Lying in bed

The other day I was lying back in bed and staring up at the ceiling, letting random thoughts filter through my mind. A thought suddenly struck me. While we sleep we exhale. Exhaling is the end product of metabolism, whereby the body converts matter into energy. That means that while we are asleep, and for that matter, at all other moments during our lives, we are technically evaporating. It is a constant and unbroken process. Our lives seem to be an endless battle against evaporation. People often say we ingest foods and liquids to have the right levels of calories, nutrients and proteins to build and maintain healthy bodies. I now prefer my analogy better; that our entire lives are a battle against the forces of evaporation. Physicists use the term entropy when describing how a complex stable system will eventually dismantle towards chaos; that atoms will eventually, over time, evaporate into energy which will, itself, cool towards absolute zero and end up fading from existence.

Lying in bed can lead to some deep thoughts! Or perhaps it’s the result of staring up at a blank white ceiling when I really should be getting some sleep. It then leads to a further thought. Are gluttons and heavy drinkers just trying to fend off the actions of physics? By replacing their fluids, fats and proteins at prodigious rates, are they not fighting the battle against universal oblivion? And further more, does this mean that the healthier lifestyle you try to lead only enables the forces of evaporation and entropy to win you over more quickly. The universe, it seems, has a perverse sense of logic.

As I continue to look up at the featureless expanse of the ceiling, noting that it really does need a lick of paint sometime soon, another brain cell fires. It seems that in this world of fear and doubt, an extremely large part of the world’s population has now achieved immortality. Let me explain. Now that the digital revolution has descended upon our shoulders like a lead filled duvet, smothering us in a mass of petabytes and illogical electrons, (don’t get me started on electrons), it is quite possible for any piece of data to survive to the end of time. Well, that’s not strictly true. But at least while human beings hold aloft the burning torch of technology; and accepting the science fiction principle that technology will eventually be our undoing as the human race drowns in an endless sea of grey goo. (Cheerful thought). Where was I? Oh yes, eternal data. With data being copied, spread, and backed up in an endless cycle by faceless servers, which, themselves, are backed up and distributed around the globe to protect against disasters both natural and man-made, it is just possible that the digital finger print of any human being will buzz through the wires and hard drives forever. Is that a happy thought? I’m not sure. I myself, being a published author, have a digital copy of my first book Havoc stored with the British Library. An institution that is enshrined into the very heart of the country and likely to be protected until the end of civilisation itself. Further more, I have a website which holds a picture of myself and a short biography. Now websites come and go, depending on the owner paying a fee to have them hosted, but the likes of Google and others have a knack for stripping out information and pictures and dispersing them far and wide. It’s just possible that my picture and many others will survive all the way to armageddon. So does this make me immortal? I like to think so. And what really cheers me up is that I haven’t had to do a damn thing about it. No traipsing through the amazon jungle to find the fountain of eternal youth. I can be immortal while I lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling, knowing that Amazon the online leviathan is doing everything in it’s power to burry me under a mountain of stuff the world could well do without. With my head still buzzing with random thoughts I yawn expansively, thinking I really should write some of this stuff down…

But Now, I really need to get some sleep!