On a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and a gentle breeze caressed the green grass. There was a small family — a father, a mother, and their four-year-old son — out for a walk.
The boy was sitting in his mother's lap as she read him a book. The book was a novel called A Planet for the Simple, and the father lay nearby, listening as well.
The mother spoke as she narrated:
"After this farewell, which came against House's wishes, he fell to the ground without will. He was filled with emptiness, and his eyes saw nothing but the sight of the yellow sky… The End."
An expression of annoyance then appeared on the father's face as he said:
"What a silly novel, with an even sillier ending! I'd have preferred you read something other than that."
The mother replied calmly:
"Well, Black is the one who chose it. Would you have preferred another novel?"
The father scratched his hair and said:
"Fine, if it was Black's choice, it's alright — though this isn't the kind of novel I prefer."
The mother knew the father's taste was quite poor; he always suggested novels whose events made no sense in why they began or why they ended — novels that were nothing but endless sagas — so she paid him no mind. Instead, she turned to the little boy and asked:
"So, Black, do you have any questions?"
The little one — Blackhole — always had many questions, many of them hard to answer, but this time his question was very simple:
"Mom, why is the sky blue?"
Black asked this while gazing up at the vast sky with his childlike eyes.
A simple question, yet deeper than any ordinary person of this age might imagine. That was what the mother was thinking before a smile appeared on her face and she said:
"Well, that's a wonderful question. If we use logic and science to answer it, the answer would be that Earth's atmosphere is what turns the white light coming from the sun into blue or violet, and that human eyes are more sensitive to blue, so that's how our eyes see the sky in that color. But… I know you're not convinced by this answer. Well… neither am I, really — it just raises more questions, doesn't it?"
The mother had a sense of what her son was thinking.
Indeed, Black already knew this answer, but he was searching for another answer to another meaning — one he hadn't yet found the right way to ask about.
He was about to speak, but his father beat him to it, saying:
"Yes, what empty talk. The answer is much simpler than that: the sky is blue because it wanted to be that way… simple and beautiful."
He said this while looking at his wife and child with a gaze full of love, a smile on his face.
The mother smiled at her husband and said teasingly:
"Seems I married a philosopher who doesn't know the meaning of what he's saying."
The father replied, raising one eyebrow and lowering the other, the smile still on his face:
"What do you mean? Of course I know… and well, I can be wise if I want, just as the sky wanted to be beautifully blue by day, showing off the sun's beauty at dawn and dusk, adorned by the moon and stars at night. My point is, Black… you can be anything you want, just as the sky wanted to be this way. That's the meaning of what I'm saying."
A smile lit up Black's face despite the confusion in his mind caused by his father's illogical logic.
"Of course, Dad."
The mother added, a smile lighting up her face as well:
"What a surprise! I really did marry a philosopher."
Black and his mother both thought at the same moment:
"How illogical… but… why?"
A year and a half after these fond memories, the world suffered a deadly pandemic that killed millions of people in less than a month. Although modern technology had managed to stop the pandemic from spreading further, cases still occurred, and no one discovered a cure — even with the help of technology and advanced science of that era — until a full year had passed.
The person who discovered the cure was Bella, Black's mother. Not only that, but she also managed to invent a device that could enter a person's body, detect any new pathogen harmful to it, and make the body adapt and eliminate it as though it had already received a cure — while alerting the devices in other people's bodies and online databases. It was a step toward making humanity immortal.
But she did not survive, and she lost her life.
On the day of her death, all the news spoke of her and her achievements, and of the progress she had brought to humanity. Of course, most of the world stopped caring much about such things after a while.
Two days after her death, Max, Bella's husband, was seeing off the last guests who had stayed for her mourning. Afterward, he went to Black's room to check on him — surely he wouldn't be alright after what had happened. Max himself wasn't alright either.
Max stood at the door of the room and knocked:
"Black, may I come in?"
Black replied:
"Come in."
Max opened the door and found Black lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his expression as calm as usual.
Max said, his voice hoarse with the grief he felt:
"Black, there's no need for sorrow. This isn't the first time, nor the last… you know that well."
Black replied:
"Don't worry, Father, I know what you mean. I might be sad right now, but not to an exaggerated degree. Actually…"
Black's eyes now glistened, as though they wanted to shed an ocean of tears but couldn't.
"Sometimes I think I should feel more sorrow than I do, but I can't. My mind never lets me. My mind binds me with: why? and how? And now I just sit thinking about a silly question I can't find an answer to."
Max asked him:
"Tell me, what's the question, Black? I'll do everything I can to answer it."
Like a six-year-old, Black asked his father:
"Dad… what is the meaning of a person's existence?"
Signs of sorrow appeared in Max's eyes, tears began to gather, and his voice remained grief-stricken.
"Of course it has meaning, and that meaning is the distinct impact you leave on the world as a human being, or whatever you are… you are its maker, aren't you?"
Black said:
"Before I asked you this question, I asked Robby — our robot — you know? He said something similar to what you said, but my mind quickly disproved that answer with another question: will that impact still hold meaning if the person who made it is gone, and eventually becomes like an inert rock? Doesn't that mean the impact they made was never meaningful to begin with?"
The first tear fell from Max's eye, and his voice grew heavier with sorrow as he said:
"What are you saying? Surely your mother… her life will still hold meaning as long as her impact on the world remains: her research that advanced science, the people who are alive because of her, the people she left a mark on who cannot forget her… me… and you."
Black replied without pause, his mind still unsatisfied:
"Does that impact really matter if humanity itself will eventually perish? Even if humans become immortal, the world itself will perish too, and everything in it will end as well. But even if humans outlast the end of the world, then what? What would they do? The world on which they used to leave their impact would be gone. And if the world doesn't end, then they've become immortal and have shed the desires their bodies once bound them to for survival. Does the consciousness they have still mean anything if there are no more problems left for them to solve? Wouldn't they become like rocks — not perishing, but proving no meaning either? And immortal humans wouldn't prove any meaning for the lives of the mortals before them either. And even if they did prove something, there are people who lived lives with little impact on the world, and when they passed, no one remembered them. Does the world's existence really have meaning? No… my question is: why were humans made distinct from everything else in the world? Why do they have the ability to change it, even though nothing they live for may have any meaning?"
Tears streamed from Max's eyes, and he covered them with his hand and said:
"I don't know… I don't know. These questions are like the one you asked before: why is the sky blue? I gave an answer your mother said was meaningless… and now I realize my answer truly was silly and devoid of logic. I'm sorry… I can't…"
Then, at last, a tear fell from Black's eye, and he said:
"It's alright, Dad. That answer of yours — even though my logic doesn't accept it — when I think about it, I find myself contradicting myself. How does something like the world exist? And how does a distinct creature like the human being exist without reason? The world is so vast and so complex — how can I know the meaning of its existence and the reason humans are distinct, if I don't know everything within it, every detail of it? I just… need to search more."
This was the moment that defined the meaning of Black's life. That meaning was: the search for the reason for existence.
Max knew that his son was different from anyone else in the world, that he was leagues smarter than him, and that he would become an obstacle if he tried to help him directly. But he had to fulfill his duty as a father and honor the trust his wife had left with him, so he wanted to say something:
"Son… ignorance is bliss, and the search for knowledge and truth is like torturing one's own soul. I know I can't stop you, so instead I'll try to be a good father, and I'll try to reach the highest positions in this world, just to remove any obstacle that might stand in your way. Son… rely on me."