Pandora’s Box
Mars had been declared lifeless. Now it was time for real humans to set foot on the red planet.The world watched as the first men walked on the dusty surface in triumph; superlatives filled the media and at NASA great cheers resounded.
The next day both men were dead. They lay waxen like old Egyptian Mummies , their skin stretched and pock-marked heads almost skeleton- like. It looked as if both men had died in their sleep from a cause unknown. The situation was dire, as the whole trip was designed around manpower.
The next day their bodies began to dissolve and all organic materials in the ship began to break up and turn to dust. The watching world was filled with horror. The eccentric scientist Coburne Cox declared it was a virus that had laid dormant for millions of years and we in our exuberant foolishness had fed the beast.
Other more religious groups spoke of the wrath of God on the human race that had gotten too clever for its own good.
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You got me from your opening line. Where can I read the rest of the story….??
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There is no rest of story.
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An interesting story! Obviously it wasn’t a virus, since viruses don’t attack “all organic materials”, but merely cells. But what, then could it be? I like how you left the reader suspended!
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We should not limit ourselves or our thinking to that with which we are familiar. Our earthly organisms are based upon Carbon ( + Hydrogen and Oxygen and a few ‘basics’) What if Mars had silicon based organisms that fed on simple carbon-hydrogen bonds? Would they not then be capable of destroying (breaking down) all organic life as we know it? Such a ‘life-form’may even be microscopic, perhaps consisting of just a simple few thousand molecules or so?
love.
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Is silicon capable of such intricate complexity that carbon so effortlessly achieves ?
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Absolutely – same outer electron shell structure C and Si are siblings chemically. It can make some really interesting structures with P instead of Oxygen as Carbon might.
love.
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Professor of chemistry Raymond Dessy would strongly disagree , he has answered this question on the internet . It’s not easy for me , a layman, to follow but he gives several reasons as to why silicon could not take the place of carbon. I’m in the hands of the experts all I can do is question and cross check .
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Thanks, I read shorts whenever I can.
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Been a while since you posted?? 🙂
I was thinking about your statement over on my blog that an eye for an eye has certain advantages over turn the other cheek.
It has one fatal flaw also. (I’m surprised God did not seem to see this!)
If someone takes the eye of another, one of his eyes is to be taken in return, like for like. (Justice) If the person then takes another person’s eye his remaining one is to be taken so as to retain the level of justice. If he then takes a third eye, or a fourth???
If a man takes the eyes of ten people at once – what then? Eye for an eye does not work more than twice or in all situations.
Similarly killing a man for taking one life might on the surface seem just – but if the man killed two, or ten, or a thousand people? How is taking one life then fair to all the families of the victims, or to his own family?
Just some musings i had.
love.
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We live in a ludicrous age where an evil killer Ian Brady is kept alive in prison at tax payers expense. A man who never gave the whereabouts of the body of the school boy he tortured to his now dead mother. Brady manipulated lawyers and the police costing a small fortune and died in hospital cared for to the last breath. Even his last request regarding his ashes was kept after more wrangling by well paid lawyers.
Such is the position of the law after the two thousand years of Christian influence. I will stick by the old testament an eye for an eye : turn back the clock to the days when justice meant something and evil was suitably punished.
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If i chose to look at it from exactly the viewpoint you have done i would say exactly the same thing! As for Brady i think he was a sad sick vicious bastard (who the hell paid his legal bills/lawyers??) and i’d hate to be the parent of one of his and Hindley’s victims. Here in Australia they are talking about making a law that killers get no parole and serve their full sentence if they do not reveal where all bodies are buried that i wholeheartedly endorse.
I too cannot understand why such people are kept in decent conditions at far greater cost per year to taxpayers than if they were living outside and had to work to survive in honest labour like the rest of us.
Having said that i don’t see going back to a more primitive and savage time or ‘justice’ system to be a good thing for anyone who claims to live in a civilised and evolving (improving) society.
Admittedly, there are still barbarians and primitives living with us today who gain benefit from the growth hard workers have made towards a better form of civilisation, who i find it difficult to think should be allowed to stay in modern society while choosing to behave more like cavemen.
Sadly, altering the basic nature of man to raise it to something greater is a very long, hard and thankless process. As you say it is 2000 years since humans were given a better way to behave – the guy who gave it got strung up on a cross and was despised by his people and most of us chose to ignore his advice (Love God then Love one another) despite many missionaries spreading the Word around the world (while failing to entirely live up to or correctly explain it themselves).
love.
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‘ To whom much is given much is expected ‘ It is a heavy burden to be responsible for the lives or well-being of others. To use such responsibility lightly is a cardinal sin.
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Quite a likely scenario! Definitely food for thought.
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I have always been a great admirer of HG Wells who always managed to put a twist into his stories. For him progress always had a snag or two.
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Even he failed to foretell the number of horrible snags our modern progress has already unearthed!
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Failure is common to us all ; hindsight makes us wonder why. My liking for Wells was not his ability to predict but his distaste for making mankind always top-dog.
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I think you and I agree in reality but perhaps you are clinging to a form of idealism which can never be squared with human nature.
Your refer to a more savage and primitive time I would call it a more sensible civilised time but we tend to think technological advancement means more civilised. If we lose all sight of justice or we delay it until the afterlife we are heading for a break down in society.
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