Paranormal
We drove down the endless expanse of the desert, silent and tired from the initial excitement that we shared when we had just gotten into the car. It was, after all, going to be a nice long drive across the desert, far more exotic in our imaginings than what we were looking at outside the window.
Heads leaning against the window, lost in thought or maybe not, everyone was looking outside at what nothing was passing by.
We had no air conditioning, our only respite was to keep the window open and bear the furnace winds that whipped our faces. Still, it was better than keeping the windows closed and being cooked inside. It was better than being lost somewhere in the middle of those sand dunes, not being able to get a proper sense of direction and eventually collapsing of thirst, our decaying corpses to be buried underneath the sand dunes until archaeologists discovered it. If ever.
A desert is nature in it's calmest fury. A volcano or hurricane can kill you instantly. This, though, killed you slowly. It didn't have to do anything, it just had to be there and that would be it for you. The road we were on was the only hint of civilization here. A long, black ribbon pasted unnaturally against the golden-brown of the desert sands.
There were different types of desert areas we passed by. The sparsely vegetated areas, then the dunes and then the dry hills. I looked at the hills and tried to imagine what it must have been like millions of years ago when this whole place had been covered by an ocean, and how the ocean shaped what I was looking at right now. And whether there were any aquatic dinosaur fossils to be found if we'd just get off the road, head there and start digging.
Never mind.
We stopped in between to stretch ourselves. The highway was empty, completely empty. I stretched my hands and looked everywhere. A clear blue sky, and the flat earth. I saw nothing. I reached for it. And all I could hear was the wind whistling by us and throwing sand in our teeth. I stepped off the road and walked into the sand. My senses responded to the absence of tar. It was somewhat psychological, as if the tar somehow protected us from the death that may await us if we were to get lost there. Yet, it was as though the desert was beckoning me to hop onto a camel and ride off into the dunes.
As we drove on after that, I felt a little more energized and noticed the colors being thrown about as the sun proceeded towards the edge of the planet to sink into the evil underworld where, who knows... dragons may reside. Shadows lengthened, and colors would change rapidly... from the regular golden-brown, to a sudden blazing hue of orange everywhere, or a pink-purple against an odd silhouette on hill tops and often a sharp wisp of clouds in there, just like an oil painting, only more awe inspiring.
The wind cooled down and so did we. The sun threw its best colors at us as it sank in the distance, as if to remind us that it wasn't gone yet. Dark blue descended on us. Everything turned a shade of blue, except for the blackest things. There was no moon.
We happened upon a small structure near the side of the road. It was very plain and simple. It looked like a concrete cube with one side removed, and a flat surface inside it, nothing else. Next to it was another concrete cube, but with the roof missing. I figured, it was for travelers who wanted to rest at night, and there was enough there for us. So we did stop.
I went to the cube without the roof, that's where I lay down. I didn't really mind the dust there. What was the point? She was sharing the cube with me, and started sweeping her area with a newspaper. It had to be clean.
Night had fallen and there we were, lying down, looking up. It was completely quiet, but I could still hear something. It was as if I was feeling with my sense of hearing, much in the same way that we have intuition or a sixth sense about an object, except that I could hear the existence of the place, the emptiness, the power.
As we lay there, she reached over and held my hand. Neither of us flinched, we were just looking up there.
Without turning towards me, she asked, "Do you see it?"
"Yes," I answered.
"What do you think?" she wanted to know.
"Well... I'm looking up at this brilliant white band in the sky. We have no moon right now, but those stars are just enough to light up everything here. It's surprising, back in the city all that light pollution, you tend to forget what the sky really looks like. Then you come to a place like this, no lights or anything for miles around. Just you lying flat on the ground, and the Milky Way covering a sky that looks like a dome right now. A large, inverted bowl. And the shooting stars I'm looking at, they're so common here, but such a big event back in the city. And I can see some moving objects and recognize them as satellites. Did you know that satellites always tend to travel along the perceived 'length' of the Milky Way?"
"Hmm," she wanted me to continue.
"I'm looking at this brilliant clustering of stars, and I'm thinking that this is what the ancients must have seen. They didn't have a night life or an urban jungle lit up all night long to block their view of the sky. What they saw is what we are looking at right now! And they had to look at this every night of their lives, it's no wonder they saw all the patterns, like the lion and the hunter, and made stories about them. And this probably led to the mythological stories as we know it today. I mean, think about it, the religions we are following may be a manifestation of those mythologies which were exaggerated over time and twisted around to give it a more modern significance. And today, we fight over these reasons which we can't even understand."
"But I feel different from what the ancients must have felt. I have more knowledge than they do, I know that what I'm looking at isn't some path for the gods, but it's the Milky Way band. I know that I'm looking at our galaxy on its edge. And I know that right in the middle there, is a black hole. And what I'm looking at right now is just our galaxy. There are so many more out there. And I know that these are all stars and nebulae and supernovas and other objects out there and it makes me realize how insignificant we are. I feel so small when I try to imagine how vast it must be out there. And somehow, the fact that life has formed on this planet makes us feel that we're the center of attention of some divine power, when it seems to me that we are just a random occurrence in a relatively infinite universe. We were bound to happen, this thing we call life, it was supposed to have been created somewhere, here in this case, and create these creatures called humans who were at an intellectual level to be able to realize their existence and question themselves. And so our ancients came to the conclusion that it was a god that created them, and I am thinking that it was a supernova explosion that gave our DNA this helix like structure that made us what we are today."
"But think about it, we're making so much progress today. We're discovering lots of new things about this universe we're in and I think that this will bring a new change in us humans in the future. I think that a point will come when all of us are intelligent enough to realize that religion is irrelevant, and that science exists to replace it. And it'll make us realize that we are not the center of a divine universe. I am sure that the discovery of alien life forms will definitely be a major factor in making us realize this."
"But who knows? Maybe aliens don't exist, or maybe we'll never get to contact them, but my point is, all these things coming out just because of stars in the night sky. Only a view like this can make us question who we are and try to figure it out. What if there IS no meaning? What if there IS? What if we never find out? Yet this sky, this night sky, it will always make us question it. At any given time, there will be someone somewhere on our planet looking up at a night sky and thinking about these very same things and reaching different conclusions, their own realizations."
"You know what? Even though we may never discover the answers to all our questions, I think that it's wonderful that we are able to come up with these questions and thoughts, despite being so limited in our senses and our space. There may be something that we are completely unaware of, yet it may be something that is of such significance to us that its non-existence would mean the non-existence of our universe. So many theories about its nature, there are theories of 22 dimensions, super string theories, quantum physics, the list is endless!"
"But the fact that we can explore these concepts and come up with these ideas, that makes us who we are! And the fact that we think about the universe, our existence... our existence is all in our heads. It's all in this lump of gray matter which just happens to be a creation of this universe. It's as though we've been created as a manifestation, to realize the universe as it is."
We were quiet for a long time after that. Just looking. Finally, I turned my head to her. "What do you think?" I asked.
"Well, I think the stars are really pretty," she giggled.
"I think you're full of shit!" came the voice from the other cube. He had been listening to me ramble. They laughed in unison.
I fell silent.
At that moment I realized something.
I turned to my side, closed my eyes and went to sleep.
