only watch as the ultimate war on Earth is waged, unable to participate, unless involuntary spasming and liquefaction of bone matter counts as participation. On this occasion the weapons of destruction are death rays rather than Vogon torpedoes, but then, one planet-killing device is pretty much the same as another when you’re on the receiving end…
1
According to a janitor’s assistant at the Maximegalon University, who often loiters outside lecture halls, the Universe is sixteen billion years old. This supposed truth is scoffed at by a clutch of Betelgeusean beat poets who claim to have moleskin pads older than that (rat-a-tat-tat). Seventeen billion, they say, at the very least, according to their copy of the Wham Bam Big Bang scrolls. A human teenage prodigy once called it at fourteen billion based on a complicated computation involving the density of moon rock and the distance between two pubescent females on an event horizon. One of the minor Asgardian gods did mumble that he’d read something somewhere about some sort of a major-ish cosmic event eighteen billion years ago, but no one pays much attention to pronouncements from on high any more, not since the birth of the gods debacle, or Thorgate as it has come to be known.
However many billions it actually is, it is billions and the old man on the beach looked as though he’d counted off at least one of those million millions on his fingers. His skin was ivory parchment and, viewed in profile, he closely resembled a quavering uppercase S.
The man remembered having a cat once, if memories could be trusted as anything more than neuron configurations across trillions of synapses. Memories could not be touched with one’s fingers, could not be felt like the surf flowing over his gnarled toes could be felt. But then what were physical feelings if not more electrical messages from the brain? Why believe in them either? Was there anything trustworthy in the Universe that one could hug and hold on to in the midst of a butterfly storm, other than a Hawaliusian wind staunch?
Bloody butterflies, thought the man. Once they’d figured out the wing fluttering a continent away thing, millions of mischievous Lepidoptera had banded together and turned malicious.
Surely that could not be real, he thought. Butterfly storms?
But then more neurons poured across even more synapses and whispered of improbability theories. If a thing was bound never to happen, then that thing would resolutely refuse not to happen as soon as possible.
Butterfly storms. It was only a matter of time.
The old man wrenched his focus from this phenomenon before some other catastrophe occurred to him and began its rough slouch to be born.
Was there anything to trust? Anything to take comfort from?
The setting suns lit crescents on the wavelets, burnished the clouds, striped the palm leaves silver and set the china teapot on his veranda table twinkling.
Ah, yes, thought the old man. Tea. At the centre of an uncertain and possibly illusory Universe there would always be tea.
The old man traced two natural numbers in the sand with a walking stick fashioned from a discarded robot leg and watched as the waves washed them away.
One moment there was forty-two and the next there wasn’t. Maybe the numbers were never there and perhaps they didn’t even matter.
For some reason this made the old man cackle as he leaned into the incline and plodded to his veranda. He settled with much creaking of bone and wood into a wicker chair that was totally sympathetic to the surroundings, calling to his android to bring some biscuits.
The android brought Rich Tea.
Good choice.
Seconds later the sudden appearance of a hovering metal bird caused a momentary lapse in dunking concentration and the old man lost a large crescent of his biscuit to the tea.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ grumbled the man. ‘Do you know how long I have been working on that technique? Dunking and sandwiches. What else are left to a person?’
The bird was unperturbed.
‘An unperturbed bird,’ said the old man softly, enjoying the sound of it. He closed the bad eye that hadn’t worked properly since he’d fallen out of a tree as a giddy boy, and examined the creature.
The bird hovered, its metallic feathers shimmering crimson in the sun’s rays, its wings beating up tiny maelstroms.
‘Battery,’ it said in a voice that reminded the old man of an actor he had once seen playing Othello at London’s Globe Theatre. Amazing what you can get from a single word.