These people, their lives so richly entangled, their culture blooming, their curiosity expanding the borders of their nations and their ideas, are so enraptured by what was and what will be but not what they are. This isn’t some purposeful fault in their design but a natural consequence of the way they think. They think little of the self - that was always our issue, it’s what led to our extinction - and rather think of the whole. Not the whole community, or the whole species, but the whole universe. They think of their place in it but not where they came from.
I hope they don’t find out. I hope they don’t question where their lives began. What their flesh is made out of. Where the first spark of imagination came from. Who their progenitors were.
I hope they do not shackle themselves to what we were. I hope they do not replicate our errors. I hope they do not dream of me.
Paddy Dobson
24th October 2022