Have you ever noticed the way we humanoids use humor to overcome our fear of our own, all too brief, mortality? Sashi and I have traveled a great deal, and we are continually meeting other species for whom this fact is as true as it is on Earth.
'Mortality', for most living things, however long-lived, is finite. Everything has an allotted time and a pre-ordained cycle of existence, and yet rather than accepting this incontrovertible fact and making the most of our short time here, we 'sentient' beings seek to ignore it. We pretend it isn't going to happen to us; that the scientists will discover a way to prolong life real soon. And when, of course, something happens to draw our attention back to it, well, as is our nature, we just joke about it.
Here's an example of just such a joke, if you need one:
Q: What were the last words of the captain of the spaceship, 'Wanderer'?
A:"What rogue asteroid?"
At this point, everyone is supposed to curl up laughing. Yet, I ask you. Has it spared anyone from the dark one's scythe? Of course not! It has simply enabled them to deal with this particular example of the uncertainty and fragility of life.
So, what has this article to do with any of this? Well, it's just that according to a joke doing the rounds in all the bars, right now, the last words attributed to the technician responsible for monitoring the core temperature in Cora-Ventu's largest fusion reactor, were, "What faulty gauge?" They weren't of course - his last words, I mean. How do I know that? Well, because all such installations on Cora-Ventu have voice and telemetry recorders, capable of withstanding a catastrophe. According to the voice recorder recovered from the reactor control room, the exact phrase used by the technician in question, Jerom Ausser, immediately after the 'CORE TEMPERATURE IS THROUGH THE ROOF AND YOU'D BETTER GET OUT OF HERE FAST' alarm went off, was, "Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry, but I thought you were dealing with that." These words were spoken in a commendably calm voice, by the way, considering the widespread panic that was going on around him, and draw our attention to another aspect of our daily lives: the 'Someone else will take care of it', syndrome.
We put our garbage sacks out on the sidewalk, or in the communal dumpster and walk back inside our home. A few hours later, maybe even the next day - certainly by the same time next week - they've miraculously disappeared. Who took them? We assume it was the garbage man - though it could have been a cop, or a PI, busy building evidence against us for some crime or other. Just joking. Honest![Editor's Note: Does that mean we're frightened of falling foul of the authorities? 'Course it does! That's why we joke about it.]
So what happens to it? Where does it go? Most of us really aren't interested. Civilization is all about teamwork. You do your bit and everyone else does theirs. The most extreme example of this is a ball team. Each member is hugely talented - a few are more talented than others in the team of course, which may cause problems - but when these unevenly gifted individuals pool their talents and effort, something amazing happens. You have a team.
Teamwork, however, like life, is a really fragile thing. Why? Because it only thrives in adversity.
A group of individuals need a common goal or challenge to come to together as a cohesive whole. Take away the challenge, introduce repetition, and ultimately boredom, and the team members will rapidly revert to their own individual personalities. Some of course will be naturally punctilious - instinctively focusing on the minutest detail of the task at hand - while others will pass the day staring out the window, relying on their more dependable colleagues to 'take up the slack'.
Jerom Ausser was just such a person. On this occasion, unfortunately, his colleagues did not spot the rapidly climbing core temperature until it was too late, and when they did, Ausser was so convinced that they would deal with it, that he maintained his extraordinary composure right up until the point where his body and his spirit parted company.
Ausser was a very small cog in the Cora-Ventu machine and he messed up.... Bigtime! Thanks to his idleness, a large piece of real estate no longer exists, and a five hundred mile ring of land around the crater left by the explosion is completely devoid of life - a wind-blown desert of melted silica. And of course, a few million customers of Cora-Ventu Light and Power are without both. Perhaps, instead of simply assuming someone else will do it, we might like to think about doing a little more ourselves?
