No Surprises

Sherlock Holmes perfected the art of deduction to the point that he wielded a peculiar form of omniscience over existence. Through his careful, some would say obsessive, calculations and observations, Holmes anticipated even the most esoteric of events before they occurred.

Centuries later, chaos theorists would pour over his extant journals. They became fascinated by his predictions, sometimes so specific that his diary entries anticipated their own research into his system of ideas.

But what they saw as a nearly divine intuition of the universe, Holmes viewed as a curse.

He lived his life bereft of the pleasure of surprise.

Virtual Insanity

Shibuya Station is nearly empty. The afternoon rain sent all the gamers scrambling for shelter for their mobiles.

I am left to wait virtually alone. The desolation leaves me feeling I am a character in a post-nuclear zombie p2p actioner. Hisamitsu and Starbucks and the latest Bruce Willis movie are the sponsors of my apocalypse. Even my daydreams have become corporatized.

I see her exit the underground. Her eyes never leave her mobile. She walks past, not even noticing the rain.

Her avatar pops onto my screen for a few fleeting seconds.

Our marriage will endure another seven years.

Clean

They were calling it the biggest mass migration in human history.

Millions of Catholics fleeing their home countries and flooding the Amazonian and South East Asian rain forests. Not only were the economies of entire regions being disrupted, but the environmental destruction was unprecedented.

The threats posed by climate change paled in comparison. The false modern idols--money and science, patriotism and Ronald McDonald--proved they were no rival to the power of religion. Millions would die due to the mistake.

All because the Pope, as part of the onset of his dementia, declared that daily rain cleanses the soul of sin.

Heretics

The tribunal accounted heresy as the gravest of capital crimes. The methods of sentence varied according to whim, but whether by fire or crucifixion, their death would be painful.

Bartholomew and George faced their accusers girded by an equal mixture of fear and antipathy. The cowards did not even have the courtesy to face them, but hid behind a poster of black cloth.

"Do you wish to recant?" Only the worst offenders were given such an opportunity.

Bartholomew refused. "I will die first."

And so he did. Gruesomely.

"And you, George, do you wish to recant?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

Graveyard Girl

During her lifetime, she had never actually been to a graveyard. The closest she came was holding her breath as the family station wagon drove by. Nor had she been to a cemetery. Nor a mausoleum, catacomb, or crypt.

But she could distinguish the difference, both etymologically and historically, between each of them. Her favorite stories were set in burial grounds, Gothic narratives dripping with death and love and tragedy.

So even though she was cremated, and her ashes spread out to sea, not many people were surprised to find her ghost haunting the church graveyard near her childhood home.

Echoless Well

The town of Bottomless Well was famous for one reason only.

No one could ever remember any water being drawn from the well. Yet, thanks to its purported wish granting properties, people still visited from miles around.

The well was meant to be a mystery, like God or a woman's heart; it was better not knowing where the bottom lay.

When scientists discovered that the floor reached exactly 36 feet and 7 inches underground, and that the peculiar convex shape and absorptive qualities of the rock prevented any sound from escaping, the villagers pragmatically changed the name. Life carried on as before.

MOOOFASA!!!

We march the bodies of our fallen before us

Their pyres lead us away from the dawn

Our ragged retreat despoils the marshes

As we carry our losses downwards and on

The clever commanders of our teaching have failed us

Now they walk with the infantry, humbled and gray

And all that we’ve learned from their studies in failure

Is the different formations for losing the day

But though our shields are just brittle paper

And though our strength is just desperate fear

And though we’ve been judged and come up wanting

Yet still we’re determined to find victory here

Alpha Eridanus - The End of the River

It’d been generations since the biomass telescopes first detected life on Achernar.  It took a hundred years to construct the ship and train the families who’d carry Earth’s hopes into the stars.  The journey itself took several hundred more.  Finally, Captain Monroe is ready to make landfall.  In doing so, he’ll confirm what they’d detected last week – that Achernar is a planet of weeds.  Specifically, one weed, iterated endlessly over an unbroken landmass.

The landing party dutifully disperses to take samples of the colorless alien, but Monroe’s eyes look skyward.  The ship’s biomass telescopes had picked up another faint signal….

Medical Mystery

The doctors had never seen anything like it exactly. They took x-rays. They called in colleagues. They consulted every textbook they could find.

"You can see the glow through his stomach."

"How the heck is it still burning?"

"The melted wax must be damaging his digestive system."

"And you say it doesn't hurt?" they asked.

"Not in the least," the patient responded.

"Well, I guess we'll have to operate."

The examination was interrupted by a forbidding woman entering the room, who looked to be the afflicted's personal assistant.

"Don't let Mr. Copperfield worry you," she admonished. "He's just showing off."

Apocrypha of Natural History - Act III

Amidst all the trimmings that the gardeners of our reality have deemed inappropriate for existence, all the strange treasures from lost histories, only one thing interests the Thief.  Despite its quiet profile, it’s the one artifact that promises to fracture the Thief’s world and reinvent it anew.  Gingerly, the Thief opens the chest….

A scroll, written in ancient Aramaic, tells a story.  It tells of a world where Mashup Month was never possible.  Where thegooddoctor rose, put on his man-panties, and never enriched my weblog with delightful synergies of truth and fiction.

The Thief places the scroll in her bag.