Planet Eater

Out of the near-perfect darkness of empty space, in an ocean of surface-less vacuum, particles converge. A miracle in itself, this goes on, and on; for a timeless epoch our only way of comprehending is in the term “millions of years”. The result is a thin cloud, spinning in the void.

Another timeless “millions of years” later, the thin cloud has a bright warm center, spreading its light and energy in every direction. The cloud beyond this center forms orbiting spheres, each a new and semi-independent miracle. Connected by their placement within the immediate influence of the center “star”… The Universe resonates with the beginning of identity, separateness of its new children, and finally, named. We hear the name of the central star, one of millions upon billions, as “The Sun”.

We don’t know how many times, or how many wheres yet another miracle occurred. We only surmise that the third world out from The Sun, named Earth, is not the only blessed with Life.

Bold supposition imagines this blessing as a random stone long lost and drifting, the result of some far distant calamity, being collected into the Earth’s system in a fiery and dramatic impact, quickly forgotten amongst other similar events, common as the distant calamities.

This one stone — unique in a Universe of diversity? — spreads the fine powder of its debris in a radius wide, spreads through the “air”, the “water”, established now on Earth.

They become as seeds, the spawning of the first precursors to a different eventual establishment — organic life.

Again, a timeless “millions of years”, meaningless to the Universe, important only to us here on Earth as a “year” marks the orbit-ness of our travail around The Sun. The “millions of years” sees billions of faltering failed experiments; of chemistry, of light, of balances of energy, and that of unseen forces yet beyond our present comprehension.

Finally, either a goal is achieved, or meaningless accident occurs. Beyond simple self-replication, now Self-will, Self-motion, Self desire to live, to stay “alive”. And of such is born the dance of competition.

At first ragingly successful, a slight change in mode results in a sub-type exploiting the energy of organic life. The new forms devour, rob, yet no judgment…