Regime Change

there is an extremely intense laser beam the width of my hand. i know because i put my hand in front of it and only my fingers are left visible and glowing on the other side. the beam is encircling us, hovering over the smoking river. it hurts (many people scream when I touch it) at first very badly and then not at all. my memory has been burned away that fast and i don't care. i can just feel the light passing through me - can feel the soft edges of the flickering beam and it feels like what i have imagined the edge of fire would feel like if we could touch it: it's gentle and of a wholly different order physically than anything we are used to.

The longer I hold my hand there the more I can see Hanguel shapes (this obviously from a student report last night on a Korean graphic designer) floating down from very high up in the sky. they contain within them (though unrecognizable from their outlined forms) actual dinosaurs. I say aloud, "Really? There are actual dinosaurs in there?" I don't understand the possibilities of scale. Other Hanguel shapes, in different colors, contain other life forms: trees, barracuda, mice, whatever.

They are floating down out of the night sky. The planet is being seeded for a new epoque of life on earth. Humans won't be part of this. Most of us are watching, leaning our back against a giant hill that is encircled by the smoking river and the laser beam that is buzzing above it.

I think we are all surprised that the end would be so peaceful, that it would be so easy to let go. In any case, there not much we can do about it.