The Ship

I attempted to write this so the reader is drawn into the story as the main character.

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It lay quiet, perhaps sleeping, perhaps dead, a thing of metal, unknown metal, sitting exposed beneath the stars. Seemingly long dead, if a thing of metal could ever have lived, though our thoughts seem to tell us it did. Buried lost for ages untold beneath layers of earth and rock. Rediscovered, uncovered, unearthed, a mystery yet something familiar, capable of unearthing things buried deep in our minds. Hidden thoughts awaken; thoughts long forgotten now have born a new. Thoughts that speak the words, "We were here before." or it seems as though we were. We can't remember when or how, maybe racial memory, (if one can believe in such a thing) but it seems sure that this is part of who we were, or at least were once.

Lying buried in the earth, buried in our minds in places never visited; yet places we have been before. Things long buried awaken again, things from the past calling down the ages to the ears of the present. This ancient thing of metal, older than anything made by our hand, this ancient thing of manufacture, beyond our current ability yet to make, and yet it bears our mark, our hands have touched this before.

There is a doorway in its surface, a hatch there to be opened and though we have to be able to bring forth the courage to do this simple thing. Can it be that in the opening of this simple doorway, that we are afraid it will open more doors within ourselves?

It is most frightening our familiarity with this ancient craft, that it is some how a part of us and we apart of it. Maybe it is we are afraid that the answers we feel must rest within will not be there, waiting for us. Afraid that the answers are there and more afraid they aren't.

So hiding our fears in our unsurity we took this thing of antiquity and built a park around it. Treating it as if it were no more than a statue to be displayed, and in our unsurity we still could not bring ourselves to open its door. Millions came and went in the years it sat there as if was a display. It seemed to draw people, not just curiosity or thrill seekers, but also everyone, and affect them all the same as it did us the ones who found it. The doorway was there but no one dared to open it.

The years went by and those of us that found it, those that still live, wonder yet what is inside and yet the door stays unopened. The world has walked through our park viewed the ship, touched its surface and yet never opened its door.

Are we content in our ignorance? We must be. Are we that willing to not to face our fears? It must be so.

I am the last of those who found the ship so many years ago, now old myself and ashamed of what we people have become. Lost in our own fears, withdrawn and hidden within ourselves. Afraid to face the thing we once were and might have become again. Sheltered in our ignorance, secure in our unsurity.

Confined to my chair no longer able to achieve mobility on my own. My grandchildren and their children have come to visit and take me to the park, for what will most likely be my last visit, for surely I will not live much longer and will find freedom from this devil of ignorance and fear that the ship has come to represent to me.

It has been a long day, and I am tired. We (my grandchildren, their children and I) are still in the park. I have been left resting in my chair, the adults are at tables nearby, the children are running and playing as only the young can, wrapped in their own worlds of imagination. It is peaceful, in spite of the nagging presence of the ship.

The sun is warm the breeze gentle and watching the children at play I fall asleep. Something, some unknown call awakens me. My eyes trying to focus themselves after my interrupted slumber, hazily begin to take it what my brain fails to comprehend at first. The adults are still wrapped in conversation; children are nowhere to be seen, though most likely are just someplace close though out of sight. How true this thought about the children proves to be.

The ship sits there quiet as ever, same as ever, but no wait the door it is open, a black hole drawing my eyes and stilling my voice. It can't be, yet there it is, my fears and hopes hold me silent, it seems to me this is like onto the box Pandora was once said to have opened. What demons of knowledge have been again released upon the world? Will slamming it shut again trap the small voice of hope inside, as Pandora did, having to re-open the box so hope could enter the world? I hear the children's voices, lightly echoing out from within the ship, my heart freezes in my throat. A light blazes forth from the open door, a hum to low to really hear yet, only to be felt slowly building in our bones. The world suddenly seems devoid of all sound except that slowly building from the ship. It seems that my personal devil of fear and ignorance has finally come to life, but at what cost. The adults, my grandchildren have ceased their talk and as if of one body turn to face the ship wondering what is happening.

The silence and the sound both build as one, and unseen the door has closed. Without further noise or visible means, the ship slowly rises from its long resting place. Gently rising above the tallest of the trees and then with suddenness unbelievable it is gone. Stunned and unbelieving we return home silent in our shock our loss not fully comprehended as yet.

Later that night laying awake in my lonely room, sleep not coming to my shocked mind, one of my lost great grandchildren appears to me, he has a message for me and the whole of our world.

In the years the ship was left alone in the park it was not only being watched and touched by all the people that can to see it, but it also watched, waited, recorded all that went on around itself. Using the energy of the sun it slowly built it energy up, did what it could to repair things time had managed to undo. After years of study the ship came to the conclusion that the people of this world had become stagnant and the only hope for the survival of the world inhabitants was in the young, those that had not become bound by the fears and ignorance of their parents, and thus when the first child opened the door unseen many years ago, it began its project to save man from himself. Over the years it was only the children that dared to open the door and thus it was the children it sought to teach, it needed crew and colonist to carry to the next world to try to start things anew. Today the final members had come aboard and the ship was ready, this was it's farewell to the people of this world it was time to continue on with its mission programmed into it many millions of years ago by its creators in hopes of saving man from himself and this world wasn't the first but the last of many that it had started since it was created.

This was the final message to us from the ship and our children. Though the ship has gone and we have suffered a dear loss of some of our children, perhaps the ship has saved us in a way not intentioned. Perhaps the new world our children start will be a success, though we shall never know. In giving us this last message the ship may have opened our eyes and made what seemed to it a failure of stagnation, into something else, maybe we can be a success after all.