for every conceivable element in the galaxy that is affected by, or affects, the galaxy’s overall evolution. I thought you’d be especially interested in this first exhibit.”
The room was similar to the one where the Eagle and Nicole had first seen the Milky Way, except that it was considerably smaller. Again they boarded a moving platform that allowed them to move around in the dark room.
“What you are going to watch,” the Eagle said, “requires some explanation. It is essentially a time-lapse summary of the evolution of spacefaring civilizations in a galactic region containing your Sun and about ten million other star systems. This is approximately one ten-thousandth of the entire galaxy, but what you will see is representative of the galaxy as a whole.
“You will not see any stars or planets or other physical structures in this display, although their locations are assumed in developing the model. What you will see, once we begin, are lights, each representing a star system in which a biological species has become a spacefarer by at least putting a spacecraft in orbit around its own planet. As long as the star system remains a living center for active spacefarers, the light in that particular location will stay illuminated.”
“I am going to start the display about ten billion years ago, soon after what has evolved into the current Milky Way Galaxy was initially formed. Since there was so much instability and rapid change at the beginning, no spacefarers emerged for a long time. Therefore, for the first five billion years or so, up until the formation of your solar system, I will run the display rapidly, at a rate of twenty million years per second. For reference purposes, the Earth will begin to accrete roughly four minutes into this process. I will stop the display at that time.”
They were together on the platform in the large chamber. The Eagle was standing and Nicole was sitting beside him in her wheelchair. The only light was a small one on the platform mat allowed the two of them to see each other. After staring around her at the total darkness for more than thirty seconds, Nicole broke the silence. “Did you start the process?” she asked. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Exactly,” the Eagle replied. “What we have observed, from watching other galaxies, some much older than the Milky Way, is that no life emerges until the galaxy settles down and develops stable zones. Life requires both a few steady stars in a relatively benign environment and stellar evolution, resulting in the creation of the critical elements on the periodic chart that are so important in all biochemical processes. If all the matter is subatomic particles and the simplest atoms, the likelihood of the origin of life of any kind, much less spacefaring life, is very very small. Not until large stars go through their complete life Cycles and manufacture the more complex elements like nitrogen, carbon, iron, and magnesium do the probabilities for the emergence of life become reasonable.”
Below them an occasional light flickered, but in the entire first four minutes, no more than a few hundred scattered lights appeared, and only one endured for longer than three seconds. “Now we have reached the time of the formation of the Earth and the solar system,” the Eagle said, preparing to activate the display again.
“Wait a moment, please,” Nicole said. “I want to make certain I understand. Did you just show me that for the first half of galactic history, when there was no Earth and no Sun, comparatively few spacefarers evolved in the region around where the Sun would eventually form?… And that of those spacefarers, almost all of them had a species life span of less than twenty million years, and only one managed to survive for as long as sixty million years?”
“Very good,” the Eagle said. “Now I am going to add another parameter to the display. If a spacefarer has succeeded in traveling outside his own star system and has established a permanent presence in another-which you humans have of course not yet done-then the display acknowledges that expansion by illuminating the other star system as well, with the same color light. Therefore we can follow the spread of a specific spacefaring species. I am also now going to change the rate of the display by a factor of two, to ten million years per second.”
Only half a minute into the next period, a red light came on over in one corner of the room. Six to eight seconds later, it was surrounded by hundreds of other red lights. Together they shone with such intensity that the rest of the room, with its occasional solitary or pair of lights, seemed dark and uninteresting by comparison. The field of red lights then abruptly vanished in a fraction of a second. First the inner core of the red pattern went dark, leaving small groups of lights scattered at the edges of what had once been a gigantic region. A blink of the eye later and all the red lights were gone.
Nicole’s mind was operating at peak speed as she watched the lights flashing around her. That must be an interesting story, she thought, reflecting on the red lights. Imagine a civilization spread out over a region containing hundreds of stars. Then suddenly, pfff, that species is gone. The lesson is inescapable. For everything there is a beginning and an end. Immortality exists only as a concept, not as a reality.
She glanced around the room. A general recurring pattern was developing as more and more regions hosted an occasional passing light, indicating the emergence and disappearance of another spacefaring civilization. Because even those beings that spread out and colonized adjoining star systems lived for such a brief time, only rarely did they come into proximity with a companion spacefaring civilization.
There has been intelligence, and spacefaring, in our part of the galaxy since before there was an Earth, Nicole thought, but very few of these advanced creatures have ever had the thrill of sustained contact with their peers….So loneliness too is one of the underlying principles of the universe-at least of this universe.
Eight minutes later the Eagle again froze the display. “We have now reached a point in time ten million years before the present,” he said. “On the Earth, the dinosaurs have long since disappeared, destroyed by their inability to adapt to the climate changes caused by the impact of a great asteroid. Their disappearance, however, has allowed the mammals to flourish, and one of those mammalian evolutionary lines is starting to show the rudiments of intelligence.”
The Eagle stopped. Nicole was looking up at him with an intense, almost pained expression on her face. “What’s the matter?” the alien asked.
“Will our particular universe end in harmony?” Nicole asked. “Or will we be one of those data points that helps God define the region He is seeking by being outside the desired set?”
“What prompts you to ask that question right now?” the Eagle said.
“This whole display,” Nicole answered, waving with her hand, “is an amazing catalyst. My mind has dozens of questions.” She smiled. “But since I don’t have time to ask them all, I thought I would ask the most important one first.
“Just look at what has happened here,” she continued, “even now, after ten billion years of evolution, the lights are widely scattered. And none of the groupings that exist have become permanent or widespread, even in this relatively small portion of the galaxy. Surely if our universe is going to end in harmony, sooner or later lights indicating space-farers and intelligence should be illuminated at almost every star system in every galaxy. Or have I misinterpreted what Saint Michael meant by harmony?”
“I don’t think so,” the Eagle said.
“Where is our solar system in this current display?” Nicole now asked.
“Right there,” the Eagle said, using his light beam pointer.
Nicole glanced first at the area around the Earth and then quickly surveyed the rest of the room. “So ten million years ago, there were about sixty spacefaring species living among our closest ten thousand stellar neighborhoods. And one of these species, if I understand that cluster of dark green lights, originated not too far from us and had spread to include twenty or thirty star systems altogether.”
“That’s correct,” said the Eagle. “Should I run the display forward again, at a slower rate?”
“In a little while,” Nicole said. “I want to appreciate this particular configuration first. Up until now everything has been happening in this display faster than I could possibly absorb it.”
She stared at the group of green lights. Its outer edge was no more than fifteen light-years from where the Eagle had marked the solar system. Nicole motioned for the Eagle to start the display again and he told her the rate would now be only two hundred thousand years a second.
The green lights moved closer and closer to the Earth and then they suddenly disappeared. “Stop,” yelled Nicole.
The Eagle halted the display. He looked at Nicole with a quizzical expression.
“What happened to those guys?” Nicole said.
“I told you about them a couple of days ago,” the Eagle said. “They genetically engineered themselves out of existence.”
