A safe height by delicious a big poem A redspot, in the Sea of Japan spawns tsunamis. A meteor-strike at sea stirs oceanic fury. CNN gave it two minutes, pix of bodies, flooding, shock. And the time's running down on the clock. That was this morning. We heard about all the dead We saw clouds blur the redness As we coasted by overhead This may be the final message to Earth, to send our observations. Is there anyone there who does not know, but can still hear, about the devastation? We've watched the last few hours. Shocked. A world in transformation. Do the numbers in any way translate into useful information? Earthside transmission reported surprise, then devastation, then... silence. Global infosources clued us in. Energies unprecedented in geoscience. The North China quake killing about 1,000,000 in the 70's was a Richter 8.3, then... but these vibrations grow, hitting 7, then 8,... then 9, ... then 10... and I remember that they're log numbers of magnitude: getting to 8 from 7 takes a pressure wave with 10 times the amplitude. And while a normal quake ends within a minute or a few seconds, these waves have been going on for hours, I reckon. And most shocking of all: observations from the Antarctic desolation, before their voices were stilled, or lost in their cold isolation. It begins: "...waves forming regular patterns, with peaks every 5 seconds, as if the earth were a great bell being rung, a regular gonging, a drum throbbing with a steady pounding. The earth isn't shaking, but being shook.." and he signed off, and hearing, we too, were shaken. We listened for transmissions. Anything. Eventually we heard nothing but hiss. We sought for clues, for what was amiss. Dark clouds wrapped the earth. Fires burned unchecked. Our infrared cameras peered through the clouds ...homing in on mountain peaks, plotted their images, and found them shaking visibly every nine to ten seconds. The high ground, it's called. Up here we're safe. The mission isn't to conclude for another 16 weeks. And then, our provisions could hold us for another 10 beyond that. Then we descend into... whatever is under that cloud curtain. But mission control is silent. Perhaps broken apart, or deafened by drumbeats. And then we see a wake. A wake in the clouds. Like a boat. A v-shaped wake in the clouds. We casually observe from 176 nautical miles up, a v-shaped wake in the clouds stretching back ...hundreds of miles. What is it? Moving steadily. A UFO? No: the v is a shock wave. And the speed is well above the speed of sound. No one wants a UFO that could humble us so totally... as if we aren't already humbled by the destruction of civilization... But must it be men from Mars ending life on Earth? Thunder and lightning accompany the wave on its swift passage. Shock waves caused by earthquakes... that's the consensus. The speed of the wave is 3,000 miles per hour, four times the speed of sound. A natural phenomenon... scary, inexplicable, ...but easier to accept than what happens next... It stops abruptly. Beneath us. And we see an arm. ...coming up for us. Or waving? We're too high. But we must eventually return to an earth where this giant strides @Mach four. Infrared resolves the image. Make that giant-ess. Unmistakably human, feminine. Terrestrial? She resumes her walk, banging the drum of the earth every twelve seconds with her feet that say "DOOM, DOOM, DOOM". Feet two and a half miles long, dropping trillions of tons AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN. Airblasts from her feet comparable to hydrogen bombs, but no fallout. No firestorm, though, as the earthquakes already set fire to all the oil, gas and wood. Whoever lives to notice the airblast has scant seconds to live. Abstract, astronomical pressures change 700 ft tall buildings with ten storey garages into the dirt mingling in her calluses in an instant, taking everything hundreds of feet further underground, compressed to diamonds, then, reeling, follow her back into the air forever trying to be part of her glorious, imponderably ponderous potential: potential energy hanging momentarily, part of that lengthening dirge cycle, now almost fifteen seconds between each glorious booming blasting step out of, and then back into the stratosphere; before the planet pulls her back, in a masochistic ritual of self-mutilation. The earth says, teeth chattering, with excitement, or with pain, "fall from the sky, and step back into the sky, step on me, shake me, break me." And when we land our shuttle, where shall we hide? Fleas can dig under the dog's skin. Will she let us be, or scratch us off the face of the planet. But why should she bother? She has already stomped the earth into its quaking dance, and billions are buried or flooded or married to one another, fused to her feet more perfectly with every rollercoaster-ride avalanche out of the sky. If those feet sought us out, what shelter what wall could hold back such megatonnage? The tallest skyscraper cannot come close to the underside of her foot's arch. Her baby-toenail would look down upon the little thorn that scratches so nicely against her Itchy calluses, until it vanishes into microscopic dust. If everyone who had ever lived assembled in their Sunday best bands playing, banners flying, "Welcome welcome! We worship you goddess! Command us, please! We give you homage." ...would she know it? Looking the other way, she'd simply stomp and we'd be all stuck to her foot, kissing her and one another in the most liquid supplication, as we all instantly became part of her. Everest's peak is only halfway to her knee, a good scratching post, or place to sit. But we observe that she is bigger all the time. She is restless: if only she would let the earth rest. If only she would stop growing. But when we land our struggle will begin in earnest: to find a safe place to land... Our landing sites in Florida and California are surely underwater. And then to live the noisy life, as dustmotes dancing on the surface of a singing drum, on a bell forever being rung. Redemption shall come for us, in a long shadow. When her feet surpass size-20[20 miles], she approaches orbital velocity, a goddess never knowing we were alive or dead, after the detonation of her passing, the shock wave of her form ripping the atmosphere apart, wherever her foot whooshes down. Thunderclouds, tornadoes, hurricanes, rent and roiling in their agony, mere feathery laces trailing from her ankles, as she steps clear of such minor squabbles, their miniature fury clinging to her like soft anklets. We may never get close enough to be flattened into the bedrock that she routinely penetrates. Her retinue of storms scours the planet. Rainforests become just a greener sort of dirt beneath her. The oceans swirl around her when she wades in, although she prefers the land, ...except for the Sea of Japan where her craft broke, on reentry... or so we think. Does she have comrades? Perhaps dead, lost in the crash? Does she look for them in her global tramping? Or is the tolling of the globe's bell a dirge for their passing... and the myriad others snuffed under her like little candles extinguished. But her resemblance to us is too unlikely. She is no alien, though she knows us not. She looks for us, sees our occasional orbital glint, reaching out for us, perhaps as a friend. But she is home. A relativistic comedy of errors, the principal uncertainty that we'll never know, has made us as her microbes, while earth who was her mother, is now merely her sister -- her dying sister. The last survivor of a futile voyage, seeking humankind's immortality has brought down an entire species that she collectively outweighs millions of times over. She is humanity, in sum and in total. The final joke would appeal to Einstein. Alone, bereft, starving, thirsty, she mourns, unaware of us, and the peril she poses. By the time we land she'll die of thirst, or inhale all the atmosphere. Her height approaches 2,000 miles; she reclines perpetually, moaning now in recognition of her toxicity, constantly looking down, examining her feet, as if digging for the ruins of Pharaohs or Caesars, or merely Americans. Trying, desperately, not to knock us down, as her size begins to rival that of the planet itself. She mourns her comrades, the residues on her feet of human habitation, of the human race itself. One last observer paradox. Her future itself is underfoot, the whole earth, flattened, clings to her for meaning, even as it loses shape and identity, folded in upon her, part of her, the ultimate solipsism. And we return to her, the only place we know.