Year 2076 – 1 light-year away from Earth
With Björn came the gray horse. In fact, the black patches that were increasingly spreading on the seraphs had something to do with a misregistration of humidity, but the foul odor that our ship surrounded since the start of the second mission was a perfect match for the meanwhile biting ones Body exhalations of my corpulent technician. Björn did not seem particularly interested in tackling this technical problem, and so we had tacitly agreed to increasingly restrict our habit of regular personal hygiene (if that had ever happened to Björn) in the shower cubicle to that Problem of increased humidity does not exacerbate. How do mold spores get into a spaceship? I did not understand much of these technical issues, and I was tired of asking Björn about such trivialities. He had long since realized that I associate his presence (sometimes consciously or unconsciously) with the decline of the Seraphs. Of course, Björn had not brought the gray horse. Thickness does not mold.
Björn sounded almost enthusiastic: “Well, the employer president should now be dead.”
“Then take some nice pictures of our husband.” I also tried to give a motivated impression in my voice. But I did not have the impression that I was doing so well.
“There!”, I heard Björn’s falsetto voice. “Unmasked and a frontal view of our camera.”
Why only have fat men so often a voice that is in such a contradiction to the other appearance?
“A complete success, eh?” Björn’s head approached mine, causing increasing grief to the sensitivity of my sense of smell.
“Well, then we’ve made it this time probably.”, I said, while my head retreating purposefully.
“You do not seem to be really enthusiastic about me?” ”
Clever,” I thought. “Oh, well. As a criminal hunter we are really very successful. ”
After the Jesus disaster, I realized that the next mission would be less spectacular. And then that: an assassination attempt on an employer president. And certainly not the first in history.
“You remind me of Mickey Mouse,” Björn said.
I refrained from any thoughts of the typical stereotype of the fat comic striper. “Aha?” I said instead.
Björn began to tell enthusiastically: “In the early cartoons, Micky Mouse was an adventurer who was allowed to experience the greatest stories in every short film.” ”
Blablabla,” I thought.
“But in the later comics,” Björn raised his forefinger. “In the comics, then came the everyday life. Mickey Mouse went chasing criminals and the stories found a smoother scheme. You could not invent a new great adventure for every story. ”
I thought about whether I should wish to solve criminal cases until I retire (which became an increasingly manageable time frame) or whether I would not be better for the responsible person at Histora AG should suggest to gradually finish the project macroscope.
Year 2071 – 2044 light-years away from Earth
“I have him in the picture.” The face of Jessica beamed. A nice sight. However, I did not succeed in joining her feelings. For too long, I suspected, it had taken the journey of seraphs and the search for the Messiah. Too imprecise were the results so far.
“Is lip analysis good for what?” I asked, half interested, half skeptical. The macroscope might look into the past, but it could not hear it.
Jessica nodded. “He’s at a good angle. That could be something. “
The answer from the computer was still on hold. The monitor’s dim light cast a shadow over Jessica’s cheekbone, underscoring the slender character of her young face. Whether it was intended as a nice gesture of the Histora AG to assign me a woman as a technician? I had always struggled in relationship matters, and that may have spread among the Histora leaders. `Let’s give the poor guy a woman along the way. As the only man on the Seraphe, it has to spark once, so you should have thought. True to the motto: ‘If I’m the last man on the planet, then I’ll have to get a wife.’ The administration had made a mistake. We had met in the first days and then stayed on this relationship level then. At some point the train finally left.
“There we have it!” Jessica patted the evaluations on the monitor with her fingertip. “Blessed and pure heart. And look here: yours is the kingdom of heaven! And up there again: peacemakers! ”
I nodded. And I realized that once again I showed too little enthusiasm.
“This is clearly the Sermon on the Mount,” she said.
I kept nodding. “Yes, and unfortunately not for the first time.” Was this our fourth or even the fifth Jesus? Was it blasphemy to gradually get the impression that the prophets of that time had all hired the same ghostwriter before they climbed the mountain?
“Look at the close-up,” Jessica said. “The blue eyes, the blond hair. The kind look. “
“Jeffery Hunter,” I replied, and the cynical undertone was unmistakable. Why did I do that? Would I have been a little nicer to Jessica, what could have become of this mission?
“Forget it!” I said. “If you have the image of an Islamic terrorist on the monitor, then let me know. An Iraqi, a Palestinian. A man with a black beard and eyebrows grown together. “There certainly had never been a Western European Jesus adorning the crucifixes of our local trails.
Year 2033 – The earth
I would rather have worked on the computer. And that was quite literal. For other guys my age, the computer was mostly a game machine. On the other hand, I loved working in the authistic world of programming languages, developing automated processes, and incorporating myself as a user of my own software into a world I had created myself.
It was cold, but the sky was clear.
“I’ve set the macroscope on the big car now,” my dad said.
Macroscope – my father always used terms that did not exist at all. For any other human, that was a telescope, maybe a telescope, but nobody used the word macroscope. Why did he do that?
“Look through it,” he tried to encourage me. I looked through the pipe and saw the highlights of the sky just a little bigger now. No idea if this really was the big car or any other stars. I did not know that and I doubted that my father was much smarter in this area.
Silently, I removed my gaze from the macroscope and lost myself in the thought of my computer programs.
“Is not it nice that we can do this together?”
The culprit of this trip to the garden was certainly this psychologist. ‘Not related’ she had called me. I am a boy who has little interest in trying to find friends who are prone to encapsulation and who would certainly find it difficult to do later in life.
At the moment I was struggling to pretend to my father the recognition he might have deserved for his efforts. “Quite a lot of stars up there,” was an anxious contribution to the matter, which I mumbled.
And now it gushed out of him: “But do you know what the macroscope shows us? This is the light of the stars that might have existed tens of millions of years ago. Stars that may have long gone out. Can you imagine that? ”
” Hm, yes. ”
” You understand, the universe does not forget anything. At the right distance, with a much stronger macroscope, you could observe the history of every planet in the universe. You could check everything a human has ever done and maybe you would have to rewrite history here and there. “
I had just said goodbye to a belief in God in that time. I did not like the thought of an old man watching me day and night. I was at an age where I did not want to be watched in particular at night. And now my dad opened up the idea of a theoretical option of the ultimate vision in every time to every place. And this even without this a dear God would have to endeavor.
“Such a strong telescope,” and I deliberately used the term “there will never be.”
Did I try to convince him or just myself? “Besides, you would have to fly faster then the light. Because even with a journey at the speed of light, you would always only see the world at the time of departure. “
“But who knows,” my father slurred. “You are a smart boy. Maybe it’s you who will one day solve both problems. ”
I knew I would do something great someday. But I also knew that in any case this would never have anything to do with space travel and macroscopes. Hopefully, this trip to the outdoors soon came to an end. I wanted to lose myself in the ramifications and loops of my computer programs and program anything the world has never seen before.