The Great Unknown
A Science-Fiction Monologue.
The day we set out we didn’t know what we were in for. We never do. Maybe that’s what makes us humans. That pioneer spirit. That incurable itch to see what’s out there. It’s what made us civilize the wild wild west; what took us to the moon. It’s what took us from huddling cave dwellers to concrete utopias. A million years ago there was probably some guy, maybe a Neanderthal or maybe one of our first ancestors, who looked outside his cave and decided to find whatever’s out there. We’ve never since looked back. Even through our darkest days, mankind has always spread, always searched for the next frontier. It’s our greatest strength and our greatest weakness, all at once. For what is evolution but also just a giant step into a future completely unknown to us.
In some ways it’s a disease. We can never be happy in what we have, where we are. It drives us mad, the stagnancy of nothing. In a thousand years we went from the Battle of Hastings, where chainmail clad knights fought vikings, to fiberglass clad men who stepped into space. But that same madness drove Eve to choose the apple, and for Adam to goad her on. It’s curiosity, that’s our disease.
That grand old urge to fuck around and find out.
It has lettered out the words of progress but it can just as well spell out our doom. In the great March ahead, sometimes we forget to ask ourselves if forward is even the right way?
Are we ants playing god?
My brothers and sisters, maybe this is a question we should have asked ourselves all those years ago. As I stand here on the flagship ‘Humanitas’, I don’t really know what to say.
All I can do is describe what I see. I see our home. The place where we were born. Burning.
I can see the blue of the seas rushing to flood our cities and villages. I can see the red of it’s core implode upon itself and split the planet in half. I can see what used to be my office turn to dust in empty space. The launch sites of the very ships we stand on, turned to ashes.
People of Earth, our homeland is no more. Alongside the many who couldn’t make it here with us. You all elected me to lead us through this crisis. And I have tried to do that to the best of my abilities.
We were not the ones who got humanity into this mess, but we let it happen. We aren’t the ones who decided to bait the bear, but we played on and placed our bets. We didn’t resist the urge to look into the great unknown within our planet’s core. Now we suffer the consequences.
We’ve all lost somebody or the other down there. Hell there’s so few of us up here we’d barely be a district back there. Nevertheless here we are.
There were warnings. Many of them, and yet we ignored it all. We just couldn’t get over that itch eh? We just couldn’t. The disease finally took us over, and we dove in headfirst. Now look at us.
As your President I know I must reassure you and plan out our collective future, But as a man, who just saw his home die before his eyes in fire and fury, I can only cry.
Tomorrow I shall lead you brothers and sisters, but today I need to grieve and mourn. Like all of you. It’s a bit ironic ain’t it? The way the circular justice of history operates. We who brought hellfire down upon ourselves by delving too far into the great unknown, must now venture into an even greater void as it’s consequence. Lord alone knows what we’ll encounter out there, but we will survive it!
May we find a home once again, and may we learn from our mistakes. This is your President ladies and gentlemen, and I address this message to every single ship in our starfleet.