Last night, I was feeling philosophical, but had nothing to ponder on. I looked at my PC and was struck with the sheer lack of technical expertise I had in electronics, rendering any opinion I had on the intricacies of the device around 10 years out of date. I started looking on Wikipedia, before feeling pretty belittled by my lack of knowledge of space physics. Then, inspiration hit me. Actually, it hit the window.
“Bzzzz. Whack. Bzzzzzz. Whack. Bzzzzz. Whack”. I looked around to try and locate the origin of such debacle, then I saw it. A fly was buzzing around, hitting off the window repeatedly.
I found myself at a fork in the path of destiny in my life. It would have been easy to ignore the offending beast and go back to my scholarship on the theorised negative pressures exhibited by dark matter. But no, unfortunately I chose the other path open to me: I concentrated on the fly.
Bzzzzzz. Whack. Bzzzzzz. Whack.
On watching the poor creature, I couldn’t help but admire its boundless stoicism and determination. However, the net feeling in my mind was not one of reckless pity. It was more a feeling of disappointment. I wasn’t disappointed in the fly: how could a creature that is probably less than a day old really understand the enormity of its stupidity? Rather, I was disappointed with evolution. I had really hoped that over two billion years of cumulative learning and development, the animal kingdom would have overcome such a barrier.
Image via Wikipedia
Evolution is always cited as such a wonderfully intelligent thing. Even as I write this, I can hear Richard Attenborough saying, “Look how the tree has learned to lean towards the sunlight.”. Of course there is far more to be said for evolution and its wonderful creations. But 2 billion years? I had really hoped for more.
Bzzzzzzz. Whack.
I was starting to get quite upset. If I was locked in a room the size of earth for 2 billion years, I would have expected to design a fly that could learn from its mistakes.
Bzzzzzzz. Whack.
The window was dirty, I noticed with increasing desperation. Surely the resultant deviation from transparency would register with the fly?
Bzzzzzzzz. Whack.
This was the last straw. I had to do it, I had to be the vector for natural selection. From that moment on, any offspring of the fly would spend their entire adult lives whacking into inanimate objects without the brainpower to overcome such a simple problem.
Bzzzzzz. Whack. I knew then, if I didn’t do it, the animal kingdom would be doomed. I reached for a newspaper. I rolled it up in my hands. The future of the world was in my hands.
Image via Wikipedia
Bzzzzzz. Whack. This only steeled my resolve. I made my move. The fly, with almost pre-cognitive reflexes, dodged to the side and flew away. Knowing that my newspaper probably created a pressure wave that aided the fly in its escape, I poked holes in my holy smiting tool, ready to continue in my role as God of evolution.
Bzzzzzzz. Whack. The fly was back. I leapt at it.
The ensuing struggle was too horrible to even describe. The bloodshed? Non-existent. The perspiration on my brow? Fairly prominent. The fly? Still alive. My curtains? In a heap on the floor. My desktop belongings? Scattered. My glass of coke? Spilt.
The fly had won. I slumped in a heap of desolation on the floor. I couldn’t help but wonder if the attempts to get through the window were simply an ingenious experiment to prove quantum theory (if you hit an object enough times you will go through it) or if the fly’s erogenous zones were on its forehead. Either way, the little bugger had won.
Bzzzzzzz. Whack. Back to trying to decipher space physics, I suppose.