Today’s challenge proved interesting indeed. Within the question itself was the destination I was most interested in exploring. For as long as I have been able to think on it, I’ve been enamored with the workings of the Universe, with Space/Time and with the conceptualization of the Multiverse. This probably at least partially explains my fascination with Doctor Who and other Science Fiction related to traveling through Space/Time. Yet, my deepest dreams go beyond even the imaginative fancy of programs like Doctor Who in that, with my imagination, I am able to travel without a vessel, experience every nuanced sensation of traversing the vast expanse and still be alive to tell the tale. In a way, this trip through space time is a trip through the imagination itself. A stretching of the boundaries and limitations of the Human Mind.
So, let’s start small and work our way out, shall we? Imagine I am able to travel existence without need of a ship. Well, I suppose the first place I would explore would be Earth. It is after all my home. I can see myself swimming through every waterway, flying through the air, coming into contact with every mineral: solid, semi-solid and molten. Imagine beyond merely touching these things or feeling the wind caressing my form as I move through the air or merely swimming through the water. What If I could become the very atoms of the environs I traveled through? Wouldn’t that be fascinating? A true delving into the existence of everything. Being able to become one with all that is around me on the sub-atomic level.
Take for example the Cetacean. Imagine being able to experience awareness as a Cetacean. Spending all of one’s life in an ocean from birth to death, whether toothed or baleen, swimming in a never ending search for food, for a mate, for fun. Imagine encountering humans, those strange bipedal, sometimes dangerous yet fascinating creatures who seem both curious and indifferent to the wonders around them. Imagine being able to dive to the deepest depths of the ocean in awe at the world one finds there. A seething mass of life existing in near total darkness, creatures of enormous size and complexity, creatures of equal curiosity but who are minuscule by comparison. Imagine being able to experience life at that level.
Traveling the Earth, speculate on becoming everyone and everything. Imagine experiencing the pains of birth from the perspective of both mother and child, as well as the anxious father. Imagine becoming the crow, the worm, the buffalo, the wolf and all manner of creatures that inhabit this sphere we take for granted. Imagine being able to soar and dive without dying, to swim through both water and lava without drowning or bursting into flames. Imagine becoming the very rocks themselves, experiencing age after age of life, until eventually weathered down by time and elements. Feeling an infinity of experience of everything on this planet we inhabit and even the very planet itself.
Taking it beyond the Earth, swimming through the edges of Space/Time, right on our metaphorical doorstep, imagine flying to the Moon and being able to observe this planet from our long time companion. Earth: Our place of birth and the sole home of all our combined species. Imagine being able to feel the Solar wind and seeing the Aurora from above the clouds. Seeing the lights of the cities, the weather phenomenon and all manner of things from beyond it. The Earth truly is a beautiful jewel but the Universe calls to us inexorably. Traveling beyond the speed of light, we’re able to experience all those things that are just pipe dreams in our former state of solid matter. We’re able to zoom around the Solar System as though it were our personal sandbox; a play thing in which we become acquainted with the wider realm of existence.
Off we zoom, taking in every nuance of all the planets and asteroids. Tasting the tail of comets, swimming through the empty blackness of our celestial neighborhood. In our new state, nothing is closed to us and we travel right up to the very edge of the Sun’s corona before diving into the white hot plasma fires of our life giving star. Taking a moment, we breath the essence of eleven billion years of fiery inferno. To anyone else, we’d have long since been dead but to us now, it tickles a bit. After swimming around in plasma for a bit, we grow still more curious for the empty, open blackness.
Onwards and outwards we fly, tasting the nuance of dark matter as we go, allowing every particle of existence to pass through us on our infinite journey to experience everything. We pass through the planetary system again, only this time, we’re headed beyond the Heliopause and out into the deeper black. In what seems like no time at all, we’re there. We stop and take a moment to honor this passage from the familiar to the unfamiliar. This is the equivalent of the wider world and we’re inexperienced but curious. After that brief pause to commemorate our passage from the Solar System, we plunge into the inky blackness.
Out beyond the Heliopause, there are a long stretches of empty space with rogue planets spinning in infinity. There are numerous stars of all colors and types giving off light and radiation. Some are cool, some are super hot but all come from an accretion of massive amounts of matter and hearken back to the dawn of time. We explore each and every one of them, learning of the differences between our host star and these new stellar figures. So far, we’re only at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy in one spiral arm.
We continue our journey, going deeper into the center of the galaxy. In curiosity, we’re pulled to the center by the Super-massive Black Hole at the center of the galaxy. Rather than take the direct route, we travel in a ever decreasing spiral, like circling a drain, so we may better experience the wonders of the galaxy. All manner of things pass through us and by us as we continue our journey, new life infinite and complex, based on nothing we’re familiar with, is bursting forth from every corner of the galaxy. It’s too far from Earth to have known about it existing but with this special trip, its existence is known.
After traveling in the inward spiral, we come to the center of the Galaxy. We are pulled into the hungry waiting gravity of the Super-massive Black Hole. On one level, there is nothing there and, yet, on other levels, we can see infinity. All of Space/Time is collapsing and colliding around us, and as we travel into the singularity itself, we experience everything and nothing all at once. Holding still, we can see the turn of the Universe and even an inking of other Universes beyond our own. Existence itself is torn to shreds and reduced to a point beyond the atom. After a while though, that gets boring, so off we fly to see other things. The journey is infinite and the destination variable when it comes to the imagination.
