Fireproof paper

The idea of fireproof paper seems great (on paper). No more sleepless nights thinking which three books you'd save if your house burnt down. No more fear of loosing the entirety of humanity's knowledge at the hands of a careless guy smoking in the library. But to be honest, that's not much of a concern these days anyway. The real issue would be someone encrypting all the data stored in those huge metallic hangars, cooled by thousands AC's. Regardless, paper feels less volatile, more permanent. Perhaps it's because it's physical, you can touch and feel the pages, the spine and cover. We humans gain knowledge and understanding through interaction. A child touches anything it comes across. It uses its most sensitive appendages, its fingers and tongue, to explore its surroundings. But we never really grow out of this. It's an instinct.

Fireproof paper would be great. No more erasing mistakes, throwing contracts or evidence in fireplaces. An additional safeguard of truth, and perhaps then, justice would prevail.

But this not what fireproof paper is about.

Paper. Well, paper's just a piece of dead tree, isn't it? Cut down on a sunny afternoon, so brutally murdered while simply existing. Now made fireproof. Isn't it ironic? This tree can only know safety through death.

Paper is just a piece of dead tree. Maybe think again. Why must the tree stop existing once it's turned into paper? Does the process of grinding down, turning into fine dust, pressing into a sheet and bleaching change anything fundamental about the raw material, the tree? Conservation of mass is universal, so nothing's really changed.

Paper is just another form of the tree, another configuration of the system. Perhaps, death is not an end. Perhaps death is not eternal. It's just a rearranging of the atoms into new molecules, new structures. The continuous change of the Universe. It's all conserved, nothing is truly lost. We're all just quarks bunched together, reorganizing perpetually, floating through the cosmos, riding the waves of space time. Hills and valleys and hills again.

Death is change.