A Story from Childhood
When I was a child, my dad and I were out walking in the evening and I looked up at the sky.
“Look at how bright that star is!” I said.
“Yeah!” said my dad. “But that’s not a star, that’s a planet. That’s a planet called Venus.”
I looked at it for a moment. I knew enough to know that we lived on a planet, that Earth was a planet. So:
“Oh. Does anyone live there?”
“No,” my dad said, “no one lives on Venus.”
And for one brilliant moment I saw, down in my mind’s eye, a vision of fallen golden columns in falling golden light.
No one lives there. If no one lives there, then there must be ruins. I don’t know why I thought this.
I know better now, I know the science now, I know Venus has no has no magnetic field, I know it’s choked with carbon-dioxide, I know the clouds are made of sulfur dioxide, I know it rains showers of sulfur dioxide, I know it’s over 800 degrees on the surface, I know it’s sometimes likened to old images of Hell, I know the atmospheric pressure will crush satellites, I know the winds blow all the time, I know the sun shows it no mercy, I know no one has ever lived there. I know all that.
But I still won’t forget my memory of the fallen Venusian Empire and its fallen golden sandstone columns in falling golden afternoon light.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1J8hyU6.
