The Magic Of Now
Science has afforded my generation, and every person alive on Earth now, some immense advantages. "I like having penicillin," was my half-joking response to my brother's question about when in the past I'd like to live if I had a choice.
Today, I found out from friends and family over a thousand miles away that my cat, Buddy, had gone missing. I found out while on a walk in a town I've recently taken as my new home. (I'm still preparing a place where Buddy can join me.) Distraught, I was able to, with a little help from a less distraught friend, find a flight back to my home town. From finding out to finding a flight, it was about an hour. I write this from the seat of an airplane on a device with thousands of applications and a single button. I should be back in my home town less than 10 hours from learning the news. Here I am, somewhat less distraught and somewhat more confident and determined to be a part of finding my beloved animal friend.
As I sit on this plane, antsy to be searching rather than typing, I can't help but think on the humans of the near and more distant past. Without the internet, without mobile phones, without telephones at all, without planes, busses, cars, trains, roads, mail. These all were realities at one point. I suppose, if you go far enough back, you enter a time where people simply stayed in their home town their whole lives. That past, in reality, isn't too distant.
I think about the future, also. I consider Star Trek's transporter beams, much utilized by many interplanetary species with at least the same confidence in safety as any modern transportation. I think of Stephen King's jaunt which highlights the mysteries of the in-between when your corporeal form is skipping through space and time. I think about Portal... and portals.
I wonder what would be happening, what I would do if I were not a human of this time and place. Would I have even considered a voyage by train or boat or carriage possible? Would Buddy have been found before I could ever learn he was missing? How much frustration and worry is added to my life via the technology I have access to? On the other hand, how much more freedom of choice?
I know that, while deciding to take on this sudden travel, while sobbing, while feeling angry and helpless, I wished I had a transporter beam. As I sit on this soon-to-land flight, I recognize that I am incredibly lucky in so many ways. Really, one man's airplane is another man's transporter beam, and is yet possibly another man's horse-drawn carriage.
That is the march, the flight, and the bright beam of science.
Update:
Buddy is home, safe and sound, less than 12 hours after I learned he'd gone missing. Happy Science Week, indeed.
