A Non-random Universe

He was a firm believer in the order of things; a conscious universe. He was well versed in Newton’s 3rd law and the law of ‘what goes around comes around.’ He had reduced life to a mathematical formula.

He'd lived his life being painstakingly good, always looking over his shoulder for karmic mis-steps. He would do good and be amply rewarded by a benevolent divinity that was weighing his every action on an eternal balance.

He died with hurt confusion in his eyes, his pain-wrecked body mangled and torn. Had he gotten the formula wrong? Was there even a formula?

From Guest Contributor Minerva Athena

Milk

In the beginning, I cried for it. Yet each night after dark, I threw up that sour formula, that fake milk warmed in glass bottles my mother tested on her wrists, so I wouldn't burn my mouth.

Still, my mouth burned. I was a difficult baby, thin and colicky. I hungered but could not accept nourishment.

That's how I began: Born at just five pounds, brought home in a receiving blanket, placed in a crib where I protested and screamed, the vein in my neck throbbing.

Years later, I'm still protesting, still screaming.

It scares me to close my mouth.

From Guest Contributor Cinthia Ritchie

Cinthia is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee who writes and runs mountains in Anchorage, Alaska. Find her work at Water-Stone Review, Evening Street Press, Third Wednesday, Best American Sports Writing 2013, Sports Literate, The Boiler Journal, Cactus Heart Press, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, damselfly press, Memoir, Sugar Mule, Foliate Oak Literary Journal and other small presses. Her first novel, Dolls Behaving Badly, released from Hachette Press/Grand Central Publishing

Discovery

The light was dim and in the blue to purple spectrum, but he could barely keep his hands from shaking. There between trembling fingers, was the first synthetic bioluminescent bulb.

He thought he heard a creak in the darkness. The deeper shadows of conspiracy theories crossed his field of vision like eye-floaters: fears that some capitalist cadre would send black ops to assassinate him and ‘disappear’ his research. Beads of sweat chilled along his spine.

Then he noticed a reddish glow from one of the beakers on the bench: one containing a slightly different formula. The scientist chased the child.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid