Where they finally got it right

Is there a place, somewhere far beyond our power to understand,
where someone finally got it right?

 

Did eons of trial and error, defeat and disappointment
in the end bear fruit?

 

Maybe we’re not alone, but one of many elegant failures,
teeming with lessons to be learned, subject to inquiry;
no blame, but some recrimination.

 

Could Gaia be no more than just a prototype, aggrandised in a nebula
of optimistic hubris, assured success at periodic checkpoints;
toasts raised from glasses always kept half-full?

 

One of many iterations, each contained within its universe,
all in parallel and linked by blanked-off corridors;
holes providing egress for engineer worms and ideas-men
when it’s time to cut and run.

 

The debris of a circus, packed away, moved on to another virgin void
and version n+1, leaving us abandoned like the rest to shamble closer
to our ragged and disorderly demise.

 

Perhaps.

 

But maybe, somewhere far beyond our ken, lies the one where they finally got it right.