Lord of the Dust

A star at the microscopic scale, a grain of sand at the macroscopic scale. The dust drifting through the air is made up of stars in turmoil. In the microscopic world, invisible to the naked eye, all life thrives in the frostbound heavens, competing to evolve and make the leap to eternal life. At the macroscopic scale, higher lifeforms observe the stars of the universe as if they were grains of sand, hoping to become part of the macrocosm and attain eternal life. Every night, Jiang Changliu dreams of the microscopic world. His cells swell like stars, yearning for the energy of evolution. He thought something was wrong with him, until one day he woke from a coma to find himself the only person left on Blue Star. A speck of dust in the mortal world had landed upon humanity. It turned out humanity had already fallen into the microscopic world. We once stood at the boundary between the microcosm and the macrocosm, able to look down into the microcosm and reach up to the macrocosm. Now we’re just another speck of dust. But why wasn’t I taken along?