Monday, March 07, 2011

the last free people in the world

in the outer reaches of the universe, it is just another morning in an advanced world. an advertising agency writer is having his morning stimulant beverage and thinking about a news clip he saw last night at office.

not that he goes anywhere physically for work, his pad turns into a workplace, home, hangout zone at the flick of a button. in his world, traveling is limited only to the discovery of exoplanets in the far reaches of the known universe. and this is exactly what the video was about.

just when they thought that the whole world was known and conquered, in a distant and minor spiral galaxy millions of light years away, a tiny blue planet has been recently discovered. and it is teeming with primitive bipedal life forms!

"the last free people in the universe" their discoverer said about them. he wonders for how long they'll remain free. soon his civilization's vast machinery will move-in to claim its right on their lands, their resources and even their lives. many reasons will be given for this, that 'they' are primitive and must be civilized, that they will go extinct if we don't go and help them out, that their mineral wealth (if any) is needed for the continuation for his own civilization.... but underlying all of them will be the notion that his is a superior race and being superior, it can do anything with an inferior race.

he ponders what being civilized and advanced really means? meanwhile, as he's getting late for that urgent campaign he was supposed to deliver last night, he flicks the button and enters his office. as he starts typing, a thought sneaks into his mind, what if his own world was some other world's primitive world?

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a fictionalized account inspired by this video featured on BBC's YouTube channel. the questions it generated in my mind are not fictional though.


5 comments:

paris parfait said...

Good questions! Nice piece, Adee.

Surubhi said...

#iwish too :)

Birdie said...

Though I'm not even distantly related to cosmology - the study of universe, it has always interested me. Imagine travelling into space, a journey that will never end. I mean you don't know where it ends? Whether it ends also or not? The concept of space on earth fails here. An area that ends is a space but The Space (with capital S) rules out that definition.

Actually, anything thats unknown, is interesting to human brain. And so is the last line of your post. Well written. Its a hair raising thought.

Keep writing,
Birdie

delhidreams said...

tara: thanks! glad u liked it :)

suru: wishing what my dear :)

birdie: the unknown intrigues more than the known. but in this post, my effort was to find the unknown in the known and intrigue the reader with that :) glad u liked it. thanks a lot for the thought provoking comment :)

Ire said...

I really enjoyed this post Adee! Thanks for sharing!

dreamt before

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