In this new world, under this new sun, fluffy as a rabbit's tail, only the beautiful and the useful can survive. I only realise this now, a thousand years after the explosion. Now, though somewhat late, though the very notion of late loses all meaning in the light of immortality I have acquired, I finally understood that strange force that destroys one thing here and, against all logic, leaves and develops another.
The beautiful and the useful. Often openly contradicting each other and almost never united into a common whole. Or maybe, because of my limited humanity, I just do not see this connection? Sometimes it seems to me that the beautiful is the peak of the useful, its true goal and the culmination of development.
But my own eyes refute this soul-saving thought. Every day I am content with bewildered and delighted contemplation of the phantasmagoria of the planet around me. Without attempting to unite it all within the framework of what I know from vague memories of the past.
Such strange life forms and such unusual laws of coexistence the former Earth had never seen before. Though, again in light of my newfound immortality, I cannot judge this objectively on the basis of the small amount of time I can call my life. I am probably as ridiculous to the planet with my conclusions as an infant in a director's chair.
The directors are no longer here, though. They don't fall under either of the two categories of this new Earth law. And I haven't seen any babies here yet. I am alive only because I guess I am, for one reason or another, useful. All these new creatures, instantly appearing or mutated from the material of the past and taking possession of their new world with primordial curiosity, have carelessly christened me Master of Water. I am useful to them and to the planet. All I have to do is learn to enjoy the favour bestowed upon me and not ask unnecessary questions. And I, a remnant of the past, have much to learn in this new world.
Take the angel fish, which have become as big as slabs of stone under the influence of radiation and have adapted to life on land. They only appear dead or petrified from afar, like beautiful yellow-blue statues with glass eyes.
In fact, they are alive. But their rhythm of life and the flow of their inner juices have changed to a pulsation infinitely stretched in eternity and rare as black pearls. Their sea has dried up and turned into ungodly glistening endless salt valleys in the sun with their eerie life forms and crystalline trees. But the beautiful creatures the planet has chosen to preserve. Being in coastal areas, I constantly see these delightful giants viewing everything in their field of vision with deep satisfaction.
Calmly and even with pleasure they accept the fact that now their lives have irreparably changed. Now that the water column does not separate us, they are easier to understand. In fact, it is only now that I have been so unceremoniously thrown off my throne as the crown of creation that I can understand almost everyone around me. I rather do not understand why this was not available to me before. I have very often waited out the hot days in the shade of these wonderful creatures standing on their narrow bellies, where the last monstrous tide has left them. I enjoyed the glare of stars invisible in the daytime, somehow miraculously reflecting off their hard skins, and patiently waited for the outcome of their years-long exercises in the mental warping of space.
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With enviable stubbornness, the angel fishes sought and honed new ways of travelling in such a new world. Ridiculously, contrary to any teaching of evolution, they didn't even think for a hundredth of a second about growing legs. They were probably too beautiful to think about the usefulness of it.
As a result, sometimes absolutely unexpected and impossible solutions arose, which apparently corresponded to a new law of nature incomprehensible to me and, from my point of view, impossible for practical implementation. True, as time passed, the logical part of my reasoning began to dull. Some of these fishes gave rise to ornate channels in the earth, full of their golden excrement, on the waves of which they travelled with hissing and hot splashes. And one of them I myself had recently seen over the Town, entangled in some kind of symbiont vine, resembling a grape vine, with gigantic leaves that lifted it into the air like wings.
I even made friends with one of the fish. His name is Hugo, and the tide has left him at the very edge of the bright blue clearing that precedes the Gateway to the Forest east of my Town. He says he wants to be fast as light and so he takes his time. I don't think he's moved an inch in the past fifty years, but I'm sure one day I won't find him in the same spot. There's no hurry. What's the hurry on a planet that now goes round a star only once a millennium? I even think its rhythm is getting slower and slower, and one day it will simply stop.
For the new life, what is wreckage to me is the natural surroundings, the favourite scenery to their young existence. Their new world, in which they are in love wholeheartedly and with all the passion of the young. Wonderful, mysterious, the way we used to perceive the world of our streets, newspapers, cars, scanty forests and tame beaches. Here, in this world, I am one of the most ancient and somehow respected beings.
Eternal and ancient. Ha ha ha! Me, Logos Rabbi, the ancient eternal one! Never could I have imagined such a life turnaround. But I don't complain and I don't feel alone among them. No. Alone? No.
Besides the children of this new planet and the sometimes delightful wrecks of the old, whom I regard almost as my offspring, I have an equally eternal companion, Spirit. He is almost like a wife to me. If a sexless creature, fragile as fog, who is prevented by the new laws from incarnating in this world, can be considered such.
In general, there is hardly anything or anyone on Earth now who can be accurately defined by me as male or female. The trend towards the erasure of the sexes has become more and more obvious over the years. I am something of a dinosaur here, an observer without someone to whom I can pass these observations on. I talk about new things and what I remember with Spirit and he, the impeccable listener, squints his huge empty eyes and nods. I wonder how much he knows himself? I don't know, he never has an episode of revelation or a desire to pour out his soul to anyone.
I talk, he listens. He has even grown long hare ears to spy on me from everywhere, and a thick blue coat with undercoat, for I don't know what other reasons, as there is no need for such in this mild climate. I don't think he's human. He never was. There is something alien about him, something mockingly curious, fundamentally caring and sympathetic, but I have no way of identifying what exactly is wrong with him. I call him Angelo. He's like an angel to me. Or wife. Silly, of course, but I'm human and I like to humanise....
No, I'm certainly not lonely in this world, full of new life forms flashing like stars, amazing observations, work. Not bored, not lonely, and not empty. I might even say that I am unrestrainedly and absolutely happy. If it were not for the Great Force spinning all of us. A Great Force that makes everyone look for others like themselves.....