lost in galaxy:introduction

"I find myself weighing the sum of what we claim to know against the stories we whisper to keep the dark at bay. We are fragile things. We navigate by the stars of our own poor choices, making decisions that eventually come to collect their debt. The scientists call us the most complex organisms on this planet, yet we live in a state of permanent vertigo. If complexity cannot grant us clarity, then it is nothing more than a beautiful, tangled burden.

I first felt the weight of it in the fourth grade. Life is a relentless conveyor. We are born, we leave a smudge of memories on the glass of time, and then we vanish, handing our half-finished notes to the next in line. Evolution claims we’ve been here for a quarter of a million years or so the digital archives suggest usually followed by a cautious 'or more.' It is a scientist's way of admitting they are guessing.

But it isn't the vastness of the past that haunts me; it is the tide of the future. I fear the day my youth is pulled out from under me. I fear becoming a relic, a ghost sitting in a chair while the world pulses on without me, driven by the heartbeats of my own descendants. They say death can be delayed by a cheerful spirit, but it cannot be erased. Everything that draws breath is a debt that must eventually be settled with the earth. That is the law. But I find myself wondering if the law is nothing more than a lack of imagination.

It’s a grim joke, isn't it? We cannot even pinpoint the hour of our arrival. Perhaps that is why we lean so hard on the divine. I won’t claim God is a myth simply because He hasn't shown His face Yet I have seen too many men suffer in His name . I think He exists as a form of hope..... a blind, desperate hope. It isn't a bad thing, but hope can turn into despair .

Hope is the engine of our species. The hope to become, the hope to endure, the hope to build something that outlasts our own skin. We all carry it, though for most, it is a cage. Only a rare few find the key and step out into the vast, cold 'elsewhere.' Eliot Pecker was one of the lucky ones. Let’s see where his luck led him."