BIOGENESIS – The Sixth Extinction

From space it seems an abstraction. A magician’s trick on a darkened stage. And from this distance on might never imagine that it is alive.

It appeared in the sea almost four billion years ago in the form of single celled life. In an expansion of life spanning millions of years, nature’s first multi-cellular organism began to multiply.

And then it stopped.

440 million years ago a great mass extinction would kill of nearly every species on the planet, leaving the vast oceans decimated and empty.

Slowly plants began to evolve. Then insects. Only to be wiped out in the second great mass extinction upon the Earth.

The cycle repeated again and again.

Reptiles emerging independent of the sea, only to be killed off.

Then dinosaurs struggling to life, along with the first birds, fish and flowering plants. Their decimations: Earth’s fourth and fifth great extinctions.

Only 100,00 years go Homo sapiens appear. Man. From cave paintings to the Bible, to Columbus and Apollo 11, we have been a tireless force upon the Earth and off, cataloguing the world as it unfolds to us. Rising to a world population of over five billion people, all descended from that original single cell. That first spark of life. But, for all our knowledge, what no one can say for certain is what or who ignited that original spark. Is there a plan, a purpose, or a reason to out existence? Will we pass, as those before us, into oblivion? Into the sixth extinction that scientists warn is already in progress? Or will the mystery be revealed through a sign? A symbol? A revelation?

It began with an act of supreme violence. A big bang expanding ever outward. A cosmos born of matter and gas. Matter and gas. Ten billion year ago. Whose idea was this? Who had the audacity for such invention? And the reason? Were we part of the plan ten billion years ago? Are we born only to die? To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth before giving way to our generations? If there is a beginning, must there be an end? We burn like fires in our time, only to be extinguished. To surrender to the elements’ eternal reclaim. Matter and gas. Will this all end one day? Life no longer passing to life? The Earth left barren like the stars above? Like the cosmos? Will the hand that lit the flame let it burn down? Let it burn out? Could we, too, become extinct? Or if this fire of life, living inside us is meant to go on, who decides? Who tend to the flames? Can they reignite the spark even as it grows cold and weak?

Transcribed from The X Files Season 6 Episode 22