Brutalist Stories #47

“We are born out of need and therefore, pain,” I say to the crowd, the audience, the world, nine billion people on this planet alone, countless more across the universe that we have conquered.

“That need comes in many forms and therefore, the pain that we feel also takes on many guises. We as a people have grown out of so many forms of our natural need. For millennia, for eons we worked together, we fought against one another, for all the most basic and primitive of needs, and to wash ourselves of the most basic forms of pain. Natural resource to satisfy our elementary requirements and save us from the most elementary forms of suffering was itself a cause of so much anguish.” They’re silent, watching and waiting for me, for the news that will see a dream become a realisation.

“We have grown beyond that. The races that we have pursued, the challenges that we have faced, we have won and conquered, in this unrelenting pursuit of something better, of some idea of peace. The existence that we have strived so hard for over the millennia of our common history, has see us lose so many through war, famine, pestilence, disease. We have managed to overcome our feral and petty disagreements, we have grown together as a race and taken to the seas, then to the skies, then to space, then onward and onward, out into the cosmos, across the universe, and yet there is still this unbridled, unrelenting lust and need within our very souls.”

I pause and look up and out at the vast audience, their silence is palpable, their glare piercing. “All humanity, of all planets, of all galaxies, we understand our great achievements, and yet we have not been able to rest. We are unsatisfied with our mere cosmic existence. There is a burning rage of our ancestors, of eons of struggle that still turns within us, that still fires our souls and we, through our science, through our wondrous feats of technology and psychology, we are still, to this day, unable to understand our why, or even begin to quench the thirst for the answer to that question.” I pause. “Until now.”

The silence of the audience cracks and the crack spreads and they are barely able to contain themselves, they’re visibly shaking, they’re lusting for this piece of information, they are seething for it. For so long they have been looking for an answer. For so long we have all been looking for some element of truth. For something to help us with this need, to satiate our pain, to quell our fear.

“It is true, that which you have heard, that news that has spread like wild fire throughout our vast civilisation, and I have here now, to tell you that, the multi-verse has reached out a beckoning hand. We are no longer constricted by the physics and boundaries of our own universe. We are emboldened by the infinite, we are now, ourselves, on a path to awe, and the infinite possibilities of the universes outside of our own. And, we shall know peace. We shall!”

Cheers and joy raise from the crowd, here and throughout the universe, it is a joyous day, when millions of years of evolution, billions of lives lost all can come together, with purpose and meaning.

Building inspiration: National Congress - Brazil