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© Microscopy-UK 1997
My departure point was a tiny place so small as to be completely undetectable - and yet, so large, that it contained everything that could ever be. Now that I have arrived, I notice other travellers here with me, yet it is impossible to have met or known them along the way. What I find more astonishing is that of the billions here, only few of them remember or acknowledge where we started out from and not one of us can recall why we made the trip. (Double-click on the left to see our departure point).
I must confess I am no different from the others for I too cannot remember a thing about the journey
nor why I made it. I guess it was when I was a young boy that these things first entered my mind. I was a man
before this infuriating memory-loss began to trouble me less, mainly due to the greater problems encountered with
the vessel I arrived in: at the merest site of some of the more attractive travellers, this fragile frame would veer off
upon its own path, forsaking my efforts at trying to remember why the devil I was sent here!
There were other difficulties too. Not least, the constant demand to earn money for fuel to
maintain my vessel and to purchase a remarkable remedy
used for easing the pain caused by my unanswered question burning like fire inside me. I noticed other
travellers, also troubled, using the remedy to escape their great sense of despair
at not knowing their purpose. So powerful a thing this substance was, that many became
foolishly lost in their mission and beyond all help - their vessels burnt-out and wrecked!
In watching them, I resolved to limit my access to this pain-killer and instead look for comfort by finding other travellers like me, for the possibility existed that somewhere, one of them had found an answer!
From books and libraries, I discovered we had been arriving here for millions of years, and while each day, I toiled to keep my vessel going and support new ones born of union with a female traveller, I searched the past to see what had been learnt before my own arrival.
Great comfort was found in the knowledge that even thousands of years ago, others
like me had pondered the purpose of their journey. Although these early settlers
had not yet gained mastery of this world's resources, they had worked in earnest with
the tools at their disposal to leave behind messages built from stone.
They were but simple records yet effective none-the-less, and said:-
"We don't know why we're here... but we thought about it a lot!"
How astonishing that early travellers, with all their problems finding food and shelter, should have put such effort into building these structures. Maybe, they were troubled more than those who came later by this collective memory-loss?
Other civilizations had followed in their footsteps. Vessels arrived in ever increasing
numbers and established independent bases upon this world.
Inevitably, without knowledge or recollection of their objective, wars ensued as fellow
travellers met and set upon each other in pursuit of independent aims. Ultimately, just
a few thousand years ago, two of these mighty bands of travellers merged, and the power of the
thinker welded with the might of the warrior into a force which swiftly engulfed the planet.
With them came records and notes, many still surviving until today, from great travellers
who were called Greek Philosophers. It appears they had thought more than all others about
their arrival here and their purpose, and yet, for all their probing... not one of them had
resolved a definitive answer as to why we came!
From this vibrant era was born a legend which seemed to provide hope for the future. A tale
has emerged of a single traveller that came through the long, almost endless journey, with his
knowledge and memory intact: someone who knew the objective! It seems that others like him
may have followed, each professing a truth which seems strangely similar. Maybe their words came too
late for the existing travellers, now so distant from the origin point, for these special
arrivals bearing the truth were ill received and fared badly...
Sadly, a great opportunity was lost and the world fell into chaos for the next 1000 years.
Darkness and war reigned - sweeping aside a great civilization and much of the progress made
on discovering the truth. It is remarkable that any of their original knowledge survived at all through this period.
Maybe during this time, other travellers had attempted to revive the quest for truth, but against
the dark forces of superstition and false objectives, and the suffocating cloaks of priests
who struck quickly to destroy all that dared question their supremacy -
what hope did they have of convincing others that a vital quest was needed...
to find out more about our purpose here.
Slowly, a few brave travellers - through great work and personal sacrifice - gained
footholes in the darkness. One by one they rose to challenge the powerful forces
which held a world in ignorance and false security. Just a few hundred years before
I arrived, a quest was started. At first it was one piloted and led by individuals,
each working alone. But in a short time, their independent efforts and learning became
organised, producing great help in the ability of all new arrivals to settle quickly
and prosper. There came a time when these travellers were finally able to challenge
all previous wisdom about the process of our journey here. It was not long ago. This I know for
I arrived just after this change!
At twenty-six years of age, it seemed already too late for acquiring the basic
skills to join the quest, which I so much wanted to do. None-the-less, passion to belong
to any endeavour which might resolve my burning questions drove me to join the quest from a distance. I learnt to paint
and sought to express the shadows and dreams hiding in my mind, thinking they might
represent some remaining fragments of memory about my purpose here.
In time I came to suspect these images as more an expression of my difference
from the mass of fellow travellers rather than hidden recollections of our mission.
Like many young men, I was still excited by space and stars... and noticed my own creations
often featured these elements. Before long, I owned a telescope and went resolutely out into
the city night to watch the sky and look back at some of the space-time ocean I had crossed
to arrive here. In no time at all, I was thrilled to see for myself the rings of Saturn, Orions Belt,
and even tracked Halley's comet when it was no more than the merest speck far, far, out on its
approach to our system. I must confess that on a cold winter's night, crisp and still, the great darkness
above would reach out with invisible fingers through the metal and glass to touch my soul and probe my mind
even as my awareness probed it! And in a quiet moment, here and there, once in a while as I stood alone in the dark - I would feel
a hint of that memory and wisdom, so far lost to me for which I sought.
Alas... stars
so far become very dim when a city grows ever larger. Within a short time,
the dark sky turned sodium-bright, as a million street lights bled their vigilant
glow into the abyss, and swept away my nightly companions in a sea of orange.
But a man determined to join the quest for answers is not so easily deterred. There were
other travellers, many with visions and dreams close to mine. And as my eye turned away
from the sky, one such traveller's name shone like a beacon offering much promise.
I remember his name today: Sinclair! For through his personal endeavours,
a new tool came within the reach of other travellers bent upon a path of discovery -
a rudimentary brain of sorts - a personal computer! How rapidly the power of this
device grew, and how hard I clung to it on a whirlwind ride - a pioneer programmer like many
others working to give it life... that it may help us on our journey!
Like a mirror, it showed me all I had failed to learn as I wrestled to fill it
with wisdom. Other, faster, machines were born - each demanding more... and as
they showed me their empty ignorance, I learnt the depths of my own and filled us
both with knowledge and skill! Ten years we danced together in a mental embrace and a
frenzy of learning. And around the world, in the twilight hours - alone, dedicated,
were the hunched bodies of my kindred, eyes entranced by the flickering face and the
constant yearning of our new child....
I
searched the software lists wondering if there was still a subject left uncovered.
Sure enough... there was but one: microscopy! How little I knew then in those early
days, just a few years back, what an exciting new journey of discovery I was about to embark
upon. Things were not easy at first. There seemed little or no references anywhere to sources of
help... and yet I was certain that a wonderful tool like a microscope would be used by many.
Slowly, I found contact - first with a small business which sold microscopes, then a club
called the Postal Microscopical Society. I have Dr. David Bellamy to thank for the latter, for
one of his book's called Garden Safari included them in its references.
The first time in my life I looked down a microscope
I realised something immediately. Out of the swirling mists of reason and instinct came a
thing so clear that a bright light exploded
like an echo of that first moment when all our journeys began. For there, in the
glowing circle dancing across a sliver of glass was my first close view of the place we
had all journeyed here from. Where I had looked at the stars seeking my departure point, it had
been all around me, laying hidden from my gaze all this time! Beyond the light and the glass now extending
my vision... deeper and further than my humble scope could probe... down there, smaller and ever finer, beyond
life, beneath matter, were the very points of the cosmos: super-microscopic pin pricks into the surface of
reality, through which everything has been threaded together!