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I know that all two of our readers have been wondering, "When are these guys who pump out such great stories going to finally get a .com?"
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Plot is Really Secondary

“I really wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said as he crashed through the oversized wooden double doors of Judge Krill’s chambers. “It might be very bad for business.”

Krill turned away from the girl he was molesting to admire the girl’s boyfriend, the hero, for making it past his overly extravagant phalanx of personal bodyguards. He had thought them quite invincible, what with the blinding drugs they were on to take away all thoughts except obey and fight for him. Krill was impressed and he said so.

“I’m impressed.”
“This has gone on for too long,” said the hero, tearing off what was left of his shirt to expose his blood and sweat soaked pectorals, rippling in all the fury of strained musculature. He was confident, but he also knew the judge’s extensive history: 15 years in KGB, 12 more in American Special Forces, and now, head of both the judge’s seat in the highest court in the land and the most powerful and ruthless crime syndicate in the world. Krill may look old, but you could guarantee the dude still packed a punch; you may not be able to see it, but beneath those black robes stood a body carved out of pure rock. The countless henchmen were nothing compared to Krill. They had all attacked him clumsily and always one at a time, consistently. They watched friend after friend fall in the heat of battle, but insisted on waiting their turn to take their vengeance. In addition, the drugs generally made them make poor choices. They were easy. Krill would be harder.

Judge Krill’s chambers were a little on the gaudy side: mahogany everywhere, curtains flapping in a slight breeze coming from somewhere, a large open wood floor, swords on the wall, a globe the size of a small cottage, various other obstacles lay strewn about the room. Gaudy, but he could afford it. Up till now, only the hero stood between him and world domination through drug trafficking and assassinations of the line of presidential succession. He had killed the President and the Vice, now all that was left was the Speaker. And once the Speaker was dead, it would be over. Which is why he now had her tied up in his chambers. The one flaw in his plan was this hero, an ex-New York detective who had recently been a top Presidential bodyguard, and who was dating the Speaker of the House. He was there for the presidential hit, and he soon put all the pieces together through an arduous process of ass-kicking and evidence collecting. He now had enough evidence to bring down Krill, but that was never going to happen.

So he’d have to bring him down some other way. And that other way was killing Krill, hard.

Krill turned his back on the hero to remove his robes, exposing a smart suit and tie, then he turned back around and attempted one final option before killing the hero -

“You must be an amazing fighter,” he said. “But before you start throwing fists at me, I want you to think about something, namely what are you fighting for?”

“For freedom, for democracy…”

“But what does that mean? Freedom… Democracy… Love… they’re all just words. Words expressing concepts. Concepts which really mean nothing. Can’t you see?”

The hero looked incredulous.

“The things that really mean something are the vices: money, power, sex,” as he said this, he brushed a hand against the Speaker’s cheek. “We’re not so different, you and I. We both fight for something. Our ideologies. Our worldviews. We both fight to keep our world from crumbling around us. We fight to maintain what we believe to be necessary.”

He looked pensive, but still angry.

“The truth is, I’m getting old. After I’ve instated my empire, I will probably not last very much longer, and I need someone to be an heir. I need someone with ideologies, someone who’s not afraid to fight, someone who will protect my empire. Someone like… you.”

“But why would anyone want to protect an empire of crime?”

“Don’t you see? Joining the world into one world order is an end to war! To Hunger! To Strife! We can fix the epidemics in the nations with low GDP’s because we can share GDP’s! The third world will join with the first and we’ll change it. We’ll make it better! More beautiful!”

“But at what cost?”

“A few lives here and there of mostly corrupt politicians. But these lives pale in comparison to the lives we’ll save! Can’t you see it? A bright, new future.”

The hero paused to think. His next line better be a zinger.

“When President Michaelson stood on the docks in Brooklyn and looked out at the harbor, he pointed to Lady Liberty,” the hero spoke calmly and airily, “and he said, ‘This nation was built on her, and on the promise of her.’ The idea that people can be free, to live, to breath, to love. That’s what freedom means. And also he was my father.” It wasn’t the best line in the world, but at least he got everything in there.

Infuriated, Krill tried one more time.

“JOIN ME!”

“Join yourself in hell!”

With this, they launched into a brilliant trade of fists and kicks, each placing their attacks in a well-coordinated, nearly choreographed manner. Punches were blocked, landed, and returned. Grapples ended in a man being thrown like a horseshoe at whatever was around them. They took down the swords and began sword-fighting with the proficiency of old pros.

After a good couple of minutes of intense fighting, neither side gaining much ground on the other, Krill finally decided to try the fighting style he was best at: dirty fighting. He ran over to the Speaker and held her with his saber at her throat. The hero stopped cold.

“Who’s got the upper hand now?” said the judge maniacally. “Put down your sword.”

The hero thought for a moment before deciding to throw his sword at the judge in one last attempt to save the world. It went whizzing over his right shoulder. The judge laughed insanely, but then he heard the sound of the giant globe rolling towards him. The hero had thrown the sword into the globe, loosening it from its moorings and sending it crashing down towards Krill. As Krill turned to see his fate and feel the crushing weight of the world, the hero leaped up and pushed the Speaker out of harm’s way, getting his ankle caught slightly beneath the rolling globe and instantly breaking his foot. But at least it was all over now.

In excruciating pain, he crawled over to his girlfriend and loosened her ropes with his good hand. She embraced him and kissed him hard to show her appreciation, then she picked him up and helped him hobble out the oversized wooden double doors of the judge’s chambers. Out into the sunlight of glorious American freedom, the gloriously bright future, and a huge crowd which had gathered just outside the doors. Read more...

The General's Labyrinth

General Luciano Bravada was 35 years old when he commissioned the labyrinth to be built. The war he had fought since he was 20 had made him paranoid of the world around him. Constantly, he would look all around to find the assassin hidden in his periphery with a dagger, a murderer waiting to plunge into him and claim the war victory for himself. The trees themselves became lethal killers in disguise. Finally, when walking down the open beach, he formed an idea: if I am in the open, he said to himself, I am exposed; I shall, therefore, remove myself from the open to the closed.
Soon thereafter, the carpenters began work on the elaborate labyrinth which was to keep him hidden from the enemy and keep him safe for the rest of his days. They used the sketches Luciano himself had drawn as a design plan: they depicted several tiers hewn into a hillside, one entrance and one direct center which would be where he would spend his days, and an endless maze of dead ends, booby traps, trap doors, twists, and turns. So convoluted was the maze that the carpenters consistently had to ask to make sure they were holding the sketch correctly and building the labyrinth to the general's liking.
They worked fast, and soon, the labyrinth was well underway. About this time, some of the carpenters began to notice that the general had taken to staying the nights in the labyrinth. Confused, they questioned him -
- Why do you stay in the labyrinth?
- It shall be my home.
- What about food? Water?
- I have eaten enough. I have drunk my fill.
- How will you ever get out?
To this question, Luciano simply smiled and walked back to the center of his labyrinth. He had an ingenious plan to guide him through his maze, and he knew that the key to his labyrinth was keeping the secret of his guide to himself. Otherwise, the maze would become completely useless. After all, even this carpenter, as congenial as he is, could be a spy. And even if he isn't, everyone is a spy for the right price.
He would have to let the carpenters work another week before he could start his work on his map. They had to be far enough along that he would never catch up with them, so General Luciano stayed to himself in the center of the labyrinth as the carpenters continued the work around him, making his world more confusing with every cut of the knife, sealing him off more effectively with every portal opened. All the while, Luciano scratched notes into his notebooks and felt the growing warmth of complete safety.
A few days passed, and the general checked the carpenters' progress: they had three outward spirals and were starting the fourth. Luciano concluded that he could begin his guide safely without meeting any carpenters, so stealing a chisel and hammer, he went back to the center and began his work.
He turned to the wall on his left, placed the chisel at the top left corner, about an inch away from the ceiling, and striking it with the hammer twelve times carved, “I” into the wall. He stood back and observed it. It was sloppily done, the vertical did not meet the horizontals exactly right, and it was by no means straight up-and-down, but it was the beginning. The first word of his life, the word that occupied his every breath. “I” is the beginning of every good story, and so it was with the general.
His plan was to carve his life into the stone walls, starting at the center and spiraling out until it finished at the exit. He would cover every wall in scratches, showing every advance, every downfall, every merciless pain he had endured, along with every happiness. He had also developed a multitude of untruths to mislead anyone who tried to seek him out. The idea was simple and cunning at the same time: since the end would be at the door, some assassins would think that being a scholar of the war would be enough to get to the center of the maze and kill the general, but as they went deeper into the caverns, they would find themselves trying to piece together the general's childhood, even some things which only the general himself knew about. They would inevitably fail, either by giving up and trying to find their way back, or by making a wrong choice and finding themselves caught in a trap of some sort, and there to spend the rest of their miserable days.
Taking up the chisel once more, General Luciano began carving steadfastly, with burning determination. He pounded his childhood into the wall, the death of his mother, the abuse of his father, his desire for his sister. He continued, letting his life blood flow onto the walls in vivid color. Page by page, his life began to take its form. He covered wall after wall, floor to ceiling, with his burgeoning lust from his youth, his philosophies, his induction into the military, and at every wrong turn, he would carry into some falsehood, just true enough to lead someone who didn't know to their end.
Meanwhile, the carpenters continued to build outward, always a spiral or two ahead of the general, who soon became phenomenally quick in his work. The labyrinth became more and more confusing as it stretched further and further outward. Some of the carpenters even became lost while working on a section and were never seen again. This led many men to believe the maze to be cursed. They began to think that it was a plot by the general to watch even more innocent young men die in his service, at his command. So a group of them hatched a plan to seek out and kill General Luciano.
Setting out one night after everyone else had gone home, they delved into the dark stone corridors. After passing two outer spirals, they began hearing the incessant pounding of the general. Thinking it was a ghost, or the curse, they ran off in different directions. Only one was ever heard from again, and he was found nearly starved to death three days later. He had stumbled into a work area at midday and immediately collapsed to the ground. He muttered something about the curse of the labyrinth, about how the maze draws a person in and destroys him by changing pathways and misleading them. But his throat was parched, and his body was weak, so none of the men understood what he meant. They all thought it was the effect of having been so badly deprived. He was clearly in no state to reason.
So the carpenters kept building and finally finished the labyrinth and went home.
And General Luciano kept carving the words of his lifetime into the stone. He was now far into the war years, telling tales of deceit and clever strategy, cunning and strength. He told of the young boys he'd seen die around him, and the old men who looked at him with their blue, blue eyes as they whispered a last breath. Wall after wall, he told his story, stories of love and loss and dreams and crushed hopes, until he finally came to his paranoia, the enclosing and entrapped feeling of knowing that there is an assassin so close to you. There simply must be one, behind this tree or that wall, plotting, waiting for the right moment to pounce and destroy the man who had destroyed so much, the General Luciano.
He tapped his dull and well worn chisel through the inception of the labyrinth and the commission to build it,until his life and the maze became so entwined that he could not separate one from the other. He finally arrived at his current age, 67.
Chisel in hand, he carved his final sentence: The rest is the labyrinth, nothing more and nothing less.
Here he stopped, for the first time in nearly 30 years, and looked around to find himself not at the exit of the labyrinth, but within arm's length of the beginning of his story in the center of the labyrinth. That first crooked “I” glared down at him, harshly contrasted to his now nearly perfect handwriting.
Shocked, he took out his sketches and went over them. How had he gone wrong? He had paid close attention to every detail, at every turn making sure he had gone the right way. He followed the map looking closely once again to make sure he had followed every turn correctly, walking down the corridors, left then right, into the darkness and out again, upstairs then down. He followed the map straight through, double checking to make sure the carpenters had not somehow made the maze wrong. He could sense that he was getting into the outer-most spirals, and he was nearly to the exit. He looked up and saw the door and started sprinting to it, overjoyed to find the way out. But when he turned into the portal, he found only the center again, the end of the story to his right and the beginning to his left. The only thing left for General Luciano Bravada to do was wander his labyrinth and go back over his story to try to find where he went the wrong way.
According to legend, he is still doing just that.
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First Date at the Electro

God, she looks fantastic. Her hair is loose, her white sparkled dress is tight, her curves are emphasized, she just looks really great. And she’s smiling, and that helps so much. When she smiles, you can at least imagine that she’s having a good time. It makes the night go a lot easier.
I picked a dance club to take her too, that way there’s an absolute minimum of talking. I can’t hold a conversation with people I’ve known my entire life; I can’t imagine having anything to talk about with someone I just met, thought was attractive, and asked out, no matter how much she’s smiling, and how cute she looks. Even if I was being tortured and interrogated about what I did yesterday, my responses would be monosyllabic at best. So dance club, it is. You get her there, you move your body a little, and next thing you know she thinks you’re the best thing since toasted bread. And you’re in. No conversation required.
I pull her up to the bar and tell the mack, “two.” The eyes he gives her makes it clear he knows that I mean, “be a doll, and put a roofie in one.” She looks fantastic. The mack knows the score. Or he knows me and knows my score. He pours her a stout something-something and dilutes mine a little so I don’t make any stupid mistakes. The International Conspiracy of Men: This Hand Washes That Hand. Thanks, mack.
The music blares some hideous so-and-so with a backbeat. It’s so loud you can’t even really hear it, it’s just muddled vibrations through air and you can only pick out the slight treble here and there. Still she leans close with her drink in hand and says something completely inaudible. This is another reason to opt for the club on a first date: if she wants to talk, the only way is to get really close, licking your ear to get her point across.
I scream, “what?”
And she gets right in my ear saying something like, “I really like this song,” or “I’ve got a sexy thong.” Then she takes a coy drink and flits her eyelids at me. She puts down all the road signs: playing with the hem of her dress as it inches up her white thighs, drinking quickly and keeping eye contact as she puts it away. She even pulled down the front of her dress to expose her dragon tattoo on the leftmost of her exceptional cleavage. The mack paid her no mind, just let her do her thing, he’s done his part.
“You’ve got a lance?” she yells.
Yes, ma’am, I think. “What?”
“DANCE! Want to dance?” Dancing is a beautiful thing. It’s legitimate public eroticism. She bumps and grinds against you just like you would at home in the throes of a sexual revolution. The hormones rage harder than a middle school church camp. Strippers don’t do as much. Prostitutes barely do. It’s all about the contact and the emotion that goes with it. Strippers and prostitutes don’t really have a leg up in that field of contact and emotion.
So we go to the dance floor. And she’s fantastic. She wraps her arms around my neck and pushes her hips into me, smiling a little lecherously. She pulls my hair. She’s rough and I can tell she wants me. And I mean, I’m not one to complain. I mean, right now, I’m fighting my primal instincts off with a baseball bat in my brain. I am closer to violent rape than I’ve ever been before.
Then it happened: Scandal’s The Warrior started playing, and she did that squeal. The “Oh My God This Is My Favorite Song of All Time” Squeal. Her short blond hair became a flurry of motion as she shook her head with incredulity. There are so many things wrong with her excitement at this song.
Firstly, her excitement is what most people call “girlish.” It expresses an immaturity that usually accompanies 16 year olds.
Nextly, the song is a pop-feminist ballad. Patty Smyth yelling the battle-cry “I am the Warrior” and “I’m the heart you’ll win, if you survive.” It’s roughly more discouraging for the female gender than the women’s suffrage movement would have been if it had been lead by Rosie O’Donnell.
But most importantly (and disturbingly) was what she was going to do. The song had only just started, but already she was grabbing my tie and pulling me center-stage. I had no reason to know what was going to happen, but I knew as soon as I saw the reaction to the song. I knew she had a dance. I knew she had a plan.
The first verse played through without a hitch except for her idiotic jumping and headbanging, I forced a smile to conceal my disgust. But it was coming to the chorus. I dreaded the chorus with every fiber of my being because I knew exactly what she was going to do when those words came. Then, like a gunshot in an otherwise healthy evening, it came:
“Shootin’ at the walls of heartache,
Bang! Bang!
I am the Warrior!”
And she did it. She did exactly what you think she did.
“Bang! Bang!”
And she made the guns with her hands.
One for the left. One for the right.
Bang goes the one. Bang goes the other. And my forced smile melts like ice cubes on the sidewalk in Egypt. But she loved the song too much to notice that the evening had been utterly ruined by innanity.
I think the mack must’ve seen too, because as we left later that night, he gave me a look that said, “I’m sorry buddy, I thought she was a good one.” I responded with a sad, “I know” gaze. I walked her to my car, with her drunkenly shouting, “Bang! Bang!” intermittently. I drove her home, all the while with the radio on full-blast, trying to purge the foul sounds and sights from my mind. But there she was, making guns with her hands and Bang Banging left and right.
She said she had fun as I dropped her off. I told her I’d better not stay, what with church in the morning and all.
And as she walked to her door from my car, through the rolled down window I heard her shout, “I’m the heart you’ll win, if you survive.”
Slam it into drive and leave her behind. Sex is good, but not that good.
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I'm Gonna Miss You, Pal

Last weekend was one of the most interesting of my life. First my hard drive crashed and I was forced to use my limited computer knowledge to repair it to avoid buying a new one, since I am broke to the point that bums should be giving me money out of pity. A three day project which ended in success I am happy to say.
Then my dad wanted me to drive two and a half hours through the wretched Oklahoma terrain to assist him in planting this year's wheat crop, something he has never asked of me and even swore not to ask of me and which is made all the more ridiculous by the soaring gas prices and my aforementioned poverty.
Then I helped my best friend pack things into a U-Haul so that she could drive away and out of my life.Unthinkingly. Just trying to be a nice guy. I help her desert me. What was I thinking? Why would I facilitate the vanishing of a friend?
The rest of my weekend has been filled with her absence. She was someone very special to me, a confidante, a pal, a buddy with whom worry and dreariness sort of melted. When we occupied the same room, the only other thing that could fit was our love of each other's company.
I don't want to be misunderstood, here. She's happily entrenched in a long-term relationship, and the thought of her leaving him for me never crossed our minds. It just wasn't like that for us, we were a different kind of close, not the kind that really would or could work in a boyfriend-girlfriend setting. And I think of all the things about her, it's that particular closeness that only we shared that I'm going to miss the most.
Our love for each other's company. Just hanging out in the morning eating grapefruit smothered in sugar while her bird, a slightly vocal cockatiel named CeeCee who happened to adore me, hovered overhead, perched on the ceiling fan and looking down at us like she was waiting for some sort of signal to come join. Just forcing her to watch my hideous cartoons and comedy shows and read my sadistic comics and tolerate my general malaise. Just following her around while she was taking pictures and occasionally stealing her camera to capture my own bits of art. Just laughing about McCain. Laughing about Obama. Laughing about laughing about McCain and Obama.
Even our hideous and stubborn discourse on the nature of satire, which ended in nothing but hard disagreement. These things, all of them. I'm going to miss the hell out of her.
When I met her, I was just starting college. A good Christian boy from a good Christian town. My eccentricities were on full blast to preserve my fragile frame, my own personal security blanket. Most people remember me as the guy who pointed to his nipple and said that he was from there (my right arm extended out made a crude, impromptu image of Oklahoma: the arm forming the panhandle, and my body, the rest of the state. My hometown is located roughly above the right nipple), but she remembers me as the guy who wanted to see a dead hobo in a fountain. This, as is often recounted, is her first real memory of meeting me.
Basically, to explain my dead hobo thing: All too recently, a hobo had been found dead in this fountain we passed by on the way to a school outing. I remarked on the morbid romanticism of a dead hobo in this gaudy fountain, saying it was picturesque or something to that effect. The instant reaction was, my what a strange person. Most everyone else cut my chances of being friends off right there, but for some reason, she didn't.
We started spending more and more time together, me and my polar opposite. I was a good Christian boy, she a good Atheist girl; my dad raised beef and I was ravenously carnivorous, she on the otherhand was violently vegetarian; I was morose and morbid, and she was happy and life-loving. Polar in so many ways, but our friendship really worked.
After the first year, I made lots of mistakes and we ended up drifting for a year, but we came back together very soon, started hanging out again, even moved in next door to each other so we could wake up, walk to class, come home, and eat breakfast and talk about how ridiculous our teacher was. Then we might pack up her cameras and go hiking (which I had hitherto detested) or go to this crazy hotel liquidation store on 23rd.
This place is filled with insanity and repetition. Walking around in there is like walking through a surrealist film, couches on top of couches, rooms full of thousands of copies of the same painting, a large wooden fish attached to a tacky light up tableau waterfall which all together looked like it had spent some time in a Chinese buffet restaurant. There's a look to it, a feel that is entirely indescribable. There was also a cement room with walls lined with the X-bottoms of chairs, stacked to the ceilings, and the light flickered like some horror movie. The room itself looked like it might have been used for interrogation by the intensely foreign owner who was not a little frightening. Here she took some amazing photographs of various things. They looked like fallen Roman pillars.
I spent Saturday morning packing her things and moving them out, piece by piece she emptied her apartment. The couch I had so often passed out on, the table we would eat apple pancakes at, the desk where we would watch new installments of The Onion News Network. Everything left for the van and I was left behind to vacuum.
And my best friend was gone.
It later dawned on me that I would have to do this more and more as I grew older. That people will come and go from my life and that I will have to pack their things for them, because I'm a good guy and that's what I do. My buddies will get married and leave me behind holding the bag as they move on to a more fulfilling relationship with a spouse, and I'll help set up their new home. And then one day, they'll start dying and I'll go to their funerals. Everything I will ever get close to will leave me behind: friends, family, children. They will all go on to something better than I can give them. Just like my cat, who also left this weekend to find a better life far away from me. No one stays, everyone leaves.
And I'm sure there are people who feel the same way about me.
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Out of Her Misery

I never like killing animals. It's not something I enjoy doing. But it is my job.
I'm in one of the most loathed occupations in the world, certainly the most hated in the vet clinic. I mean, when it comes down to it, nobody wants to kill animals. It's just something that... well... it's just a thing. In the 5 years I've been doing animal euthanasia, I've been kicked by children, punched by grown men, snubbed by countless women, scorned by PETA (even to the point of property vandalism when they found out where I lived and decided to throw animal corpses tied to bricks through my living room window), and my right thumb cut off by a punk rock guitarist who screamed, “Try killing defenseless animals now!” as he was being dragged away by mall security.
“I'm left-handed,” I had said sullenly, picking my severed finger off the ground, and the look of utter dismay flooded over his face as though I had just killed his dog. It was the exact same face I'd seen thousands of times. Deal with that face. I dare you. Deal with it once, and then understand that I have to everyday.
Animal euthanasia is the worst job in the world.
I do it because I know that it's best for the animals at a certain stage. It's worse for them to continue living in overwhelming pain that will never get better than for them to simply fall asleep and never wake up. I believe this, and that's how I'm able to keep doing this hideous job, day after day. I do it for their good.
But this time is completely different, and honestly, I can't quite put my finger on why. I brought this dog in myself, a Border Collie about a year to a year and half old, blood red on white on black, breathing heavy, more like gasping. Not moving a muscle, barely making a sound, but looking at me like I was Jesus come to take her home.
She looked at me like I was some sort of angel. Like I was hope, I was everything she needed to be okay, like if she never saw anyone ever again, it would be fine because she would have still seen me. Her eyes were glass in the deep black of her hair and deep red of her slowly caking blood.
She looked at me like I was a savior, but it was me who made her like this in the first place. I hit her with my car. It wasn't her fault, I just wasn't paying enough attention. She... was just there, in the wrong place at the wrong time. I heard her head hit my bumper, and at that moment, I knew I had killed her. She might as well have been already dead. Unfortunately, she wasn't.
I carried her into the Clinic, blood washing over my hands, coating my shirt. All I could feel was her breathing, and how it matched my heartbeat: too quick.
I laid her on the table and checked to see if she had a collar with a name or anything. No. She was alone in the world, no friends, nothing. We were more alike than I had thought. She kept starting at me. I think I was all that she could see, but I believe that she saw me with perfect clarity.
They brought the syringe for me. This is what we do when there's a dying animal and there's nobody to call, after all, we're not a charity case. We can't save animals that need saving just to do it, we have to do it for money. When there's no money, there's no surviving.
She and I locked eyes for a long time. She looked at me because I was all she had, and I looked at her knowing what was coming and wishing someone, anyone, else would do it. But it's my job. This is what I do.
Her breath fogged out on the metal table. Like she's breathing smoke.
I took a breath and drew some pentobarbitol into the syringe. Tap the needle to get air bubbles out, more out of habit than for any purpose, and slid the needle into a vein on one of her front legs. All I had to do was push the plunger and she'd go to sleep, her pain would disappear, and maybe somewhere in doggy heaven, she'd be happy and playful again. All I have to do is kill her to set her free. But I couldn't stop thinking, “Haven't I hurt her enough?”
Her breathing was heavy but consistent, her bloody chest heaved with the effort to continue, but it was all so mesmerizing. I couldn't move. Locked in a trance, I was frozen, her frail body draped in front of me waiting for me to do something... anything.
If only she would stop looking at me. If only she would break eye contact, I could finish this. I could end it. My thumb is on the plunger, the needle is in the flesh ready to overload her system with barbituates... but I don't think I can do it this time. I don't know if I can end this... even if it is best for her and best for me. The pained look in her eyes only beckons me to stay my hand just another second or two. Maybe she'll be fine, maybe I'm misinterpreting the signs. I know I'm not, but I'm telling myself anything to keep her here. But why? There's no special connection between me and this dog other than the whirlwind romance between her and my fender.
But still I freeze. Looking at her and knowing I could save her from her pain by moving my thumb an inch, but not being able to bring myself to do it for some reason. Some reason I'm not certain of.
I just don't know if I can end this.
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The Great Equation

Ok. So here goes.
The Earth is a planet, spinning on an axis, roughly spherical. The particles of the Earth are not connected, but more like compressed, simultaneously being held in by the magical force of gravity (more than likely caused by the Earth’s massive core) and the being repelled by the equally magical centripedal force (more than likely caused by the rotation).
We think it’s all one big ball, but it’s just particles orbiting the center. And those particles have electrons that orbit nuclei. And beyond that, who knows how many orbiting bits.
To continue: The moon revolves around the Earth which in turn revolves around the sun which in turn revolves around a super-massive black hole in the center of our galaxy. Revolution by revolution by revolution, so is it safe to assume that the pattern doesn’t stop there? There is a theory that there is one point in the center of the universe, super-massive as hell, around which everything else turns. One single stationery point which exercises it’s own gravitational pull to give the universe a sembelance of order.
Now imagine that there are some masses near the stationery point. Can we safely assume that these masses will be dragged faster toward the point, colliding with it and eachother and making it even more massive, thereby adding to the gravitational power of the point? Making it able to pull in more and more mass from further and further out, eventually causing the universe to collapse in on itself.
This is called the Universal Collapse Event (UCE), and this would not be the first time it has happened. Remember the Big Bang? The sudden explosion of matter? According to scientists, this is what happens after a UCE. This is not our first universe. Nor will it be our last. Who knows how many we’ve had or will have.
Scientists have estimated that the next UCE will take place in another 900 billion years, but I’ve done the math myself. Measured the dense microwaves eminating from the center over a few years, seen the exponential growth on a day-to-day basis, carried the decimal and the universe ends today. At approximately 2:30, the gravity of the center will become so great that the galaxies will start colliding as they begin their speeding toward the one stationery point. Andromeda collides with the Milky Way collides with Erratz-13 and so on until we reach terminal velocity (at this point, we’ll already be dead, of course). Then it’s reset and it all starts over again.
2:30 this afternoon. That’s when I’ve estimated it starting. That’s what my math shows. Most scientists are off by 900 billion years. I assume they just don’t know what they’re talking about. That or they want to preserve the order so they aren’t telling anybody.
Most scientists would start getting depressed about this, thinking, “But there’s so much we don’t yet understand.” Not me. I think I get it. I mean, I know where they’re coming from. I used to be the same way: even human nature, which is a purely human invention, is a mystery. We fight wars we don’t understand for people we don’t know for rights or land we’ll never have. We work jobs to pay for things that we wouldn’t need if we didn’t have jobs to start with.
But, I got past all that and realized it’s all something we’re not supposed to figure out. I caught on that projectile motion, fluid motion, quantum mechanics, and everything is part of an equation that explains it all. And that equation also explains why such-and-such girl doesn’t like you, why this guy smokes, why this war is happening in wherever where such-and-such person is getting shot. Even the location on his body where the bullet enters and whether or not it goes out again are part of the equation. Everything contributes to everything, the universe is a clock with billions and billions of little parts. That’s why we can’t find the equation to explain it all. Right now, there are trillions of variables we can’t see, because the whole universe gives a little; however, as the UCE occurs, the variables will diminish with the universe.
That’s why I’m sitting at this table looking up at the sky, waiting for the world to end: so I can spend that last bit of life finding the equation, albeit greatly diminished to only a few variables. I know I can’t publish it. I know nothing will come of it. But I just want to know.
I watch my cigarette smoke in the ashtray, the smoke clouds whisping upward, floating toward the sky slowly in a way that only cigarette smoke can.
My prediction is that when it all starts, time will speed up greatly. In fact, time has been speeding up since it started long ago, but soon it will speed up exponentially. Of course, no one will notice since we’re in time-space with everything else, nonetheless that is my prediction. The smoke will continue to float, but were I able to observe it from outside the accelerating timeframe, I would see it burn up almost instantaneously.
At 2:28, the television starts the breaking news: the Andromeda Galaxy crashes into the Milky Way, an incident that is supposed to happen hundreds of billions of years from now. The news anchors call into question all of the various predictions of scientists. I smile, knowing that before the scientists will have time to rebut, it will all be over. I look back at the sky and wait for God to hand down the Great Equation. Read more...