Okay well I was smoking up the other day, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to write a story. This is what I wrote. ____________________________________________________________________________________ The Humming World He gazed out to the universe, in the unbounded abyss of space, and pondered, as he always did. He monitored the asteroid belts, stared at the swirling nebulae and analysed the births of stars. The cosmos was teeming with astonishing sights, sounds and feelings. And it was all for him. For he knew not of other minds; other beings. In all the vastness of space and time, He was alone. He brought himself to the top of the universe and stared down at the countless galaxies that lay before him. Nothing amiss, nothing ajar. All was quiet in the universe. All was orderly. Except for one tiny object. One planet, in one tiny spiral galaxy. Something was happening, and He had no idea what it was. The planet was humid and wet. The sun's temperature was going through minor changes, he noticed. He had observed planets like this before. But this was different, this planet was humming. Yes, humming. That's what it sounded like, a gentle hum, harmoniously emanating from a warm, wet globe floating calmly in orbit around its sun. He brought it closely to his attention and studied, fascinated with what it was, and how it originated. Suddenly, while studying the planet, He noticed a meteor entering the system. He observed its trajectory and he was suddenly filled with dread. It was going to hit the humming world. It was going to destroy his precious little gem. What could he do! He couldn't somehow alter its path could he? No... That wouldn't even be possible. He didn't know why, but for some reason he felt compelled to save his little world. He knew it was impossible but he had to try. He pushed all of his will into it. He forced himself forward into the path of the meteor and tried to move it away. It just passed through, like normal. No. The planet was doomed, and there was nothing he could do to protect it. The meteor struck, and the humming stopped. He was filled was grief. The only matter that he had ever even comprehended to be ‘his own' was now ruined. But wait, the humming was back. He listened harder... Yes, it was very faint but it was definitely there. He brought himself right up to the world, closer than he had ever been to any world before. The land on the planet wasn't green because of dense mineral deposits like he thought. It was covered with something. Life! The planet is teeming with life. The green beings on the planet he dubbed ‘flora'. He observed them at an exceptionally slow, intense place. This was unique, the only unique thing in the vastness of existence. And it was beautiful. Chaotic like the nebulae, yet predictable like the rotations of the cosmos. The flora on the planet was constantly changing, he had observed. He went closer. They start small, get big, spread their seeds, and die. That was the meaning of their existence. He went closer. He began to notice there was much more than he had ever imagined on this particular world. He went closer. He saw canyons, cliffs, volcanoes and barren mountain ranges. The large majority of it crawling with flora. Closer. There were things. Incredible things, impossible things. Things that he would have never been able to comprehend, in all his eternal life. They were everywhere, infesting the planet and the flora. He watched on, enthralled. They were alive, like he, but unlike the flora they seemed to be conscious. He dubbed these conscious beings ‘fauna'. They walked on, reproducing, consuming and dying, very similar to the flora, for these life forms seemed to need a fuel to carry on their existences. He watched as the generations would go on and the various species would change in ways to make them better suited to their environments. All the different species of fauna seemed to be competing with each other for the limited amount of resources that were necessary for survival. Some of these fauna would consume flora, and some would consume other fauna. Mesmerizingly, the pattern just continued and continued. And he watched, and watched. The planet was humming louder than ever now, filling him with a sense of excitement that he only felt when witnessing the rarest of astronomical phenomena. The life forms reproduced at such a rate that it would take much more than that meteor to permanently destroy them. He was observing the brilliant adaptive abilities of the life forms. He watched as the planets temperature dropped, and instead of killing off one particular animal, it just caused it to slightly adapt its DNA. All of a sudden the animals were covered with long brown hair to keep their average body temperature at roughly the same level as before the drop. He then observed the way the different animals fed. Some, like the newly hairy creatures, graze on the unconscious flora, but the newly hairy creatures themselves were being fed upon by something else entirely. These creatures were using their environments to hunt and kill their prey. They were creating small fires to cook their food. What was going on? These life forms were advancing in complexity faster than ever. They began creating things. Monstrously large habitats made out of refined minerals, towering above the rest of nature. They sent small capsules with a couple of themselves inside, flying out of the atmosphere and landing on the moon occasionally. They filled the atmosphere up with small metal objects. They sent massive arks out, with millions of different animals on board. The arks flew through space until they reached their target planets. They then built an atmosphere and let the animals loose, creating mirror images of their home world as they went. They spread themselves throughout the galaxy at an exponential rate. He noticed that the hum was considerably louder now. They spread to another galaxy, the hum loudening again. His excitement turned anxiety, the harmony of the hum to dissonance. They kept spreading, filling the universe with the humming. He couldn't escape it. It was like it was coming from within his very being. He was besieged by the jarring disharmony, his senses were overwhelmed. Never again would he gaze out to the universe, the infiniteness of time. Never again would he ponder. Never again would he monitor the asteroid belts and stare at the swirling nebulae. Never again watch stars be born. Never again would he see, hear or feel the cosmos. The only habitat he knew. No longer was it all for him, no longer was he alone. [FONT="]The hum never stopped. It will never stop.[/FONT]