It’s something humanity has conditioned itself into believing for aeons.
That we are all alone, in this universe, which was concocted solely for us to inhabit, by forces that are simultaneously all-encompassing and extremely personal. Able to be grasped by the frail human mind and be touched, communicated with, whilst occupying a vast, unknowable territory far beyond our existence.
Perhaps to make our chance appearance on Earth seem more important than it truly was. Blow out of proportion what was likely one of the many dice-rolls of the perpetual chaos that is the cosmos. Give us that sense of grandiose pride that told us, “we, in fact, do matter”. Mankind seems to be the only terrestrial being who has a pathological obsession with what their existence means, why it means that, where it comes from, and who could’ve caused it. As far as anyone is aware, no other creature seems to be too concerned with these matters. Maybe that’s for the best. They seem freer and happier as a result.
What does one do when they’re confronted with the fact that…maybe we are not alone, when it comes to…out there? How is an individual supposed to react in the presence of unknown factors which reveal to us that the yawning abyss, the endless depths of incalculable infinity, the gaping maw of that which we don’t know, cannot ever know, and, most controversially, shouldn’t know…we are, indeed, in the presence of something else?
Apparently, all you can do is grip the knuckles of one’s steering wheel and slam one’s foot to the gas pedal, in pure shock, absolute terror, eyes gazing at everything you did not know. Teeth clenched as the…the…thing…appeared to be actively pursuing you.
But before that, you notice the peculiar shape in the sky. So bizarre, so otherworldly, so out of place is it…that all you can do is try to block out its existence from one’s mind, in a desperate attempt to say, “that wasn’t there”. But it was. That was no dream. And it knows that you know it was there.
Suddenly, you’re not where you were before. It looks similar. Not the same, but similar. However, details are off. The scenery you were used to driving past in your car for countless months was now foreign, alien, in ways that it shouldn’t have been, for it had not changed ever since you’d come to know it.
Your heart had never pounded this hard before, and probably never since you saw that mobile, dark mass of what-the-fuck-is-that coasting over the field, hovering idly atop what you had always known to be an empty patch of desolate grass and dirt. No doubt a harsh reminder that you and your bipedal kin were not masters of reality, and did not know all, did not perceive all, did not experience or even come close to understanding all.
In those moments, aeons of belief are shattered like fine china, reduced to little else but past comforts.
A World In Flames 