You know, I’ve got to admit, I — occasionally — have ideas.
No, seriously!
Some of them even work out: the one where I thought ‘I could do pub quizzes’ worked out, until the recession hit. (I’m not cheap, in that sense: AND provided booby prizes.)
Another seems to be doing well: ‘I know, I’ve now got an internet connection, what about I write one of those blog thingies everyone’s banging on about … ?’
That seems to still be going, several years later … … … …
Then there’s the ones you only get at two in the morning.
And have no conceivable way of putting into practise.
Like the one I had at two, this morning, when I couldn’t sleep: that still seems to make a certain vague amount of sense.
Even if it would take a lot more money and engineering skill than I have.
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Ever read Arthur C Clarke’s short story, The Sentinel … ?
No … ?
Basically, it’s the short story that formed the basis for the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And follows a a moon bound scientist, when he and his team find a tetrahedral beacon — under a dust covered forcefield — tucked away in the one of the more obscure bits.
Well …
It wasn’t so much the story that caught me.
As a mental image of an astronaut looking as this glass tetrahedron: and thinking/explaining to himself that it’s a marker beacon.
You see, what was floating around my mind, at the time … ?
Was Doomsday.
Sort of.
Well …
A Doomsday vault, to be precise …
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You see, what I also had in mind … ?
Was what happens to all that stuff, it everything goes — and I’m hoping you’ll excuse the phrase — tit’s up … ?
What happens to all that information … ?
All that knowledge, art, literature that we, as a species, have produced over the centuries?
And it sort of came to me.
We need somewhere to put it.
Somewhere safe, along the lines of the Doomsday plant Vault, the Global Seedbank, in Norway.
Only … ?
Well, it occurred to me putting it on Earth wouldn’t necessarily be a good idea: earthquakes, volcanoes, continental drift, what have you, would be certain to do some damage. Not counting what a nutter with a gun or a simple pair of pliers could do.
That idea, this morning … ?
Was this …
What if we had a giant knowledge bank on the Moon … ? Under a marker buoy of some sort … ? Oh, and with SOME form of instructions on how to get to it: you know, literally, “Dig here, build a generator, here’s how to make a computer, and speak our language.”
That sort of thing.
Let’s be frank, here.
Death’s scary …
It’d be nice to have something in place for the inevitable day the species pops its clogs …
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