Author : Joe Carter/Kyle French

37 hands. Zed shook his head. The 84 candidates running for President were asked if they believed in Sixism, and only 37 raised their hands.

He couldn’t believe this debate was still going on. For years they had assumed that the Manhattan Inflation Trial in 4838 had put the lid on the silly notion that the universe contained billions of galaxies. Billions! Zed looked out the window at the smooth black plane of the night sky. One-two-three-four-five-six. Six galaxies. There they were. It was so basic, so obvious. Any kid with a neutron telescope could make the observation for themselves!

The moderator turned to Governor Tembke of South Africa. “Madam, are you a Big Banger?” There were dampened giggles at the pejorative. Everyone knew what a ‘banger” was.

Rev. Tembke sniffed. “I’m running for the office of president, not planning on writing a 5th-grade textbook on astrophysics.”

“Aargh!” Zed threw his shoe at the screen, but it flew through the image of the Senator from Zimbabwe instead. He stood up and began to pace. He tried to breathe deeply, as if that would lower his blood pressure.

He used to be patient with relativists. He really did. But at a debate at ultra-conservative Harvard University, he’d made the mistake of asking one to explain how this galactic disappearing act occurred. The answer the nut had given him had been so ridiculous, he’d written it down:

“As the universe expanded, the force pushed the galaxies outward faster and faster. As they surpassed the speed of light, their light shifted to infinitely long wavelengths and dimmed. A similar “cloak of invisibility” befell the afterglow of the Big Bang, a faint bath of cosmic microwaves, whose wavelengths shifted so that they are now buried by the radio noise in our own galaxy. There was also an element called deuterium, but it is in deep space now. To be seen it needs to be backlit from distant quasars, and quasars, of course, have also disappeared.”

Totally unqualified. Unprovable! Billions of galaxies–similar in size and shape to the six observable galaxies – simply sped up and – poof! – became invisible. “Yeah, that happened,” Zed chuckled to himself, turning back to the debate.

Zed was particularly frustrated that the relativists were able to prop up their beliefs with… ancient texts! The silly belief was dying out until an archaeological dig in New Atlantis produced evidence of near universal belief in relativism by ancient world civilizations. Einstein, Hubble, Hawking… proto-scientists believed in an inflationary universe, so why shouldn’t we?

“Science is based on observation,” he grumbled, “not faith in theories about a Big Bang, cosmic radiation, and an expanding universe in which galaxies go missing.” Why couldn’t they just embrace the facts? Why did they insist on clinging to mythical beliefs? Were they just stupid?

Zed collapsed back into his recliner. Fortunately, time was on the side of science. Eventually, the old beliefs would finally fade away. After all, everyone knew the modern system would collapse if the rules could ever change.

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