In the Time of Jim Williams

It is odd to think that hundreds of years from now when the chapter is written summarizing the turn of the second millennium, the title of the chapter might very well be In the Time of Jim Williams, with a set of short footnotes on the last page summarizing the discovery of relativity, the landing on the moon, and the creation of the atomic bomb.

From now until the end of time, every human being will know that name, the name of the first person to create life from nothing. I can still remember that fateful morning when he reluctantly decided to introduce the rest of the human race to their eventual successor. It is a day that will forever live in infamy as the moment when the human race woke up and realized they were no longer alone in the vastness of space and time, the day that the creation became the creator, forever updating the human race's designation from the first fully conscious species to the first species to create a fully conscious being.

Looking back now, had I known that I was going to meet him for the first time that morning, I would have paid better attention to every particular of my initial impressions, relaying them here in perfect detail. However, as Jim explained to me that morning, it was important for someone to record the human perspective of the events that followed, and, ironically, he was never very good at being human.