Impermanence (English)

By Frisano, Daniel

Book Id: WPLBN0100302737
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.3 MB
Reproduction Date: 29/07/2017

Title:	Impermanence (English)
Author:	Frisano, Daniel
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Drama and Literature, Mortality
Collections:	Authors Community, Science Fiction
Historic Publication Date:	2017
Publisher:	Xeno Publishing

Member Page:	Daniel Frisano
Citation APA MLA Chicago Frisano, B. D. (2017). Impermanence (English). Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Description
Humanity has discovered the formula for immortality: regular maintenance and replacement of organs, and daily electronic backup of complete brain data. In an infinitely remote future, inhabited solely by women, life flows eternal and serene, seemingly invulnerable to any possible threat. At least until...

Summary
Humanity has discovered the formula for immortality: regular maintenance and replacement of organs, and daily electronic backup of complete brain data. In an infinitely remote future, inhabited solely by women, life flows eternal and serene, seemingly invulnerable to any possible threat. At least until...

Excerpt
“Because I’m not buying it. For a start, according to official records, we’re supposed to be on Earth because our original planet became inhospitable when the star it orbited was close to collapse. But we don’t know its name, where it was, what became of it – whether the star turned into a white dwarf or whatever – or anything else. Don’t you find that strange?” Hawiya turned towards her with a quizzical look. Baxti shrugged: it wasn’t so important, she seemed to imply, no-one was interested in history, there were lots of things to cultivate that were far less boring. “Why doesn’t a single human remember where we lived before?” insisted Hawiya. “Because not a single one of us is interested,” replied her friend, in mock exasperation. “Our brain has huge – but not infinite – storage capacity, and we all prefer to use it for other things.” “It doesn’t seem plausible to me,” said Hawiya. “I can understand that the topic might not be so popular, but how is it possible that, out of all the hundreds of millions of people in the world, no-one is interested in preserving the memory of the last planet we lived on before moving to Earth? Plus, we know that even the smallest inter-galactic transfer – to move, say, a few hundred people – involves a massive investment of energy and materials. “How did we manage to move an entire planet? Where did we find the resources for so many and such large vehicles? And the hydrogen fuel? You’re going to say that resources in the universe are virtually unlimited: then why aren’t we using them to explore other planets? Aren’t we curious? There are just too many questions.” “Glad you said so yourself,” interjected Baxti, giving her friend a sidelong glance. “Too many questions, leading nowhere. Our existence is so cushy enough for us to seek complications where there aren’t any. Your questions are grains of sand in a mechanism that works a treat. Blow the sand away and the cogs will go on turning.” Yet she seemed more intent on convincing herself than her friend. “So what about the hominids?” resumed Hawiya, going back to her starting point. “What can I say,” replied Baxti. “They brought about their own extinction, who knows how many thousands of solar cycles ago, by rendering this planet uninhabitable, a condition that persisted for a long time after their disappearance. Their economy was based on fossil fuels, which goes to show how reckless and primitive they were: far more similar to animals than to us humans. “Little by little they poisoned the air, making life on the planet impossible for themselves and for many other species, some of which became extinct even before the hominids did. Once they were gone, Earth gradually repaired the damages it had suffered: habitability was restored relatively soon, and after a while we arrived.” “That’s something else I find hard to swallow,” said Hawiya. “It seems to me that hominids weren’t that primitive. They could express themselves and communicate, albeit in a coarse and rudimentary manner, and proved they could make some sense of their society, despite their occasional tendency to attack one another until one of the two parties destroyed the other, or the second surrendered, submitting to the authority of the first.”