She appeared from nowhere, literally. I was drinking by myself in the snug of the King’s Head public house when she appeared on the bar stool beside me, and from that moment something inside me changed forever. Read on…
(a revised chapter from: The Sins of God)
Let’s suppose there is a God. Let’s suppose that this God is our divine creator, that he (for the purpose of this treatise I shall use the personal pronoun of ‘he’, with respect to the fact that as God does not exist, ‘he’ could equally not be a ‘she’ or an ‘it‘) is immortal and that among his necessary attributes, he is omnipotent, omniscient and supremely benevolent. Read on…
The Sheriff and one of his burly deputies pulled the Defendant out of the burning mansion and dragged the old lady roughly down the circular drive, past the ruined fountain all the way out to the road that led back to Greenville. The men dumped her face first on the crumbling asphalt, the rough surface bit into her flesh, cutting her cheek and forehead. Read on…
My welfare in mind, Grace declares that coffee today at The Compass Café is out. She hands me Steven Hawking’s The Universe In A Nutshell, then quietly leaves the bedroom. Ten to the power of 36 is big. Just how big I cannot fathom under normal circumstances, let alone when in the grip of the flu. The same goes for a thousand light years across the spindrift of the cosmos. I sink into reverie. When the effects of medication wear … Read on…
The esteemed professor, an expert on interstellar civilizations, is giving a public lecture about the area of her specialization. For years she has been studying the distant planet of Lipar, where intelligent life once existed but has been long extinct. Tonight she discusses some of her findings: Good evening. Almost half a billion years ago (435 million years ago to be more precise) the civilization of the Neans, a highly advanced species on the planet of Lipar, which orbits a … Read on…
The Ox folds his wings and in no known language admonishes Our Lord to behave like a role model. The universe resounds with Heavenly annoyance. The Eagle and the Lion are unperturbed. Intervention is out of the question. The Almighty can hardly expect men to act as though they were responsible for the consequences of their actions if He doesn’t accept the consequences of His. No Ex Machinations permitted. And He needn’t act as though the Committee has imposed a … Read on…
With his electric screwdriver, my big brother Lyle is tightening the hinges on the saggy composite doors beneath the sink in the kitchen of the minimalist apartment I rent from Barbi. One of Lyle’s cast-off high school love interests, my landlord harbors few ill feelings toward the person Lyle was twenty years ago. For me she has only sisterly affection, a lavish wardrobe of hand-me-down T-shirts, and expert haircuts strictly off the books. “I’m pretty sure,” I say, “that the … Read on…
Mo didn’t think that it was a foxhole, really, but more of a shallow depression left when a recent mortar misfire had landed in the soft, moist, often-tilled black earth of this poor farmer’s field. The ground itself was dismally flat, even this close to the river, as was most of the land in this country. But the hole itself was very difficult to see, surrounded as it was by the withered tall stubble of common wheat that littered the … Read on…
Eight years had passed since Voltaire abandoned Candide, his wife, the once-lovely Miss Cunégonde, and their companions on a small farm not too distant from Constantinople to “cultivate the garden.” Miss Cunégonde had grown less attractive in countenance and temperament, and Dr. Pangloss, as hard as he tried, could not free himself of the philosophical pursuit of the nature of good and evil and the best of all possible worlds. Old Martin, the philosophical Mr. Hyde to Pangloss’ Dr. Jekyll, … Read on…
When Brian was young, he had looked at the moon as a magical place. Now, he saw the cool serenity of the lunar surface and the efforts that it had taken mankind to reach its surface. Although not even an amateur astronomer, Brian had always enjoyed the night sky. It had been a place of both mystery and discovery for him throughout his life. It was also a sight that inspired speculation. How far is it to that star? How … Read on…