The Road to Destruction
Abrahm, Vishy and Shiv made up the Triumvirate that ruled Plantilox. Plantilox was a company – at least, something resembling a company, for in that day and age, in that location, there was no Company Law in existence, and so Plantilox could not have been a company. But it controlled the resources of the entire planet. What competition there was for the resources from other ‘companies’ had been eliminated by barter or by getting those involved to hop over into the Plantilox fold.
The great invention that made Plantilox what it was today was the development of the 3-D organic molecular printer.
The great invention that made Plantilox what it was today was the development of the 3-D organic molecular printer. This terrific product could create organic molecules by inserting atoms at specific locations, so that the atom chains could grow into whatever complexity desired. And then the design of the printer was enhanced, so that it could simultaneously produce and grow multiple chains of atoms.
The next step in the development was to program the printer to produce DNA. This was followed by the production of DNA as well as all the other organic material that goes to make up a living cell. And as if that was not enough, the printer went on to make entire living organisms.
That was when sexual reproduction stopped on the planet. Parents would go up to Plantilox and ask for children with specific special features and capabilities. Plantilox would then program and print the desired child into existence. Within a generation, all the ‘living’ parents had died, and left this population of specially equipped, non-dying breed that had been printed into existence. The normal aging process had been eliminated. And the special powers granted to all those beings truly made them – Gods.
Yes, Plantilox ruled the planet of the Gods. And at the helm of Plantilox were those three – Abrahm, Vishy and Shiv.
The three were themselves Gods, with no in-built decaying mechanism. Abrahm was the expert at the printing programs, and was known as the creator of Plantilox. Vishy, on the other hand, was a designer, one who could modify Abrahm’s designs to produce the right features in the finished product to have a harmonious blend with the other denizens of Plantilox. Shiv’s role was to locate those creations that had somehow gone out of control, and bring them back into the fold, if possible, or destroy them.
Plantilox was a wonderful place – idyllic surroundings, almost perfect harmony among the ‘people’ who happened to be Gods, with global growth rates adequate to keep all the Gods happy and contented.
Yes. Plantilox was perfect. It could go on forever and ever, with all the Gods in happy coexistence.
But those three, Abrahm, Vishy and Shiv, knew that this happy state could not go on forever. This is because Plantilox existed in a universe, and had to follow the norms of the universe. And one of the norms of the universe was that energy conversion from one form to another always left a part of the original energy as ‘irrecoverable’. This ‘irrecoverable’ energy accumulated in the system, and led to not just global, but universal ‘warming’. The term ‘entropy’, which was used to measure the extent of irrecoverable energy, thus became an ever-expanding function. Along with the ‘warming’, entropy was also proportional to the chaos in the system. Thus, the whole universe, and even the tiniest component of it, could be seen as traversing an arc starting from low entropy state (which was highly ordered, as the entropy was low) to a very high entropy state, characterised by extremely high chaos.
Yes, this entropy, often called ‘the arrow of time’, was definitely taking the universe from a state of order to a state of chaotic disorder. And Plantilox, as a part of the universe, was sooner or later going to get caught up in this universal drift towards chaos and get annihilated.
This was the problem that was engaging Abrahm and Vishy and Shiv. Was there anything in the whole universe that could stem the unbridled growth of entropy? Anything that could at least slow it down, if not take entropy in reverse gear?
Yes, Plantilox ruled the planet of the Gods. And at the helm of Plantilox were those three – Abrahm, Vishy and Shiv.
They got the God with a thousand eyes to look into the skies with a thousand telescopes for a thousand years, and they could not find anything that could slow down or reverse the unidirectional growth of entropy. But after a thousand years of looking out onto the universe, they found the tiniest thing right there on Plantilox itself, staring at them for all those thousand years that they were searching the skies.
Yes, right there, on Plantilox, in every cell of every living body created by the miraculous 3-D molecular printer, there was this molecule called the DNA.
Now, if entropy was the law of the universe taking everything towards chaos, then the DNA molecule was the exact opposite, taking its surroundings and itself from one level of order to a higher level of order.
Even in a single-cell organism, the DNA controls the whole cell. Not only that, by controlling the products it ejects from inside the cell and retains outside its cell wall, this single-cell organism starts controlling its environment.
Yes, right there, on Plantilox, in every cell of every living body created by the miraculous 3-D molecular printer, there was this molecule called the DNA.
Yes, more living cells mean more order, and therefore less chaos. But DNA went much further than that. Left to itself, the DNA multiplied. And as it multiplied, from one generation to the next, the DNA itself evolved from one state of complexity to a higher state of complexity. As the DNA went to a higher state of complexity, it in fact went into a lower entropy state!
Yes, Abrahm and Vishy and Shiv now had the weapon with which to fight against the forces of chaos – DNA was the weapon.
