridiculous

I Want To Believe That The Truth Is Out There


Zornak turned a few dials, and his personal starship began to power up. “I swear, Klardun. The Great Crystal appeared to me in a dream. I need you to believe me.”
“Well, I don’t.” Klardun snorted. “The only reason I am coming on this ridiculous journey is to show you that you are very wrong.”
“You’ll see.” Zornak’s brow creased as he remotely removed the docking clamps from his ship, and begin to raise the craft into the air. “The crystal told me there was other life out there, and showed me how to get to it…I think.”
“Wait,” Klardun turned quickly. “You think!? So you’re even more lost than completely? That’s just great, Zornak!”
Zornak couldn’t help but frown at himself and Klardun. “I’m sure. I know it was a dream. Our logic sages would tell me that it means nothing, but the few mystics left would urge me to follow it.” He accelerated even more, hit the thrust button, and they shot out of the atmosphere, and into the dull, dotted black of space. “If I didn’t do this, I would spend the rest of my larval stage wondering if it was actually true or not.”
“So your logic processes are going well then. I thought you might have lost your minds, but you seem to be functioning well.” Klardun sat down next to Zornak and put two of his four long, green arms on his shoulder. “We have been friends since the birthing core when they accidentally sent both of us to the same brood drone. I will follow you anywhere, but I do not want you to be disappointed.”
“I know. Thank you, Klardun.” Zornak switched on the automatic pilot and trained an eye on his friend. “A part of me expects to be let down, and another part knows I am crazy and is trying desperately to notify the rest of me. Yet…yet the largest part of me, down to my hearts and stomach, knows that I am right. Knows that we will find dumb, but alive and flourishing someones out there.”
“The Great Crystal told you this, right?”
“Yes, you know that.”
“In a dream?”
“Yes. Why are you repeating your questions?”
“Just making sure I have it right.”
Zornak sighed and stood up. He placed all his hands on the back of a chair. “Look. Logic plus science plus common sense tells us that we cannot be the only beings in the universe.”
Sighing himself, Klardun leaned back in his own chair and put two hands behind his head. “That is correct, but it has been a millennium (give or take) since we took to space, and none have been found.”
“We have not searched everywhere.”
Klardun scratched his neck, and glanced out the window. “That is true, but we have searched many systems.”
“Once again, not all. I am going to look behind. Unthink, and go completely against how we have been taught to think. Unravel my own mind to make a straight line to the truth.”
Klardun sat up. “How will you do this?”
Zornak chuckled, “Search a place that our scientists have decided could not possibly support life.”
“And where would that be?”
“In a system with only one medium-sized star. Small, really.” Zornak crossed his arms and smirked at Klardun.
“Impossible. Absolutely impossible. Our physicists have proven that life can only exist in a binary system with large suns.”
Zornak threw up his hands. “Yes, and they got that information how? By finding a bunch of life in these binary systems? No one or thing has been found! They have only searched where they have decided life could exist, without trying the possibility of something ridiculous.”
Klardun stood and advanced on Zornak. “Ridiculous is not scientific.”
“Of course it isn’t if you think of it in those terms and always trust the textbooks.” Zornak stepped back. “Thousands of years ago when scientists found that everything comes from the very small, and that most of the universe is made up of nothing, it was ridiculous. Preposterous, inconceivable, and impossible to everyone, but it was proven right. Space travel was once thought of as impossible, and now we are bending space to our will to get somewhere millions of miles away very quickly. If you tweak your mindset, you will see that ridiculous things are proven more often than they are disproven.”
Klardun opened his mouth, then closed it, raised a hand, dropped it, and finally slumped back in his chair. “You are a logic student as well as I. How did you change your mind to think in such a way?”
Zornak came to Klardun and placed a hand on his shoulder. “My very best of friends. All I did was believe. I did nothing more or less than believe that all the ridiculous things could be real. That spark is what drives me, compels me, and it makes itself grow with passion and a fervor for the truth.”
Klardun looked up at Zornak, “You should have been a poet.”
“No thank you. It does not pay nearly as well.”
Klardun smiled, but it was soon gone. He looked long and hard at his friend. He licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay, Zornak. I am now with you in this all the way.” He raised a hand. Zornak took it, and pulled Klardun to his feet. “Show me these awkward pink primates you saw in a dream.”
Zornak smiled again. “I will do so much more than that, friend. Buckle up, Klardun, because we’re about to get ridiculous.”

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