"Zach Hughes - The Legend of Miaree" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

and what went into the making of it. It is the product of two
civilizations. Made by one, salvaged from a charred world by another.

What does it mean? I will not have the arrogance to tell you that. It is
for you to decide.

First, we must remember that the words are only our words, and
thus, a feeble substitute for reality. The words are not necessarily those
of Miaree, for we found the fable to be totally incapable of literal
trainslation. There is, as a result, a certain lack of preciseness, and
absence of definition. There are questions left unanswered. Was Rei a
man, much like us, Alfred? Ah, you can't say? Don't be ashamed. Neither
can I. Yet I can see him and I know him. He lives in my mind, and thus,
although he is separated by an eon of time and by endless light years
from our pleasant rooms, he exists, does he not?

"When our race was young it looked up and saw the colliding
galaxies. They will be colliding long after you and I, young friends, have
joined Miaree in past time. And then, as now there will be many
questions and few answers; hopefully, men will still be trying to find
answers, perhaps, as we do, through literature. For I consider literature
to be a minute island of sanity in a sea of excesses of cold measurement
and frantic amassing of data. We live, through literature, many lives.
This is a blessing, I feel, comparable to those bestowed by our medical
miracles, which give us the longevity to travel to Cygnus for the sole
purpose of watching stars mash each other, and which allow us a
surplus of years so that we may squander the youth of our children in
studying a fable which gives no answers.

I was asked once, by a scientist, the purpose of my seat here. I
confessed that I had no answer. I said that my work would not chart the
voids beyond our deepest blink. I said that my teachings would not
explain any reasons. The universe, I said, will continue to expand as I
talk and after I cease to talk, and someday, if you are right, my scientist
friend, it will slowly, over endless eons, slow, fail, and fall, to start the
cycle again. Will you be there to measure that primeval rebirth? You
say, I told him, that all matter began with hydrogen. If so, explain what
happens when all the matter in the universe coagulates into one infinite
mass and goes Boom!

In the face of such monumental questions, we are more
concernedтАФare we not?тАФwith today's lunch menu in the dining hall. Life
is measured in microseconds in the day of the universe, and our sun is
but a second in its life, my children. We must be content to live our lives
on the rolling seas of the endless eons and to be thankful, as Miaree was
thankful.

Thomax, would you please shake your friend LaConius and remind
him that sleeping is best done in barracks? Ah, thank you. Now,
LaConius, since you exhibit such interest, perhaps you would condescend