The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Los Caprichos - Francisco Goya.

What if the apocalypse doesn’t arrive with four horsemen and a hail of frogs? What if it slips in sideways, unnoticed on the back of a billion bad decisions? What if it has started already?

Astrobiologist Dr. LeeCee Schofield should be ecstatic when she finds evidence of a new species deep below the Antarctic ice. Instead, as her research progresses, she has to decide whether she is losing her mind or uncovering impossible truths. And losing her mind might be simpler as her discoveries are terrifying: Not only are we not alone in the cosmos, we are not alone in our own bodies. The alien other we have looked for is not out there but in us, and resembles nothing so much as the “soul.” And it is dying, suffering a kind of colony collapse that threatens to take our humanity with it.

Excerpt from Sleep of Reason ~

If it is true that bacterial cells outnumber the human cells in our body by a factor of ten—why can’t we recognize ourselves for what we are: A shambling colony of survivors?

And if we go that far, we should take it one step farther. I suggest there is much we don’t know about ourselves as a colony. Considering the implausibility of what we know to be true, there is likely more truth out there that is even less plausible.

Photograph: DR HUW GRIFFITHS/BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY