Darkness

            

 “There stands man’s limit.” I said, gazing up at half moon, glowing in the nighttime sky over the city skyline. “That’s as far as we’ve gone, the moon, and it’ll be years and years and years until we can get any farther than that. Machines still need to be invented, rockets still need to fly, oil needs to be discovered on uncharted planets, and a whole sort of other scientific leaps need to be made. But I want nothing more than to be here when that happens. We will finally be one humanity, with no barriers to race or gender.

But what if it never happens? What if we are trapped on this planet for eternity? I will have wasted my life chasing fantasies, moreover, fantasies that I am not near intelligent enough to complete all by myself. I can’t sit down and do the math. Im not intelligent enough. I would have had to wait for other people much more qualified people to try to make my own dream real for me, and watch them fail. What will I do then?”

            The older gentleman gave me a quizzical look, and then relaxed the harsh lines around his eyes. He then pointed up. “Look up there. Tell me what you see?”

            I strained my eyes, searching, but saw nothing. No stars, no sun, no life, no future.

            “Exactly,” my acquaintance said, “there is nothing up there tonight. No stars, no distant galaxies, no nebulae. Only the darkness. We may have set foot upon the moon and nothing more, but we have conquered the stars from right where we’re sitting.”

            And the table lamp beside us gleamed on, joining the host of electrical lights that lit up the city, fighting back the darkness surrounding us, uncaring of the starlight, dying from the artificial glow.