Mask Mandates and Starships...

 

© March 6, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Star Trek and Star Wars

Are hell-bent on:

Superluminal speeds to propel starships

Past the galactic speed limit

Set by Einstein’s General Relativity Geodesic,

And the drag of inertia, making such acceleration an impossible trip,

Don’t worry: there are papers published working on it.

 

The one thing that each franchise

Probably gets right

It would take unprecedented

Planet-wide cooperation

To build a single starship,

Let alone a fleet of them,

Expanding your empires beyond your respective solar systems,

Now, we would pollute other worlds with our toxic politics,

 

It would take working on a common problem,

Survival,

Putting away tribal rivalries,

Seeking a standard solution: exodus,

For Earth-like planets in habitable zones,

“Boldly going.”

Is quite a slogan,

But not enough motivation to make us do so,

 

Another twist perspective on this pandemic:

Are we mature enough species to build a starship?

Before we start calculating Alcubierre Drive Warp Field Metrics,

Gia sent a zombie apocalypse,

 

Viruses are neither alive nor dead,

Procaryotes are smaller, primitive versions,

Eucaryotes are more considerable, capable of mergers

Forming tissues, organs, organ systems, to organisms,

Viruses may have evolved with us as an RNA variant,

They propagate neither sexually nor asexually,

They require host bodies to replicate,

 

Or, they are the first failed spark of something earlier,

2.6 million years ago,

When Earth started manufacturing oxygen,

We know this from rust first appearing in the sediment,

 

Macro teleportation,

Violates the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,

That says you cannot know with certainty,

The position, energy, and momentum of quantum particles,

Inequality proportional to Planck’s constant,

Inversely to two times Euclid’s Pi,

So, reassembling humans,

Or, any other solid object without mistake is impossible,

 

That negates technobabble solutions,

Magically eliminating viral pathogens,

Beaming up inadvertently from a new unknown planet,

 

Our descendants’ descent will be similar

To the “seven minutes of terror” landing Perseverance,

On Mars, our closest sister planet,

Time dilation and distance will make travel to distant planets,

A one-way trip,

No trade routes established by visitor starships,

 

If the atmosphere is breathable,

Until sure their genome is evolved enough for survival,

Our space-faring progeny,

They Will probably perform their experiments of inquiry,

Wearing masks for their safety,

Washing their hands,

Cautiously distancing,

Observing if they’ve contacted,

A new procaryote pathogen,

 

What if this pandemic,

Is Gia’s test

Before we leave the nest?

“In space, no one can hear [you]r screams,”

No matter replicators or Uber Eats,

No 911 to call for assistance,

No tribes to define oneself with,

No conservatives, liberals, republicans, or democrats,

The only question is, “no rescue is coming; can WE fix it?”

No poetic Latin words E Pluribus Unum,

The only governing philosophy boiled down to three letters: GSD, equaling “get shit done!”

More “final frontier” than we’ve ever been,

 

Quoting nuggets from Bill Mahr,

Patrick Henry NEVER said:

“Give me liberty AND give me death!”

“Half of the country is following Dr. Fauci; the rest are following Dr. Seuss!”

 

Following simple mask mandates

It might be our mother’s final test,

Before we leave the family nest,

If we can’t do this simple thing,

 

Who are WE to arrogantly believe,

Are we ready to become a space-faring species?