The Secrets Of The Universe – Behold! [FICTOID]

One would think a glass rainforest would be perfect for stargazing but no, the myriad facets of glass break up light, scattering it in an ever-dazzling array of chromatic hues, bathing the ground below it with a soft ethereal glow. 

Nonetheless, Pandora Escobar chose this place for her observations.  While other astronomers studied planets and stars and galaxies and nebula, Pandora studied the universe itself. 

She likened the effort of others to specialists in various medical fields.  “It's perfectly fine to visit a podiatrist for problems with your feet, a dermatologist for a rash, and an ophthalmologist for your eyes, but they only provide part of the answer for part of the problem.  You need someone you can study the entire body in conjunction with the mind and consider dietary and cultural influence as well. 

“That is why I'm here:  To study the problem of the universe.”

“And what problem is that?” she was asked. 

“The problem is we don't know what the problem is,” she answered, “and that in turn leads to a host of other problems. 

The glass rainforest was technically not a rainforest, of course.  A dark asteroid the size of a country western star’s ego slipped past Earth's early detection systems and slammed into the Amazon headwaters at the respectable speed of 27 miles per second (43.5 kilometers per second for those reading this in the civilized world).  It blasted a huge crater, killed millions of people, and ignited a massive firestorm in the Brazilian jungle. 

What it also did was to liquefy a large deposit of silica from the intense heat of the impact and splash it upwards with its shockwave.  The silica cooled immediately to form grotesque spikes of transparent glass stabbing at the sky and was immediately dubbed the glass rainforest by Brazilian journalists looking for something positive to say about the catastrophe. 

Pandora Escobar saw this as a chance to observe the universe through a unique lens.  She packed up her equipment, hired a boat to take her to the glass rainforest, and set up camp, telling the boat crew she'd radio for them whatever she found whatever it was she was looking for. 

Nights were preternaturally quiet in the glass rainforest.  The intense flash of heat from the asteroid impact killed every living thing down to the microbes in the soil.  Indeed even the hardy tardigrades were fricasseed by the blast.  Pandora was the only living thing for hundreds of miles around (or kilometers, take your pick).

Once she set up camp she started studying the stars.  During the day she hid out in her silver dome survival tent, reflecting off the concentrated sunlight from the glass rainforest.  At night she dragged out her gear and studied the diffused more light filtered through the stark glass spires. 

Days passed into weeks, supplies ran low, patience grew thin.  

Fresh water was no problem; the Andes still poured melted snow caps into the tributaries that comprised the Amazon basin and newly formed impact crater. 

Food proved slightly more problematic but just as the Andes carried fresh water down to the reconfigured Amazon, so did it carry fish and insects and other small life. 

Pandora caught these -- never too much, only enough to survive on for a day or two -- and kept herself nourished. 

What starved was her mind.

She poured every ounce of mental energy into studying the universe yet never gained a new insight.  Those times when she thought she caught a ghost of a glimpse of the ultimate reality she quickly realized it was only her mind projecting her own desires onto misplace confirmation bias. 

Increasingly frustrated, she thought about giving up.  This proved to be both a blessing and a curse in disguise. 

The blessing was that once she divorced herself from the desire to learn the secrets of the universe, she suddenly knew.  The universe revealed itself to her in one blinding flash of insight.  Beside herself with intellectual and spiritual ecstasy, Pandora knew she must share this with the rest of the planet.

And the curse?  The asteroid impact drastically altered earth's weather system.

An unpredicted gale tore through the glass rainforest, toppling the fragile towers and raining huge shards of razor-sharp glass below. 

The next year when the university realized they hadn't heard from Pandora in months, a relief mission travelled up the slowly reviving Amazon River.  They found her under tons of glass shards, shredded and riddled, then baked to a charred husk by each day's sunlight accumulating on her desiccated corpse. 

And the great secret of the universe she learned?  

Just because the universe will share its secrets with you doesn't mean it will let you share it with anyone else.

© Buzz Dixon