A Cross sectional epoch of life in the Empire of the Sun

He is the ultimate creator. Ultimate enough for this story. He didn’t create the universe, nor did he come up with the laws that govern it – the very laws that facilitated his existence and of those above him. Like a functionary in a huge hierarchy, he sits smug in his end of the galaxy with his progeny (and their progeny), moving around him - worshipping him.

His eight major sons and daughter (nine if you count the one who was banished recently) respect his superiority – after all they owe their existence to him. Like all families, one of the siblings is the favourite and most pampered of them all – The third one from her father. She has been endowed with a gift of organic life by her father. “Earth” is what her own progeny calls her. Her elder brother Jupiter is quite fond of her and protects her from the millons of their other siblings who - from time to time - in an envious rage hurl themselves towards her.

The Earth is a proud parent of millions of species of life. She carries them around like a marsupial in her pocket - the biosphere. A layer of ozone & a geomagnetic field is what she uses as a defence to protect her little ones from the radiant gaze of her father. At places where the field is weak, the radiance creates wonderful floating ribbons of light – like a nexus between the father and daughter. One particularly naïve species called humans are enchanted by these.

The Earth wants her children to coexists, but one of them has started to bully others. Humans are turning out to be thankless little brats. They hope around multiplying, messing up everything everywhere. But the earth is hopeful, they will grow up someday, take care of her, make her proud.

--Tone Change--

Sun provides for his grandchildren. It sends countless miniscule bundles of light outwards. Some of these fall on the Earth and are absorbed by plants which store this energy in chemical bonds. The have been doing this forever. When they die, they get buried under tonnes of soil and get fossilized and turn into liquid – one so potent that millions of years later, it is dug out by humans and is now used by them as fuel – to power their lives and their greed.

Humans are magicians. They are beginning to master the art of manipulating the small – chemistry. It’s this craft that has improved (or messed up?) their lives. They extract petroleum from the earth and make thousands of useful products from it – some help them move around, some allow them to light up the night and keep working past their bedtime and some let them create nifty strings of threads to adorn their clothing. These artificial fibres are meticulously combined with natural fibres from certain plants to create lovely pink dresses for little girls whose parents are rich enough to buy these for them on their 5th birthday. The little girl becomes fond of the dress and wears them for a while. She has been fortunate enough to live a life of luxury.

The pink dress is washed in a washing machine in a whirling swarm of detergent molecules and water. Some of these molecules (and those of air later on) who have been promoted to the extreme right end of the Maxwells’ bump are naught enough to knockout a few of the dye molecules off the dress. The ultraviolet photons from the sun who are lucky enough to have evaded the Ozone molecules of the atmosphere hit the dress as it is drying. Some of them have the right energy to penetrate and disintegrate the dye molecule. The colour of the dress fades, the girl grows up, and the dress is donated to the maid servant’s little girl. The dress has a second life.

The maid’s girl dreams of a future life when she is able to buy a new one for herself instead of wearing tatters dumped at her. She studies hard, and begins to traverse the numerous lanes of life. The path is treacherous but the vision of her own new dress propels her forward.

She has now graduated, works at a small firm – small enough to still use Tally for their accounting needs. She needs the money for further studies. She day dreams about the dress. She would need a larger size now. And the colour? What colour would look best on her? Her skin used to be dark when she was young – the same insolation which turned her dark had faded the dress. But now her family had prospered. She didn’t have to be out in the Sun anymore. She was fairer. A customer walks in and makes a purchase interrupting her chain of thought. She punches a few keys, a few electrons give off a few photons which hit other electrons and so the cycle continues within the computer until the printer churns out the bill for the gentleman. The customer leaves, the girl returns to her thoughts. She thinks of her mother now. Her mother is old and weak. The sun burns its hydrogen to provide for life. In the same way, her mother’s bones had parted with some of their calcium to create the bones for her daughter. Old ages had taken its toll, the mothers bones were weak now. The dress will have to wait a bit longer.

(This was inspired consciously by http://tara-think.blogspot.com/2010/12/sincerely-from-biochemistry-student.html and probably subconsciously by one of Upasna's posts)