Seeker

by Douglas E. Richards

As he continued to explore his surroundings, he was struck by just how infinitesimally tiny a fraction of reality the average man was exposed to, or could access. There were universes within universes, realms within realms, well beyond the range of human experience. The microscopic universe was one such example. The inhabitants of this realm were engaged in a constant struggle for survival, waging warfare on a more epic scale than any man could ever imagine. And all of it happened within a universe that human beings were part of, but couldn’t sense. A single human body harbored five thousand times more bacteria than there were humans on Earth, making the total worldwide population of these organisms truly unfathomable. The oceans represented another largely unseen universe of life. More than ninety-nine percent of the world’s biomass resided in the oceans, which not only covered the majority of the Earth, but did so to an average depth of two miles. The insect world was yet another epic realm, a universe almost entirely invisible to the self-proclaimed dominant species. And so was the Amazon. Here, billions upon billions of creatures battled for survival every day in an environment as removed from the experiences of the average city-dwelling American as was an alien planet. And most of humanity was oblivious to all of these realms, the microbial, insect, ocean, and rainforest—not to mention many others. Even beyond this, the species was only beginning to comprehend just ho...