It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . . 11番

One of the more popular plot lines in science fiction involves the hero going back in time, and preventing something from happening so that in the future they came from some, even more terrible, thing will not happen. For some reason, probably one best explored while watching the currents created by the ice melting in a glass of scotch, the even more terrible thing very often is the birth of some individual. The argument goes something like this: the world, as we know it, is crap. The reason it is crap can be traced directly back to this exact person. Therefore, if that exact person is never born then, ipso facto, the world will not be crap.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . . 10番

The afternoon had been even less fun than Thomas had anticipated, and after a lifetime spent in the madcap world of academic administration his standards were pretty low. As a reward to himself for having endured two rather accurate samplings of hell he skipped the buffet and dance being held that evening, and was walking along the edge of the beach watching the surf and an occasional surfer. He brushed the sand off a bit of the wall that separated the beach from the man made parts of town, and sat down staring out at the waves, but naturally what he was really looking at was his seemingly empty past and an equally meaningless future as it seemed to be shaping up at the moment.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .9番

At the window stood a young girl. Well, actually, she wasn’t exactly a young girl as we know them, but we’ll get to that in a moment. She had her back to the room and the lights were out because it is much easier to sulk petulantly that way. The day had been simply awful.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .8番

There was a time when traveling by plane was an event. You dressed for it, and were given a seat that was both comfortable and spacious. Even if you were traveling ‘Student Stand By’ everyone treated you with respect, and you expected to arrive at your destination within a few minutes of the moment indicated on the ticket. These are not those times.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .7番

This being the Twenty-first Century, the one that the Mickey Mouse Club had said he, and some others, would lead, Thomas had bought his tickets to San Diego online. Whenever Thomas thought about it being the Twenty-first Century he was always slightly let down. As the picture of Mickey had flashed across the screen along with pictures of the Mouseketeers tap dancing and jumping around in pantomime horses for Wild West Day, the announcer had been so emphatic. This show was for the leaders of the Twenty-first Century. Now that he was actually mired in the bloody thing he was finding out that he was anything but a leader. At least not a leader of centuries. He did lead several committees, but the thrill of ruling mimeographed handouts no longer approved for graduate classes soon wears off. Still, one committee was getting him three days at Pacific Beach, and that was ample compensation for whatever the topic of the conference was.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .6番

Thomas’s ankle was quite sore, and each time he took a step a little white-hot flash of pain would shoot through it so he decided he would stop and have a cup of tea and rest a bit. It turned out that this was one of the three times this century it has been verified that a Starbucks was not the closest place to Thomas’s current location. The first time was on a trip he took to Murdo, South Dakota. When asked why he had gone to Murdo all he will say is he had already seen the corn palace. The other time was when he had to spend the night in Orem, Utah. He refuses to say anything about that night, but his analyst grins uncontrollably whenever he hears the city's name. Orem passed a law banning the sales of mango-coconut gelatin and feather dusters soon afterward, but no one really knows why.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .5番

One of the more interesting inventions humans came up with over the two thousand years we have been talking about was printing. It seems that for most of the long, mostly forgotten history of humankind either you or your mate actually had to remember everything you needed to know to survive. I mean everything. Stuff like:

• How to find and catch dinner without doing too much damage to yourself.
• How to keep the neighborhood lion from feeding her family with yours.
• What the exact procedures were when someone had coveted your ass (or worse yet, your wife’s ass).
• How to build a shelter, a fire and a baby carrier.
• Which mushrooms were safe to eat, which ones would cause you to see strange things, and which ones would kill you
• Where it was safe to cross the river, and where to suggest strangers cross it when they came by trying to sell you some kind of god.
• How to keep the kids amused in the evening.

And that’s just for starters.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .4番

Now Thomas—please try to keep T.D.M. in mind. He is, after all, one of the central elements of this story, if not, as some would have it, life itself. As I was saying, Thomas was under the weather, and on this particular day it was not weather he particularly wanted to be under. It was one of those marrow freezing, soul draining early spring rains you get in the Mid-West who's only redeeming feature is that it makes the first line of "The Wasteland" seem like an understatement. When the local PBS station broadcast a work by Mahler that afternoon the suicide hotline had to bring in extra help. The world was cold, wet and gray, and not only was Thomas being rained on, he felt like hell.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .3番

Now Thomas is an average man. This, of course, means that his life is as totally devoid of meaning as anything can be and not be the subject of a Sylvester Stallon movie. To most of the universe this is exactly as it should be. “Let humans and other spoiled little twits worry about things like existential angst. I’ve got better things to do,” is pretty much the general attitude. But to Humans, alone among all the different forms of living things in the universe, this lack of Meaning is an outrage. It is clearly a case of incompetence, questionable management, or at the very least it is very, very impolite on somebody’s part; and this indignation has led, given the nature of the species, to the creation of the world’s oldest profession.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .2番

This particular story starts about two thousand years after a small proportion of the world’s population believes a nice Jewish boy got himself nailed up on a rather shabby cross, and concerns, or at least occasionally mentions a certain Thomas D. Milton III. How and why he came by this rather awkward name has been chronicled elsewhere, and frankly I don’t feel like retyping thirty odd, and one or two downright strange, pages just to bring you up to date. Sure I could dig out the old manuscripts, and now that I use a computer I wouldn’t really have to retype them because I could just tell it to print, and there they’d be all ready for another shot at the big time; but there’s only so much rejection one man can go through. I mean why are you even dredging all this up again.

It's a thousand pages give or take a few . . .１番

If you ever go in the kind of bookstore that has a coffee bar and someone playing jazz harp you will notice that near the door, right next to the remainder tables, is the magazine section. The front, most visible shelving is, of course, reserved for the better selling serious news journals. “People,” “US,” “Cosmopolitan” and other purveyors of Truth the American Way. But farther back, usually near the cooking and gardening section, you will find those pricey, little periodicals with names like “Humping Turtle Review” and “Nebraskan Zen Poetry Semi-Quarterly” that are filled with the meaningless stories currently fashionable among the graduates of the more exclusive writing workshops.