Writing for Fun
July 2016
The Beginning Of A Thought . . . Thoughts Of A Beginning - Pete Norman
Buried, deep down, many miles deep down below the surface, the furnace of hell raged incessantly. The white-hot molten rock seethed and bubbled, swirled and flowed, poured and solidified, boiled and exploded.
The fire’s lights were brilliant. More spectacular than all of the world’s firework displays since the creation.
But there were no eyes to bear witness to the inconceivably violent destruction.
The fumes enveloped the subterranean world in a dense choking blanket; heavy, hot, sulphurous fumes. Distilled from the very substance of the rocks, sealed within the vast cauldron, crushed under the enormous pressure.
There was no nose to smell the stench. No lungs to choke on the acrid smoke. No throat to cough back the yellow poison.
The sound of the immense conflagration was deafening: the cracking of the solid rock in the searing heat; the collapse of the boulders into the furnace; the explosion of the sedimentary minerals encapsulated within them.
There were no ears to hear the sound. No hands to press against them to shut out the tumultuous noise. No lips to call out for silence, or for some respite from the overbearing cacophony.
Only the sounds of billions of lost souls crying out in their torment, could be heard above the discord. The sounds of the legions of the dead locked in their worldly antithesis of heaven, each one hopelessly, bitterly, uselessly, repenting the sins of their former life but their wailing was sucked into the din, mixed into insignificance, and spewed forth unintelligibly, destined to rot forever, unheard, in this terrestrial hell.
The tremendous primeval forces smashed the very hearts of the mighty elements. Atoms and molecules were torn from their mass and hurled violently outward from the fire.
Smaller sub-atomic particles too small to have even been acknowledged by the Earth’s scientists, were flung still further out.
Minute particles of pure energy, smaller than light, lighter than sound, more elusive than dreams, less visible than fear.
The particles sped outwards, as true as arrows, but without the strength to resist the titanic forces surrounding them: the magnetic pull of the pools of molten iron, heaving and flowing beneath; the atomic mist swirling and suffocating above.
The particles were pushed to the ends of the earth and then sucked back again, pulled this way and that in the enormous ever-changing tug of war in this cauldron of hell.
Random chance determined that, inevitably, collision was unavoidable. Particles met at impossible speeds, their energies being spent against each other in single violent instances, fusing them together into larger masses.
Speeding off again in their everlasting game of pinball: deflected, reflected, accelerated, dragged, thrown, bounced, smashed, fused.
Throughout aeons of immeasurable time, the process went on, uninterrupted until the day when two of the larger particles met, headlong in their flight.
Smashing together at the speed of light, an explosion – minute compared with the surrounding devastation, but significant in itself.
A new particle was formed, out of the spectacular demise of its predecessors. A small ethereal mass of pure thought.
The thought was flung violently across the face of the fire by the force of its creative explosion, hurtling mindlessly towards the mass beyond, but the thought was no longer mindless. Subtly, imperceptibly, it sought out the smallest of cracks, the minutest of apertures in the ceiling rock. The thought forced its way upward, twisting and turning, ever seeking out the path, travelling up the blind alleys, forced to turn and seek again.
Slowly, and inevitably, it moved towards the surface.
As the thought struggled upward through the cracks and the crevices, through the very fissures in the strata of the rocks, it grew ever stronger in its purpose.
By good fortune, it found the easier path. In a single instant, it was dragged from the bowels of the earth and blasted high up into the atmosphere, shrouded from the world by a choking cloud of dust and volcanic ashes.
The thought looked down on the world. The holocaust on the surface had, if anything, been greater than that unseen below.
The surface was barren and lifeless. The ground was grey and scorched. The white-hot sun seared through the indigo sky. The air was hot.
Broken stumps of concrete and metal pointed obscenely up at the sun, as if in their death throws they were reaching up to their God, condemning Him for his desertion. The radioactive dust covered the ground like a shroud.
The planet was dead.
The thought moved on, sweeping over the blank, featureless landscape in widening circles, ever searching, but never finding.
Great continents came and were left in its wake. Vast green, fetid seas were scanned, huge oceanic troughs were trawled.
The planet was dead.
The thought travelled on. The light of hope was fading in its heart. Deeper and deeper it sank. Down through the darkest, most secret parts of the water. Down through the black, where the sunlight, with all its power could never penetrate.
There, at the very bottom, the thought stopped.
The bottom of the ocean was as barren and lifeless as the surface of the dead planet. The poison had been spread throughout its depth and nothing had escaped its deadly touch.
The thought looked inside at itself. At the complex helical shape of its being.
The thought considered its position; its responsibility.
Slowly, with inexperienced effort, the thought stretched. Further and further outward its sides spread, until, finally, the strain was too great. The tiny thought was split asunder.
The two parts clung tightly to each other in the cold dark depths. Then each part itself began to stretch, the task much easier now with the knowledge.
The small bundle of four cells became eight, and then sixteen . . .