It’s a very common trope in science fiction: humanity are newcomers to the cosmic scene. There are empires out there that are older than the existence of our species, or even our planet. Their technology makes ours look like toys. Their knowledge and intelligence makes us look like children. Their personal abilities make us look like puny, feeble creatures. Sometimes that makes us the scrappy, up-and-coming newcomers that have something the other species have lost, other times – if the writer really wants to rub it in – we are primitive, violent, superstitious savages. In the right kind of sci-fi (and some horror), some aliens might be literally beyond our comprehension.
It does make a certain amount of sense. After all, the universe is very old, and we’re only new arrivals on our own planet. Surely other intelligent life has arisen in the vast reaches of time between now and the Big Bang. But that raises the question – scientifically expressed in the Fermi Paradox – where are the aliens? Is there some barrier that prevents spacefaring societies from developing…or life from developing in the first place?
The thought made me very sad. Afraid for our own future, certainly, but more, the universe seemed dreadfully lonely and sad if we were alone in it.
Then, at the urging of an online friend, I saw this:
(Skip to 9:15 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing)
This was…a revelation.
It seems that the universe, like a living creature, might need to reach a certain stage of maturity before it can have children, and our planet – and thus we – came into being very early in that stage of maturity.
We may be the universe’s firstborn.
We are the Old Ones, the First Ones, the Precursors. We are the Shadows and the Vorlons.
Before, I thought it would be unfathomably sad and lonely if we were the only intelligent life in the universe. But if we’re only alone because our younger brothers and sisters and others haven’t been born yet, that’s not so bad.
I just hope that when they do come along, we’ve become wise enough to be a kinder big brother than Cthulhu.