EDEN… A New HyperShort by Anthony Lawrence

Today’s HyperShort tips on saving the race, only to discover a small glitch. Read on…

EDEN by Anthony Lawrence

My slave ancestors were brought by force to a new world but I stand here now close to the end of the 21st century as a free black man who has come willingly to discover a new world to save all of humanity.  It is one of three planets around the star Gliese 667C, long considered a target potentially capable of supporting life as we know it. Our incredibly long journey was made possible through the theory of space pioneer Robert Goddard who early in the 20th century proposed that “it might be possible to reduce the protoplasm in the human body to the granular state, so that it could withstand the intense cold of interstellar space.” It took nearly two centuries to realize that process of freeze-drying and slow awakening as well as development of the spacecraft which could achieve near-light speeds that brought us so far through space and time.

Our instrumentation informed us upon awakening that we had passed through cosmic strings and a Kerr hole that was a black hole with a rotating ring of neutrons that produced sufficient centrifugal force and was safe to enter without being crushed by the infinite gravitational power at its center. We were not sure how that had affected us in the space-time continuum but we were happy to be alive and searching for the target planet. It had originally been discovered by the principal investigator and planet hunter for the Kepler mission at the Ames Research Center.  It was an ideal exoplanet possessing large expanses of shallow surface water, heated by tidal forces, plate tectonics essential for life, and an atmosphere very much like earth. Its star was an orange dwarf, a bit cooler and smaller than our sun, but providing a more favorable ultraviolet environment than a yellow dwarf. It had a longer time to develop life and provide seasonal variations that spur diversity of life and evolution.

When we landed safely on the planet’s largest continent we named this new world “Eden” because it reminded all of us of the biblical garden of earthly delights as described in the Book of Genesis. We were staggered with the exquisite beauty of this new promised land. It seemed to be “Paradise found”, a far better earth-like twin exoplanet than we had imagined or expected, the gentle meadows, lush forests, the seas graceful and magnificent, rich with natural resources, all teeming with biodiversity. The indigenous people whom we met and have been so gracious are peace-loving, intelligent, similarly humanoid both physically and mentally. They have welcomed all of us as if we were of the same family tree. But they do seem primitive and child-like, and apparently had little desire, like earth humans, to build sophisticated architecture and empires.

We discovered very quickly that this is because their lifespans are roughly equivalent to that of an American Cocker Spaniel, approximately 11 years. We have only been here a relatively short amount of time and my once coal-black hair is already turning white.

©2014AnthonyLawrence