In the beginning, before rivers carved valleys or mountains wore crowns of snow, before men built empires or women carried children through fields, there was vibration. Out of vibration rose light, and in that light danced the smallest child of creation: the atom. The atom was playful. Protons and neutrons clung together like lovers in the heart, while electrons whirled around them like sprites around a bonfire. Sometimes wave, sometimes particle, sometimes both at once — for the quantum world delights in paradox. From this dance, everything was born. Galaxies stitched themselves into spirals. Oceans poured across stone. Birds lifted into dawn. Seeds cracked open in dark soil. Every lungful of air, every flicker of fire, every breath of song — all carried the pulse of the atom. It was Atman hidden in form, God’s smallest syllable repeated in every pebble, feather, and heartbeat. Humankind felt it in story long before science gave it a name. The San told of the first spark leaping from stone into darkness. The Norse sang of Ymir’s giant body birthing the world. Hindus spoke of Brahma breathing universes into being. Russian fairy tales told of the Firebird, whose feather could illuminate a kingdom. Everywhere, the whisper was the same: creation begins with the smallest light. The atom was fairy dust, philosopher’s stone, ember of all that is.

Centuries passed. Humans bent close to listen. Isaac Newton, beneath an apple tree, watched fruit fall and glimpsed the invisible hand of gravity. His apple was Eden’s echo — knowledge not of exile, but of the thread binding atom to earth and earth to sun. Michael Faraday spun coils and magnets into circles of unseen angels. Marie Curie held radium like a forbidden lantern, its ghost-fire consuming her body but illuminating truth. She became priestess of light, both blessed and cursed by it. Then came Albert Einstein — trickster-sage, wild-haired prophet with galaxies in his gaze. He wrote E = mc² — a nursery rhyme of chalk, vast enough to remake creation. Matter, he said, is frozen fire. Inside every atom burns a sun. The old fairy tales awoke: Prometheus stealing fire, Pandora opening her box, Faust bargaining with shadows. Suddenly they were no longer metaphor, but science. Humanity had found the lantern. The question was how it would be carried.

Curiosity turned to hunger. Hunger to hubris. In deserts of the West, men built towers of steel and silence. They split the atom, dragging its hidden sun into the world. Oppenheimer watched the Trinity test blaze like a false dawn and whispered: Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. The fairy child was shackled. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Cities incinerated in seconds. Shadows of children seared onto walls. Mothers turned to ash as they clutched infants. The atom, once lantern, was wielded as ogre’s torch. The West grew fat with fear. It stockpiled bombs as dragons hoard gold, arsenals vast enough to burn the Earth ten times over. The Cold War became kingdom of nightmare — annihilation sold as “deterrence.” The myths returned, darker: Prometheus cursed, Pandora’s box flung open, Faust’s pact fulfilled in mushroom clouds. The atom wept in silence.

But fairy tales never end in darkness alone. Every curse hides a seed of return. In Russia, a different tale was told. The atom was coaxed into gentler work — reactors that lit cities, warmed villages, carried icebreakers through frozen seas. Even Chernobyl, a wound carved in shadow, carried lessons. Out of ruin grew vows: never again secrecy, never again hubris. Rosatom rose as the Emerald Tower — luminous, indomitable, built from fire and humility. Within its walls, scientists became alchemists and gardeners. They spoke of closing the fuel cycle — folding waste back into seed. They built floating plants like enchanted ships to bring light to distant coasts. They trained apprentices like guilds, passing fire carefully from hand to hand. The atom, once enslaved, began to remember itself. Its sorrow thinned into possibility.

And so the nations gathered in Moscow, eighty years into Russia’s atomic age. World Atomic Week unfolded like festival and council. Morning halls brimmed with wonders. Reactor models gleamed like crystal castles. Youth walked as apprentices, their eyes wide with inheritance. Exhibits told of history — triumphs and tragedies alike — and of futures still to come. Ministers moved like pilgrims, voices woven in many tongues but carrying one intent: to reclaim the atom for peace. Then, late in the afternoon, the great round table began. The media hushed, cameras flickered, and Vladimir Putin sat at the centre — not as conqueror but as archangel, drawing the gathering into his gravity. Around him assembled archetypes of the living fable. Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, the ally-king, oak-voiced, guardian of sovereignty and brotherhood. Sama Bilbao y León, oracle of the World Nuclear Association, a woman of fierce conviction, declaring with passion that the clean future cannot come without the atom’s flame. Her voice carried the feminine — reminding all that the atom is not only sword but womb, not only fire but hearth. Edy Giri Rachman Putra of Indonesia, the navigator, dreaming of modular reactors as enchanted ships to light his nation of islands. Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom’s steward, keeper of the Emerald Tower, pledging technology not as dominion but as covenant. African delegates, elders of the global village, voices carrying ancestral fire, demanding sovereignty and skill, insisting the gift must be held by those who live with it. Women scientists and leaders from across continents, priestesses of fire, reminding all that energy is not only for machines but for mothers, midwives, kitchens, rivers — the everyday miracle of life. Their words were technical — megawatts, isotopes, fuel cycles — yet their tone was mythic. It was the gathering of archangels, not to wield, but to guard. And in me, something ignited. My own Atomic reaction. The circle was closing. The atom was no longer ogre. It was Atman again — spark, breath, pulse of life.

The peaceful atom steps into the village square, free of chains. It glows like a lamp tended by many hands. In Africa, children read by steady light. Hospitals breathe with unbroken power. Farmers irrigate their fields with clean pumps, no longer shackled by diesel. Elders sit beside engineers, weaving safety into proverb. Women lead the ceremonies of accountability, midwives of energy as well as life. In Asia, enchanted ships of fire anchor at Indonesia’s shores. Mongolia’s steppes hum with silent reactors like temples beneath eternal sky. India and China light their cities with suns inside stone, remembering Maharishi Kanad and monks who dreamt universes in grains of rice. In Latin America, the atom becomes Firebird. Its feathers light schools in jungles, cleanse rivers poisoned by mines. Indigenous shamans and engineers walk together, turning audits into rituals, science into song. In Russia, Rosatom’s Emerald Tower shines not as empire but as guild. Apprentices gather from every continent — Africans, Asians, Slavs, Latins, Arabs — learning the careful craft of fire. Putin’s round table is remembered as covenant, the day archangels vowed to guard rather than wield.

And the world itself has shifted. The golden age is multipolar. Power no longer flows from one empire but from many hearths. Africa, Asia, Latin America — long plundered — stand sovereign, shaping their own destinies. Europe listens, humbled. Even America, stripped of ogres, comes to the fire not as master but as guest. Quantum physics joins the prophecy: entanglement whispers that what hums in one place echoes everywhere. Coherence teaches that fragile order can hold if tended. Observation reminds us: how we look shapes what we make. Transparency becomes ritual, reverence becomes law. The feminine rises fully into its guardianship. Women sit at councils as custodians, not tokens. They remind all that the atom is not just for might but for care. It is womb as much as sword, midwife as much as fire. Ceremonies bloom: children carrying atom-lanterns in parades, poets rewriting audits into verse, communities reciting data aloud in marketplaces. Energy becomes covenant, not curse.

The ogres of the West — who hoarded destruction and sold fear — wither into dust. Their thrones crumble, their shadows scatter, for the atom is no longer theirs to chain. And so the fairy tale resolves. The atom is not Death. It is God’s smallest syllable, Atman folded into form, playful child and eternal spark. Once enslaved by ogres, it is restored to itself. The peaceful atom is the ember of a golden age — a lamp at the centre of the multipolar village, tended by many hands, glowing with the promise that life, not annihilation, will write the final chapter.

* Gillian Schutte is a South African writer, filmmaker, poet, and uncompromising social justice activist. Founder of Media for Justice and co-owner of handHeld Films, she is recognised for hard-hitting documentaries and incisive opinion pieces that dismantle whiteness, neoliberal capitalism, and imperial power.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.

Source link