Unabashed

If science is right, the sun still has a good 5 billion years worth of fuel left to burn. At that point it’ll turn into a red giant and swallow Mercury and Venus, possibly Earth as well. So a million years really, in the Universal time frame, is still just a smidgeon. Our entire history, as a species, on the Universal timeline, might occupy a single pixel on an image a hundred feet long. All I’m asking is: what will our history look like when we’ve got a few inches worth of history to look back at?

I think about this often. Our civilization is so young, our species is so young, and even though we’ve come so far in so little time, humanity is still in its infancy, even though the planet we live on (as well as our Sun) is middle-aged. I think of the history we’ve accumulated so far, how much of it is actually recorded, rather than speculated on. Realistically, we have recorded history from two to three thousand years ago. Beyond that, back into the last ice age and beyond, it’s all just speculation. And the Universe is roughly 13 billion years old. And here we sit, a fledgling species, at the cusp of many remarkable discoveries and accomplishments. What will the human race be like when it’s a million years old? I rarely hear any speculation. Even in science fiction, the future we explore is normally what could be classified as near, within, say, one hundred to one thousand years. Maybe even ten thousand if the author is really stretching it out. But a million years…that’s something that kind of makes my mind shiver and turn to water.

Even in that near future of SciFic we see mankind exploring the universe. Rarely is he evolved, though. Sure, there are usually some technological modifications to the bodies, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a story in which man was evolved. Maybe one where the pancreas had disappeared, but what about skin: will we all be cafe aulait colored? Will our hair be all the same color? Will we still have hair?

And this history we’ll have piled up… it’s staggering to think of the amount of information that might be immediately available to us, to any one. Only recently, since the advent of the Internet, have we really begun to make information available, to sufficiently put the world to record. If we continue to chronicle our lives and store the data, if the petabits keep piling up, the possibilities are limitless. Just think of it from one aspect, like ancestry. I’ve tried searching back through the census records to find my ancestors, and I have found some, back into the 1700s, but even that is only 300 years. At the rate our data is being stored a person in a million years will be able to track their lineage across that entire gulf of time, have pictures, video, imprints of lives. We are a nostalgic people, and I can’t help but think that we will still pine for the days of yore, even then.

How many ice ages will we have endured? How many catastrophic events? How many species will be extinct? Will we still have a moon? Will Saturn still have rings? Will we have finally solved the riddle of time? Space travel? We’re so close to so many things, and the possibilities are so exciting, it’s almost a shame that I won’t be there to see it. But maybe my great grandson (x1000) will be able to look back across the ages and see his old papa, in that little white house on that six acre patch of grass in Montevallo, Alabama, and smile. And, whether my book ever gets published or not, he’ll have a copy of it that he can read, because people will still love the feel of a good hardback in their hands. Of course it’ll be translated, and the antiquity of its ideas might seem simple, but it’ll be a connection, something I don’t have even with my father’s father, who died when I was very young.

There’s been a lot written about how rotten the future might be. But usually when I think of it I try to send some positive thoughts that way, I paint a nice picture of it in my mind. I still see grass and mountains with billy goats on top of them. I still see little houses where people farm for their food. But I see a people who have solved many of the big problems our civilization has today. Sure, they’ll have their own batch of problems, but they’ll have fixed a lot, too. One thing’s for certain: at some point, a few generations of humans will have to dedicate themselves to cleaning up the mess we left them.

I think that they will. I’m sorry that they’ll have to, but I believe they will.

What do you think life will be like in a million years?

written by Matt Mitchell