The Cloud

Two children lay in the grass atop the largest hill either of them could find. The wind gently wafted over the grass, enough to ruffle both of their clothes. The sky seemed to stretch on until the end of the earth, and was colored in the clear blue reserved especially for a summer’s sky.

“Which cloud is your favorite?” The girl inquired of her companion, in a similar laying position beside her on the grass. “Mine is that one,” She pointed up to indicate her decision. “It looks like an elephant. Come on,” She prompted, nudging the boy. He wrinkled his brow in thought. After a moment he lifted his hand and pointed at his choice, a small, unremarkable, puffy cloud.

“Why?” The girl asked of him, “It’s so small and little. Mine’s bigger than yours.”

“That’s exactly why I picked it. All the other clouds are big, but it carries on and doesn’t let them get it down. It just calmly journeys across the sky.”

And the clouds moved slowly along in their journey across the sky.

***

The cloud, in fact the very cloud that the boy enjoyed, drifted lazily onward, over countless fields, forests, hills, and lives. The wind eventually happened across an area of exceedingly low precipitation and equally low humidity, an area called, by the fragile creatures below, a desert. The cloud slowly fell and evaporated, the water making it up dissipating and being absorbed fruitlessly by the air around it. The wind in turn bore aloft the water molecules, scattering them hither and yon, sending them to seep into the ocean, flow through a river, become more clouds, or freeze into ice. The molecules condensed into life-giving water, nourishing and cleansing. The death of the cloud gave new life to many, the home for fish, the hydration of animals, and the rain for plants. The molecules of water were, and are, destined to cycle over and over, becoming clouds, rain, rivers, oceans, and clouds again, in the ever-repeating cycle of water.

***

However, nothing is permanent. Eventually, the end of days will come. Long after any self-important primates walked upright upon the blue planet, thinking themselves to be the center of everything, long after even the greatest of their accomplishments are wiped from the face of the earth, their life-giving star will begin to die. Slowly at first, after using its hydrogen, but faster and faster as it annihilates heavier and heavier elements. It then will expand outward, absorbing all of the planets in its path, Mercury, and then Venus, then Earth will fall to the dying sun. Everything man has ever done in the entirety of its history, every leader, artist, kind parents, and wayward travelers, all trace of all they have done extinguished, a candle snuffed by the hand of time. A nova is then created, a celestial explosion of matter. The sun, rather what is left of it, throbs at the center, a pale shadow of its former self. Our life giving orb, a mere cluster of charged particles, will be trapped at the center of the dust of its corpse. Without the necessary gravity, the outermost planets move slowly along in their journey across the universe.

***

The sun will leave behind a wonderful nova, a cloud of energized gas and dust drifting in space. Many would find the cloak of the dead star to be saddening, a mournful epitaph to the former solar system. However, the cloud will serve another purpose: a stellar nursery. The dust slowly begins to form together, as the lump of dust gets more and more mass, its gravity attracts more dust, and gradually it becomes bigger, asteroid-sized, and soon planet-sized, then on to the size of a small star. When it gains enough mass, it will collapse in on itself into a furnace of fusion, annihilating hydrogen and creating heavier atoms and energy. Thus a new star is born, a fire burning for four billion years or more. The death of the sun, giving stars new life, and solar systems of their own, rising from the ashes of the sun and the earth.

***

Novae are not the only way a star can die. If a star is large enough, when it burns its last, it collapses in on itself into a gravitational singularity. This is commonly known as a black hole. Eventually, long after the sun’s stellar nursery drifts into particulate atoms spread across the universe, much of the matter in the universe will be contained inside black holes. The stars will wink out one by one, being eaten by the monsters of the deep, or collapsing and becoming sinister wells themselves. The universe will begin to go black, all of creation, all anyone has ever done in the whole of time. No matter, no light, no joy, no pain. Everything reduced to spinning balls of compressed matter, moving slowly along in their journey across what is left of the universe.

***

Gravity wells, all that is left of the universe, spin gradually around a common point of gravity. Ever dropping inward, orbiting faster and faster, spinning down into a massive singularity. Every last bit of matter condenses down into the center of everything. All of the matter of the universe packed into less than a teaspoon of space. Some inhabitants of the planet that they called Earth predicted this event, and called it The Big Crunch. Soon, in the cosmic measure of time, the energy released by the crushing of matter by gravity builds up, and becomes too great. The singularity explodes in a brilliant flash of noiseless everything. Color, light, matter, energy, an entire new universe created in less than a millisecond. The matter cools, the matter congeals, and the matter creates planets and galaxies, solar systems and new life. A new universe is created from the death of the old. More Earths, more suns, stars in the sky, ready to live, die, and create again.

***

And thus the endless cycle begins, ends, and begins again. Everything dies so everything may live. A perfect, beautiful harmony lives in all things forever. Philosophers from one iterate, on a mote of dust covered in water, call this Yin and Yang, life and death in harmony. The cloud disperses so that rain may fall across the land, and rivers and streams may flow. The sun dies so stars may live, and the whole of creation dies so that a new creation may live anew. This is the universe, enjoy moving slowly along in the grand journey across it.