Midnight at noon

Would three hours of darkness at the height of a twelve-hour day matter very much?

What if the earth was plunged into darkness at noon?

Maybe some won't even notice? Yeah. There are some like that. Working too feverishly inside an air-conditioned box to even look outside a window (if it exists), and see the darkness. Or, looking outside a window, seeing the darkness, and not perceiving because their minds are still thinking about the problem at hand. Perhaps they are solving equations that affect our origins as a planet and as a race. Or just making money.

I wonder what it will do to the entire system, though - what would happen to the geological and planetary systems? Would the tides be confused? Would the moon be caught out of its orbit? Would the sun resent it? Would the stars go on as if nothing had happened?

On earth, what dials would be furiously zinging? All the infinitesimally minute measurements we human beings are constantly making these days about this universe of ours - what would happen to those readings?

What about nature? Would forget-me-nots close their leaves? Would birds retire for a three-hour night? Would the nightjars and owls stake their claim again? Would there be bats in the belfry?

What about financial systems? Would banks close for three hours? What would the "losses" amount to? Or would banks say, this is just another day, with one exception - we're going to have three hours of darkness, but we go on working? (Very likely!!!)

What about political developments? Would that deal still be inked? Do we go ahead with the revolution? So are we withdrawing support or aren't we, darkness or not? Shall we swear in the government or not? Is darkness inauspicious?

For most of us normal folk, I suppose we'd be spooked out of our wits. Maybe we'd go pray. Even so, there'd be questions that cannot wait. Do we hold off the marriage for a day? What about the arrangements? the guests? the money?

It's not too much to say that the plans of everyone on earth - individual plans, corporate plans, national plans, financial plans - will all be rudely jolted, if not derailed altogether.

Darkness. No sun, no moon, no stars perhaps. No rain. No thunder. No lightning. No twilight. No drama. Just......darkness.

The word that comes to mind is EERIE.

We would probably find ourselves in some weird, unexpected, unanticipated kind of freedom - suddenly, there would be nothing to do for three hours, in an otherwise pressure-packed day. Of course some of us, even MOST of us, would just go on hammering away at making our living, too oblivious to notice that the world had actually stopped. We'd never be able to figure out that maybe we ought to think about how weird darkness is when it comes at noon.

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Relax. It may not happen again. Once was enough.

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What if, in another story, also here on earth, those three precious hours were worth everything to life itself? Maybe, in those hours, the world actually changed. Maybe some plans were laid then that would result in ultimate destinies, no matter how few perceive it. What if cosmic wrongs were being righted? An eternal bully punished and power taken away for ever? What if there was a huge big drama going on out there while nothing shows on earth?

How can everything hang on a single day?

Everything. My life, your life. Our future. Our earth. Our homes, our children, their children, our friends, extended family, our nation, all nations, our entire race as human beings. Everything that we, as all of humankind, include in our definitions of "life".

What if everything were in the balance on one single day, a day within which darkness came at noon?

Too fantastic?

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Whatever darkness at noon means, it surely isn't in any script we would write as human beings. Maybe we will spend the next millennium figuring out what happened that day, and get nowhere. But it would be enough to keep us busy, like the eternal busybodies we are.

It is....someone else's plan. Someone else's plan, for something we might be curious about but don't understand. Maybe for something we don't care about anyway.

"And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour."