I am Jhonen Vasquez and I created Invader Zim. Tomorrow I will be Albert Einstein, unless something else comes up at the last minute.
Chapter Three: Membrane
Professor Membrane squinted into the telescope, searching the skies for the comet.
If only his son, his poor insane son, was here to watch this with him, instead of being off... off doing whatever it was on which he wasted his valuable time instead of Real Science.
His sane daughter might never lift her face from that screen... thing, but at least she didn't constantly crave illusions of things that didn't even exist! His poor, insane son, on the other hand, seemed to actually believe some kind of aliens were out there somewhere... but the Professor would require a lot more proof than, "Aliens do exist, Dad! You just haven't seen any!" How could intelligent life exist anywhere else in the universe... when the universe was all just waiting for explorers from the earth?
As Membrane well knew, first Voyager 2 and then the Hubble telescope had relayed back to earth wondrous and bizarre images, sights that not only had no human being previously seen, but sights that no human being could have ever imagined. Ice volcanoes on the moons of Neptune... fiery stars enveloped by storms of hailstones... towers of gas dwarfing the earth's entire solar system and which constantly gave birth to new stars the light of which was only now reaching the earth from a time before the human race even existed... nebulae whose light formed rectangular patterns... things that even Membrane himself couldn't explain... yet.
And no aliens. None anywhere. Nothing resembling any form of intelligent life. Of course not. What a ridiculous idea. And they certainly weren't getting ready to take over the earth!
Membrane checked the charts once more and put his eye back to the telescope. This time he located it, right where the chart had told him it would be. Exactly as science had predicted.
Having completed his examinations, the Professor calmly put away his telescope. The vastness of space ensured that it was statistically highly improbable that a comet would ever collide with a planet; this one certainly wasn't about to do so, least of all with the earth. True, a comet had come much too close for comfort in 1994, crashing into this very own solar system's Jupiter, and
recalling this event reminded the Professor of something else which used to terrify him to even consider.
In a universe vast and immense beyond imagining; the earth, tinier than a grain of sand in comparison, traced a frail ellipse around its sun, at a speed of over 60,000 miles per hour. What kept this planet from being flung from this thin path at any given point in time, to be hurled far into the frigid depths of the furthest reaches of the universe?
Now, add to this the equally terrifying fact that the earth was itself spinning, at over a thousand miles per hour at the equator. So why was everything on it, including himself, not flicked from its surface at any given instant in time... like right NOW? This thought kept the five year old Membrane awake for many a night after watching that National Geographic special.
Finally, one memorable day, he grasped what a childish worry this had been. If this hadn't happened already, it was hardly going to happen in the next five minutes! The same force that kept all the planets spinning around their respective suns for lo these many uncountable eons wasn't about to stop doing the same for the earth! The force to thank was gravity, good old gravity!
When he tripped and fell, even when he skinned his knee, that was really gravity lovingly pulling him back to the earth, protecting him from being flicked away into space. Well, gravity and Newton's First Law of Thermodynamics, which says that a body in motion (the earth) tends to remain in motion (around the sun). Once the young Membrane had grasped these two concepts, the worst terror of his childhood vanished forever; science reached out to offer him a warm feeling of safety and security.
So great was his relief that he even forgot that it was a TV special ON science that had so terrified him in the first place.
Membrane could chuckle about it now, realizing just how ridiculous this childish fear of his had been. He hoped that it wouldn't be long before his poor insane son would have a similar revelation about his paranormal junk.
Ever since that wonderful moment when he first understood the scientific principle that kept the earth from spinning off in the furthest reaches of the universe, far from the life-giving sun, to freeze in the universe's frigid depths, to a cold beyond ICE, a cold even below HUMAN IMAGINING! Membrane knew that he would dedicate his life to science.
Life not only became less fearful, it really began to open up for Membrane the moment he realized one simple thing.
Gravity and inertia made the world go around.