The day Daniel Washington decided to smoke cigarettes stood out in his mind. It was also the day he decided to save life-as-we-know-it in the solar system. It would be a long shot - and not just a long shot par five or Hail Mary pass - he was betting on God (unreliable) and science (reliable, mostly). By the time his plan began to be realized, he was already an established smoker much to his wife's disappointment. His smoking was only one of her husband's changes that upset her. More importantly, she wished her husband would quit trying to save the entirety of life in the solar system. She thought it was too much of a job for him. She relied on religion and God - she was a fatalist that way.
"Debbie. Honey." He had told her, "Sometimes we have to do our best to keep this universe going, too. God isn't going to do everything for you."
To which she said, "He is going to do nothing for you. Go to hell."
After the divorce, they became troublesome enemies. She picketed his laboratories. He sent dogs after her supporters. He talked trash on national television - the worst was on a music channel directed at young adults: "No, she wasn't even a good lay." But she was a good lay, he just worked too quickly, but she knew that she was a good lay because after he left for work she could get herself off like none other. But let's go back; this story has an immense history, as well as an immense future.
Daniel came home one day agitated and smelling of cigarettes. Soon after his arrival he would leave home agitated and return smelling of booze and cigarettes; drunk but slightly less agitated.
But we must go back further, always back. A creation story like this deserves more detail.
Four-point-five billion years ago, the solar system was created by an inconceivably (by the human mind) massive gas and dust cloud that consolidated into planets, comets, and one big star. These planets developed differently and eventually one of them could support single-cell life in the form of prokaryotes, which got energy from inorganic chemicals and through photosynthesis. Their waste caused the atmosphere to fill with oxygen and soon more complex life was evolving on Mars, which leads to the complex story of Daniel and Debbie. Now we fast-forward, always forward.
Mars eventually lost its atmosphere and all life on the planet died. This was after the time of Daniel's story; however, this began to be a concern during his lifetime. Earlier in the day that he returned to his house agitated and smelling of cigarettes, he was sitting in his office, playing addicting online games, and expecting a study to be brought to him. The study was the one of the last that his team of scientists was working on to determine when the atmosphere would disintegrate so much that significant changes would take place on Mars and life would soon end. The study came in just before lunch and as he ate his usual PB&J he read and reread the study to make sure that the world was going to start ending in just a couple hundred years.
SO SOON, MY GOD!
He called an emergency meeting.
"What can be done? What can we, as scientists, do to contribute to saving life-as-we-know-it? This is just a brainstorm, throw out any ideas."
Artificial atmosphere. Orbiting space station with solar panels and a greenhouse inside. Move to the moons. Move to Earth's moon. Stay on Mars and build cities underground. Nothing can be done; life-as-we-know-it will end completely in just a few generations.
"We must think bigger."
ARTIFICIAL ATMOSPHERE. UNDERGROUND CITIES. SPACE CITIES. EXODUS TO THE MOONS. OR EARTH'S MOON.
"There is no possible way that our bloodlines can continue in this solar system. We must think bigger."
An enormous and uncomfortable silence filled the room.
Daniel left that meeting, bought a pack of cigarettes, and drove his Ford Animator to Olympus View Park, just up the road from his office and laboratory. He put his car in park, went to a bench, and smoked half the pack while admiring the view of Olympus Mons. My God, my God made this. My God, what can be done? What what what can be done? His wife will understand. He must tell his wife. Life is going to end-they must not have children-what can be done-his wife will understand.
"Debbie, Mars will not be able to support life in just a couple generations."
"I don't understand."
"Debbie, the atmosphere will be gone, there will be mutations, life-as-we-know-it will not be on this planet in just a couple generations."
"God help us."
"God help us figure this out."
"God save us."
"Debbie. Woman. I am trying to save you. I will think of something."
"Daniel, what can be done? Life-as-we-know-it is doomed. We can only pray and live."
"I need to get out; I'll be back later."
Daniel went out to the bar. He ordered whiskey. The whiskey made him unusually drunk because he did not usually drink. It dissolved his atmosphere of intellect and it made him spin. He was rotating faster spinning revolving around the bar until he collided with the bathroom. He projected his insides into a distant urinal where they stayed for the rest of the night, stuck in the drain. He fell against the far wall. Sat. Thought of the fate of his planet, of the life that he knew. He crawled. Crawled to the stall, knelt. Knelt against the toilet and put more of his whiskey insides into the outer bowl. Where did the whiskey go? Why can he now stand? God must have put that poison in the poison water because Daniel puked out the idea that would save life-as-he-knew-it. Projectiles. Send life like insides out to places where they can stay undisturbed and undisturbing. Daniel drove home smoking a cigarette to get rid of the taste in his mouth with an idea to save life-as-we-know-it.
The next morning; hungover and anxious:
"Goddammit Daniel, you're a fucking mess. I made you toast."
"Debbie, I can save the solar system."
"Eat your toast."
"I'll take it with me; I'm going to the office."
Daniel drove a little lightheaded to his office where he asked his lab assistant to compare the facts about Earth with how Mars was when life first started on the planet.
"This will be it." Daniel said when he got the results back.
"Huh," said the lab assistant when Daniel looked happy with the results. "Earth can't support human life. It can't even support cockroach life! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" He was understandably hysterical; he was going to die and so would everybody else.
"Buddy, we are going to start life on another planet. We will keep this life alive even if we will never see it in a billion years because Earth will be able to support evolution."
There was a note from Debbie when he got home:
Daniel, I am at the church. I am going to start an apocalyptic group to pray for the continuation of life as we know it on Mars and for the saving of souls. I don't care what you do. I will pray for your soul.
Love, Deborah Jenkins
Daniel thought: Maiden name. Bitch. Pray for my soul? What about me or my mission to keep life alive? I should have gotten her away from that priest. Creep.
The next day he got his team together and announced their plan to the public. He and his team were enthusiastic but mournful about their loss of life-as-they-knew-it until it evolved independently on Earth.
The newspapers announced: Team of Scientists to Send Life to Earth.
The tabloids announced: Mad Scientist left by Religious Wife, Told to go to Hell.
Daniel and Debbie got on with their plans. Daniel researched sending bacteria to Earth to start the evolutionary process. Debbie organized a group of religious followers to protest her ex-husband's ventures. Daniel recruited an international staff; Debbie wrote letters, made signs, got out to the public. The public was split: Life must go on...We are doomed...Look at the mountains, the huge seas, the life that we live - this can go on...This is the only life there is, we propagate in marriages, not space shuttles... Well, technically it's a space capsule...Go to hell.
Foxy News invited Daniel on for a special segment with an aggressive newsman.
"And what are the chances of this bacteria growing into complex life?"
"Well, it's hard to say. The chances are small, that's why we are sending tens of thousands of capsules that will fall all over the Earth's surface."
"So you think that life on Mars grew out of the same process?"
"Yes, I think that life evol-"
"Does a higher power fall into your beliefs about the creation of life?"
"I believe that God or some force created the conditions for life to grow. I mean-"
"Aren't you taking over that role then?"
"I mean, look at the beauty of our planet and our lives."
"Aren't you becoming like a god to try to start a whole system on life on another planet, giving them a whole destiny of billions of years?"
"I think that starting an evolutionary process on another planet is the noblest of experiments."
Click-flash and the TV went off in Father (Dave) Reynolds' bedroom. Debbie and her priest had sex one more time that evening, preferring each other to watching the man that drove them together. Turning off the television while her ex-husband was puffing himself up made Debbie feel once again that power she exercised by leaving him.
"Make it slow. I want you to stay inside."
Again we go back, leave Debbie and her priest to their pleasures...
The son of God visited the people of Mars and after many years people began to measure time from the date of his birth. The Catholic Church became an established authority on the rules of God and the meaning of man. The people got bored with the Church making them feel guilty with its constructed authority and many new religions were made to make people feel more or less guilty. Apparently people need that authority. But they need it in different ways. Father Reynolds' church was the most recent break from religious traditions. The Revised Catholics believed that they were the center of God's purpose in creating the universe. There remained a hierarchy of religiosity and the all-male clergy took vows of celibacy. They believed in the powers of prayer and sacrifice, but they also believed in making the most out of life to gain the most in the afterlife. Some priests were part-time hang-gliders, base-jumpers, and scuba divers because, as Father Reynolds was fond of saying: you gotta live once to live again. The Revised Catholic Church also appealed to the scientifically minded because of the focus on worldly matters. Father Reynolds married Daniel and Debbie.
"Thank God you finally left your husband; he's been blowing his inherited fortune on this crack-brained idea for far too long."
"Noblest of experiments, my ass."
"Speaking of your ass..."
"I don't know right now, I am already sore from all that we've done."
Then they had sex again and Father Reynolds held her and controlled her, turned her every way he wanted, and she was plastic in his arms - malleable and writhing. They stayed indoors for days and Father Reynolds got pleasure whenever he desired. Debbie was a slave for him, finding pleasure in her simple submission to his needs. They hurt but they could not stop. Their responsibilities were ignored - both the protesting and the healing of souls. After days, Father Reynolds' supply ran low and they were having sex for hours and hours; rather, Father Reynolds pounded at his sweaty and exhausted will and they both delighted in their pain.
"Dave, I'm giving myself to you because procreation is the most important thing God wants and to be naked with you is the most important thing I want."
They gave up on the world and turned solipsistically towards each other, finding that sex was they only thing they cared about in a world that was ending oh-so-soon.
"Through human connection is the only way to find God," he quoted from a church pamphlet.
Intercourse was their connection with humanity in a world soon to be void of humanity. Endless sex was their calling and their celebration.
A week into its progress, Daniel disrupted this intercourse with a phone call.
"Debbie, why are you doing this?"
"Why are you doing what you are doing? You know that this life is special and it's ours. Who knows what you will create, if anything."
"If Earth evolves and develops like Mars did, then there is a chance that some life will continue to enjoy the beauties that humans have enjoyed in the past."
"I am special; I am not some typified object that can be made with mathematical calculations."
"No one is, but if life can continue, I see enough beauty in it to work my hardest to continue it."
"Do what you want, I am giving up resisting you like everyone else has and I am going to resign to fate. I am making the best for myself while I can."
Father Reynolds reached over and took the phone from Debbie and placed it back in its nook. Debbie smiled slightly as she knelt to her knees. The rest of the world resigned in the realization that life-as-we-know-it on Mars was ending. Some gave up all ambition. Some made the best for themselves. Only Daniel and his hopeful team worked to send life to another planet; sending life back in phases and forward in time.
And we go forward, flying like a space shuttle from its stand or semen from the epididymus or vomit from a whiskey-filled stomach, because we know that Daniel persisted in his plans, Father Reynolds continued his thrusting with Debbie, other people continued their own self-involved lives, and elements continued to drift away from Mars' gravity out to space and their unknowable futures.
Daniel and his team launched their space shuttle filled with tens of thousands of capsules containing bacteria to give life to Earth amongst mildly interested press and spectators.
Launch; ka-plow; zoom.
Oh shit.
"Daniel, we just got information on massive solar action. There is a solar wind that is so powerful it may adjust the path of the shuttle and may even rip off a huge part of our atmosphere."
A prayer. "Oh God, help us now."
But pause. And back, more information must be revealed, in a destruction story like this one there are always so many details. Father Reynolds and Debbie, as we all know and may be disturbed by, continued their lovemakingfucking for all this time. The energy of the room was disproportionate; Debbie was in pain but unable to stop as much as she was unable to say words or stand, Father Reynolds did not think but only reacted to his desire to dominate this woman with his paternal power. There was no balance of male and female energies. The motion of the two, Father Reynolds oscillating on top of nonresistant (and even encouraging) Debbie, actually changed the motion of the planet. It was spinning much faster, this had two effects: it pushed off more atmosphere and it made Daniel's launch go awry. At the exact moment of the launch, Father Reynolds finally let loose the ejaculation that he was pushing for days, the force of which exhausted him of life and killed Debbie on impact. It also spun Mars on an accelerating rotation therefore sending the rocket out to space not in the direction of Earth, but more towards the Sun.
The massive solar wind did in fact re-adjust the rocket's path back towards Earth and tear off more of the atmosphere of Mars. The capsules inseminated Earth and lives ended on Mars due to heat and lack of atmospheric pressure. But now there is life on Earth and thank God thank science thank sex and the unbalanced relationship of two lovers the misunderstood relationship between God and man and the sun and its eccentricities.