The cover of The Alpha And The Omega
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What my friend’s cat thinks of NeoSparta: Terran Union predicted (the possibility of) life on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Just sayin’… Introducing a new feature on this website: Stories! So far, this page includes Sinon and Prisoners of Time. In the future, the list of stories will grow to include more online published works.
The first e-book of the Terran Union series is available now!
FREE on Google Play, iTunes, Kobo,and Nook. ($1 on Kindle. Hopefully it’ll also be free soon.) On the NeoSparta front, I haven’t heard back from any literary agents, so I’m about to query book publishers directly. Also wrote a short story called Sinon. Submitted it to a handful of magazines. If they pass on it, I’ll cast a wider net and send it to several more magazines. In the meantime while I‘m waiting for responses for NeoSparta and Sinon, I’m working on the first “episode” of my sci-fi serial (codename: Jame-O Shot). To be continued… What if the ancient military city-state of Sparta existed, even thrived, until modern times? That’s the premise of my completed novella, NeoSparta. Currently peddling the manuscript to literary agents. Wish me luck! I’m squatting on the knuckle of a giant earthen hand, whose fingers are lazily swaying in a lake of fluid mercury. The deep blue sky is littered with the ivory skeletons of soldiers clashing with the endless vertebrae of serpents. I feel like a point of light. Sometimes, I forget I’m even here. Someone’s behind me. It’s her—Impossible!—standing away from the shore, watching me. I scurry over a bed of skyward faces, their mouths gaped open. Falling to my knees, I embrace her, resting my head between her pale breasts. Oh god, I loved you so much… I did this because of you… Her skin becomes bone, unyielding, cold. Cracks worm up her body. I look up at her. Her chiseled face looks straight away. Chunks of her head are missing. Pulling away, I’m startled at the sight of my arms, surprised I have a body. The pinpricks inside my arm are still bleeding a little. Bubbles under my skin travel to the punctures, slowly at first, then faster. Much faster. Snakes geyser out of the holes, snapping at my face. Pain slices through my chest, dropping me on my back. I open my tearing eyes to a blood sky. Purple lava spurts out of the side of a nearby hill, threatening to overtake me. Tribal drums beat in the distance, the beat in sync with the throb of pain. She finally moves, peering down at me, smiling, her head whole. The beat grows irregular. I smile as I cross the thin line between everything and nothing. David Downey ### This vignette, as well as several other short stories, are published in Goddess.
As a fanatical atheist (previous post), bitter that I “wasted” my life being a fanatical Christian (previouser post), I anointed science as my new god. Unlike religion, science was empirical. Unlike religion, science provided proof. And unlike religion, science invited, even encouraged, questions to its authority. Or so I thought. According to the boffins, the universe is accelerating in its expansion; instead of all the galaxies eventually slowing down due to their gravitational attraction to one another, they’re actually speeding away from each other faster and faster. This phenomenon is due to something called dark energy, which supposedly makes up nearly 3/4 of the entire universe. (About 1/4 of the universe is dark matter. A tiny sliver is ordinary matter, which makes up all of our perceived reality: the stars, the planets, your home, your car, you, your cat, a rock in Kolkata…) But this rate of acceleration is very finely tuned. If it was minutely faster, individual molecules would have long since scattered away from one another, never having the chance to gather together to form the stars, planets, your home, your car, you, your cat, a rock in Kolkata. But if the acceleration was minutely slower, all the ordinary matter of the universe would’ve long since clumped together into one big omni-ball. So how could the universe be so perfectly tuned to allow for life to exist? Does this imply the existence of a meticulous Creator? Of course not! the boffins contend. The reason is because we live in one of several universes. The universe we inhabit just happens to have the perfect rate of acceleration. There are many other universes with faster rates of acceleration (scattered molecules). And several others with slower rates (omni-balls). “Very cool theory! How can we test it?” I want to know. Er, well we have computer models. We’re still coming up with experiments, the boffins reply. In the meantime, just take our word for it. I left Christianity due to its adherence to blind faith. I went from one dubious god to another. So where am I now, spiritually? Well, religion wasn’t the answer. But neither fully is science. I do earnestly hope there is a caring god out there. I hope there is an afterlife. And I hope that my teeny tiny life matters in the mind-numbingly large celestial scheme of things. But if all those hopes are for naught, I’m finally OK with that too. |
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