Once upon a cliché in the darkness of the night, just another generically ordinary, run of the mill, middle aged bald guy, sat on his sofa in the serenity of darkness.
The living room was gently illuminated with the glow of fairy lights in the front and backyards. In the warm narcotic nights of subtropical Queensland, the pedestal fan hummed and bobbed away in the death rattles of its eventual demise.
The occasional possum bomb dived the old corrugated iron roof from the adjacent pine trees. Such unquestionably fat buggers filled with the banzai bravado of kamikaze wannabes. Each time the roof took a hit followed by the rumbling patter of preposterous paws, the bald dude hoped that tonight, Kismet would be cruel and a powerful owl (Ninox strenua) would jack every single one of these marauding marsupials.
If not the owl, then perhaps the ghost of the bearded old drunk? Before the bald dude bought the property, the bearded old drunk lived in the granny flat in the backyard. The neighbours who used to live next door before yet another catastrophic flood (get stuffed Poseidon) said that the old coot would drink Listerine and howl at the moon. He would duct tape shards of broken beer bottles to rusty old star pickets and then throw these at the possums. He hit not a single one, although a wayward makeshift spear did smash one of the neighbour's windows.
This drunk bearded boofhead was eventually found one morning, face up in the lawn. He presumably died from a heart attack. The butcher birds that he habitually fed with strips of meat and chunks of partially eaten sausages, repaid his generosity by plucking out his eye balls and tongue. By the time the meat wagon arrived, his empty eye sockets swarmed with ants.
While the bald dude sat on his sofa in the evening, the scent of mosquito coils burned what was left of their time. They burned away in corroded tins beneath the coffee table on the front deck and on the dining table on the back deck. This bald dude surfing his sofa knew not to leave such coils to burn unattended, but he let them burn away anyway. The risks paid for the sake of revelling in zen and the art of apathetic laziness.
In the cooler months the bald dude wore a kimono. He originally bought it in Kyoto. It wasn't cheap, but it came embroidered with samurai on surfboards blasting bamboo bazookas while they rode the Monster Wave towards Godzilla. Of course naturally, he had to have it. Spare no expense.
During such cooler months, the pedestal fan fell silent, but the possums continued to bomb dive his roof. Such unquestionably fat buggers stomping across the sheets of metal like rampaging rhinoceroses fleeing from hordes of angry Mongolians riding dirt bikes.
Where was the powerful owl? Did it run into some hipster budgie down in West End? Some pink and purple feathered avian hipster who convinced it to go vegan? As Confucius once said to Einstein after beating him in a face slapping contest, you can't teach a flying lion of the night to eat tofu flavoured birdseed and nor should you marry your cousin. This was followed by the epic sound of one hand clapping.
In the cooler months the mosquito coil tins were cold. They rusted away in neglect. The subtle scent of the surfy neighbour - an older man of the sea, who late at night, smoked rolled tobacco in his front yard. The smell complemented the ungodly stench from potbelly stoves. Such stoves were always in dire need of a clean. The village idiots of the neighbourhood, revelled in their own form of apathetic laziness which included heating their homes by burning rubbish, boof heads.
It was during these small windows of somewhat serenity, allocated during the 24-hour period, that the bald dude ritually surfed his sofa in sheer walrusity. He pondered, contemplated, meditated and vegetated on the question of whether we were alone in existence or not.
In the endless musings of the chattering monkey, chasing its tail with unanswerable questions, he came to understand that to draw a conclusion to this question, he had to consider the concept of numbers. Not little numbers like the cubic volume of a flat-earther's cerebrum but big behemoth ones.
And so, this dude started to type, typing away not on a desktop, laptop or even a tablet for that matter, but on the screen of a smart phone … typing letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. The paragraphs became chapters and chapters came together to create a greater tale, an epic saga, a seemingly absurdist (well it is absurdist) rant, disguised in narrative prose. The bald dude even went so far as to revise drafts of this prologue while enduring a morning Jet Star flight to Bali. Spam in a can at 40,000 feet is about as funtastic as being locked up in a padded jail cell and forced to listen to boy bands for 30 years.
Anyway, let's have a brief discussion about cosmology and pondering the existence of life beyond Earth…
At the time of typing this tripe, it is widely believed that there are over one hundred thousand million stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Now if those numbers are daunting for you then please stop reading now, for what follows might induce existential angst and even impregnation on some planets.
There are up to two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. The observable universe has a radius of 46.508 billion light years and contains all the matter we can observe from Earth. Needless to say, this accounts for a fudge load of crap.
We cannot see beyond the observable universe because light emitted from stars etc., beyond the observable universe hasn't reached us yet. Unfortunately, we'll never be able to observe that which is beyond the scope of the observable universe. The universe is expanding faster than the edge of the observable universe can grow. You might as well go looking for Bigfoot riding the Loch Ness Monster because the odds are actually better.
And as for light years, let alone billions upon billions upon billions of light years, what exactly is a light year?
If you travelled at 300,000 kilometres per second (around the Earth 7.5 times per second) and continued this velocity every second, for 3600 seconds per hour, for 24 hours per day, for 365.5 days per year, well, that's a light year.
That's a very big Sunday drive indeed but still well beneath what's considered meagre distances in galactic, let alone in cosmic terms. Consider the estimated actual size of the universe. The actual size of the entire universe could be more than 250 times larger than the observable universe with a possible diameter of at least seven trillion light years. If this is indeed the case, then there are potentially over 500 trillion galaxies.
Do you feel small and insignificant by comparison yet? Does the immensity of it all at least put some of your problems into a more appropriate perspective? Can you now forgive that other neighbour who uses a hockey stick to wack cane toads into your swimming pool because you may have, out of protest, inadvertently and accidentally thrown the rotten fruit from his grapefruit tree onto his roof? Yes, you should forgive that neighbour for being such an inconsiderate carob, but don't forget.
Six billion Earth-like planets are estimated to exist just in the Milky Way galaxy. If you multiply this number by the two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, you end up with a staggering number of habitable worlds. However, what about the entire universe? That's six billion Earth-like worlds, multiplied by 500 trillion galaxies.
Now just stop blissfully pondering for a second. Your first inclination might be to picture six billion by 500 trillion Earth-like worlds as blue and pristine hippy havens. But remember, animals tend to eat other animals. This equates to quite a lot of meat grinding and things screaming away in the depths of alien jungles while meaner things eat them.
Of course, staggering numbers like six billion by 500 trillion Earth-like worlds, relates to just our universe. If the grander concept of the multiverse is taken into consideration, then the potential number of places capable of supporting life, becomes infinite.
To scale back to our solar system, we know of one planet where life exists. However, did life exist elsewhere in the solar system? Does it exist elsewhere in the solar system at present?
Three billion years ago, Mars had a thick atmosphere and a surface covered in creeks, rivers, lakes, seas and oceans. In the present era, there is circumstantial evidence of extant life on Mars. I mean something is producing methane on the red planet.
Now that is not a fart joke because you see I carefully omitted the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, dreaded hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide (well actually, carbon dioxide is plentiful on Mars). I mean, if the big brown date of some extraterrestrial monstrosity is going to bake a biscuit, then similar gases are probably part of the brew. Why? Well because of the universality of chemistry and the periodic table of elements. I digress, too much word salad and conceptual flung dung. It is now time to move on to a different world with ample quantities of steaming hot and toxic gas (and I don't mean Uranus), the planet Venus.
Venus was once habitable, covered in a shallow ocean with continents and archipelagos. The planet possibly remained habitable for at least three billion years. This is plenty of time for all kinds of weird crap to evolve, live, thrive, reproduce and to perhaps ponder while grinding the meat of Venusian prey under the nurturing sunlight of our star, old mate Sol. Or maybe not, perhaps Venus has been a dried and hellish bung hole since day dot? The science is still out on Earth's fiery twin.
And what about Europa? This moon of Jupiter appears to have vast oceans of water beneath a shell of water ice. This frozen shell could be up to 30 kilometres deep. And what about Enceladus? This moon of Saturn is believed to be similar to Europa, as is Ceres and… We could keep on mentioning other examples, such as Pluto and the other trans-Neptunian dwarf planets, but you get the drift.
Does microbial or perhaps even complex multicellular life, exist in the vast extraterrestrial oceans of these far-flung moons and planetoids? What beasts and monsters of myth could lurk beneath the icy shells of moons like Europa and Enceladus? Perhaps something akin to Cthulhu dwells in the depths of one of these oceanic worlds, grilling the meat of an alien kraken over a searing hot geothermal vent.
Picture a barbecue occurring on an ocean floor. Cthulhu's kids play in the air pocket of the newly installed pressurised dome he had installed in the backyard. Meanwhile his wife Idh-yaa is drinking too much of the fermented mycoplankton again. She appears to be a little too friendly with that hideous shapeshifting bunghole from her work. What did the shady toss say his name was again? Was it Nyarlathotep? It was a good thing that Cthulhu's trustworthy neighbour Azathoth liked to keep his sonar on things. No doubt that good old Azathoth would let Cthulhu know if strange submersibles were parked out the front of his lair. Ah, how the plot thickens and plays out across the pan cosmos of infinite possibilities, such pointless digression.
Of course, such pondering relates to the concept of 'life as we know it' – based on the principles of carbon based, organic chemistry – metabolism, amino acids, nucleotides etc. Life 'as we don't know it' probably exists in abundance as well. After all, the universe (and the plausible multiverse) appears to be a vast, seemingly infinite ocean of endless possibilities.
The more the mind ponders and considers the facts as they are presently available to us, the more the existence of life elsewhere seems certain. Which leads us to the question – if the existence of life elsewhere is a certainty, then is there intelligence? However, I should thoroughly warn you, that before you attempt to think too much about this question, please understand that it is like a Russian doll. It will only lead to further seemingly endless barrages of questions. For example…
Does consciousness exist elsewhere?
Are there other civilisations and are those civilisations capable of interplanetary and interstellar travel?
Are some of these extraterrestial civilisations visiting and observing us?
Are there civilisations out there existing in other universes that are capable of travelling to other universes?
Are some of these 'ultraterrestrial' civilisations visiting and observing us as well?
If interstellar and/or interdimensional travel is possible, is travelling through time also possible?
Are civilisations from the past or the future, visiting and observing us?
Are we visiting and observing ourselves?
Are all of these conjectured visitations and observations occurring?
Or, are we the only candle that shines in an infinite void of solitude?
What a bunch of big questions requiring big responses carrying big, cognitive ramifications. Fortunately, there are indeed answers to all of these questions (and more). One only needs to consult the source of all truth (and absurditas). It is the pan cosmic compendium, the all-seeing, all knowing, all inspiring almanack of all that is all. I am of course referring to this fiction serial, which you are reading right now…
THE GREAT PAN COSMIC SAGA
But beware for although it is said that knowledge is power, those who know knowledge know that it is also a burden. It is a curse that can only be slightly alleviated with absurdism, stoic humour, happy nihilism and other such word saladry. It is only the ignorant who experience bliss. And so, to borrow a line from Run DMC, it goes a little something like this…