Stardust

Vaanvizhi stood, leaning on the ancient stones of Stonehenge. Cool stones in a cold climate. The stones had been shifted by people with no access to technology, and placed in alignment with the heavens. Her bank account was now down to a few hundred Euros, but she had still splurged on the ticket to come here. To touch the stones, not just look at them. To be in touch with the thirst of the human mind - the passion to understand and to thrive. She closed her eyes, letting the energy of the place wash over her. She walked away. There was a flight to catch, after all. 

She settled down in the flight, staring out the window as it took off, and Big Ben and the Millennium wheel turned into specks. She had spent a week in London, had taken a train to Shropshire, walked in Hyde Park, paid her respects to Isaac Newton, and visited 221B Baker Street. What magic had the authors woven?

Suddenly, a passenger approached her. “You are Vanvizzy, right? My daughter loves your books. They are magical!” Vaanvizhi smiled. She always forgot. She was also a bestselling author now. She talked to the woman about her daughter. “Wants to be a scientist when she grows up. She is 9.” Vaanvizhi looked out the window and sighed. A nine-year old budding scientist. She smiled back.

As the conversation drew to a close, she found her mind wandering once more. She thought of all the places she had visited in the last two months. The Great Wall, the Pyramids, the Incan civilizations, the Smithsonian museum - and through it all, she had seen the same thing - thirst. Humanity's insatiable thirst for knowledge.

Her plane landed and she checked into a hotel. She needed to sleep. The next day was going to be special.

At the crack of dawn on the next morning, she boarded a bus to a cliff. Bungee jumping. She would not have done this earlier - she was afraid of paralysis. Not today. 

She was fitted with safety gear and hooked up to a harness. There was a river running at the bottom of the gorge. With a joyous shout, she leapt off the platform. The rush of adrenaline as she leapt off the edge was exhilarating. She was pulled back up - way too soon. But there was one more thing she had to do today. 

A few hours later, she was at the open door of a plane, with an instructor strapped on her back. They jumped - and fell, speeding towards the ground below. 

“9.8 meters per second squared, time to reach terminal velocity…” A voice in her brain started. She shushed it. She was going to live in the moment. The parachute opened and they slowed. She was in the sky. She was home. This was what had always grounded her, what had driven her to pursue her passions.

As she landed safely back on earth, she was ready. She checked her account again. Almost empty. Good. It was time to go home, to return to the city where she was born. The only place, really, where she could claim to have roots. She had grown up in an orphanage, without any family, but had built a tight circle of friends. Her eyes were always on the sky. She loved to stare at it. Loved to focus her telescope and watch a fuzzy spot develop features, loved to stare at pictures looking for moving objects, loved to look at it through math, through equations. Vaanvizhi - literally "Sky Eyes" - did the politician who named her at the orphanage annual day even know how accurate it was?

She had always wished for a family. But for the last few months, she was glad to have not had one. The findings that had sent a chill down her spine. The sterile rooms, the teamwork, the monitors - she had watched skilled hands do things she could not. Skilled hands and scientific minds. How many lives had they saved in the history of humankind? This time though - it ended in a hushed conversation: We have done all that we could. There is nothing more that we can do. Go, do what you need to do. 

She had kept it from her friends, but if she had a loving family? Could she have kept it a secret? Could she have done all that she had? She might have wanted to stay with them instead of traveling around the world. But then, could she have witnessed their pain? Those questions would go unanswered. Her friends, who were wondering what she was up to, would get an answer very soon. She didn't stop to collect her baggage. She didn't have time. 

As the cab wound its way through the city streets, she gazed out the window, taking in the sights and sounds of her hometown. The city had changed, and so had she. The cab driver, a young man with a big smile, asked her about her job and her travels, and she found herself opening up to him.

As they talked, she suddenly turned philosophical. "Nothing is eternal," she said in a practical tone. "Everyone will be forgotten, someday. If mountains can be ground down into the Earth, what are we?" The cab driver listened intently, his expression thoughtful, “I was in school when the city flooded, madam,” he said. “I was so happy when they closed the school because of rains, but then water came into our house. You know - there was a couple in a posh apartment in my street. They had an Audi. When the water came, they were in the same rescue camp next to me. You are right, madam. Nothing is forever. If God decides…”

She listened, entranced. But as she did, she caught herself. Why so much philosophy? Was this what they meant by "the surge" in those medical drama reels she loved to downvote? Was this the lamp burning brightly just before it was extinguished? She felt a shiver run down her spine as the cab came close to her destination. The beach. She asked him to stop. It was 9 PM.

The driver turned to her, his eyes serious. "Ma'am, It is not safe for you to be alone at the beach at night. Let me take you to a hotel nearby? It's there on all the websites, it is very safe. You can come back at sunrise. It will be beautiful then." Vaanvizhi smiled, and got out of the cab. Safety had no meaning anymore.

The cool night air enveloped her, and she breathed it in deeply. She walked along the long line of statues and monuments. People who had made a mark on human lives. They would be remembered as long as humanity itself existed.

She kicked off her slippers, dropped her backpack by the road and started walking towards the sea. A long, quiet walk. No other beach was this beautiful. She heard the sea before she saw it. She walked right up to the water's edge, the waves lapping at her feet. The full moon seemed to hang in a cloudless sky. Its light illuminated the sea. It was rougher than usual, the water an inky dark blue. It was a far cry from the cerulean hue it took on during the day, but it was no less beautiful. She was touching the ocean that connected all of humanity, the fount of life, the water that made the Earth look like a blue marble from space. The pale blue dot, humanity's fragile home.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small bottle. It was a powerful sedative - slightly psychedelic. She had never craved intoxicants - the stars had been enough for her. But today, she needed it. It was almost time. Her calculations were always right. 

Her mobile phone suddenly sprang to life, ringing loudly in the stillness of the night. She pulled it out, and saw that messages were pouring out in one group - “Planetary Defense.” It was a stream of "Goodbye"s and "We did our best"s. She added her own message, her fingers typing out the words "We will be, in another form. We are made of stardust." 

With that, she drank down the contents of the bottle, feeling the liquid burn its way down her throat. She threw the phone into the ocean and the bottle down onto the sand, and lay down, the sea gurgling around her, staring at the moon and stars.

As the sedative took hold of her brain, a bright object rose from the horizon, brighter than all the stars. It grew brighter as it blazed its way across the sky, moving behind the buildings of the city. A few minutes later, the ground beneath her shook. An asteroid had slammed into the Earth in Western Africa. 15 km wide. 

As the last vestiges of consciousness left her, and the Earth began to shake in earnest, Vaanvizhi thought of the pale blue dot. It would burn, shake, drown and survive. But without humanity. And she was going back. Back to stardust.

Note: 

The pale blue dot refers to this picture:

Earth (the dot in the middle) as seen from 3.7 billion miles away by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, on 6/6/1990 

Here is the accompanying passage by Carl Sagan :

... Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.