Any Coincidence Is | Page 3

together in loud clap, as
he always did to change the subject. "By the way, your mother called.
She said to call her back immediately."
"When did she call?"
The Manager leveled a mischievous stare at Tom and quoted the
following: "'He tampered in God's domain!'"
"But that was seventy minutes ago!" The closing line, in fact, of Bride
of the Monster. Bad dialog had become part of Tom's internal clock.
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I had to give Neoldner a hand threading Plan 9, and I forgot all about

it. Sorry!"
Tom heard Criswell give his parting words, figured to hell with it, and
abandoned his post in order to use the phone in the employee's lounge.
It had been a storage room until just recently, when the Manager had
redecorated it with a host of kitschy sale items from Osco. Good
intentions, perhaps, but the room was only big enough for two people
to begin with, and a hypothetical third could only find space through
acts of physical intimacy which would have been rendered impossible
by the decor. He dialed home and his mother answered immediately,
showering him with motherly affection and gratitude that he was safe.
"What, mom? Mom, what?! Mom! What?!" Tom repeated his request
in several permutations until he finally received the coherent message
that had so shaken his mother: his cousin Kurt had gone missing.
Tom pondered this for a moment.
"Your point being...?"

3. Meanwhile, back at the ranch... "Voyaging through the strange seas
of Thought, alone." - Wordsworth
Justin Nelson, Jr., pounded the last of the stakes of his new cattle pen
into the dry dirt. Like sentinels, they sprouted in a line from the barn,
swerved north of the stream, veered at a right angle for the stump, and
followed Justin to where he stood. The cross-beams remained, after
which he'd finally be done.
He took a white handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his
forehead. The task had been lengthened considerably, although Justin
refused to admit it, by incessant thinking, an activity which often
stopped him with his hammer in mid-air. But now, he would soon be
able to think all he wanted from the comfort of his porch as the cattle
wandered from shade to shade. After he bought some cattle, he
reminded himself.
Under the entirely blue vault of sky, Justin felt something pass between
himself and the morning sun. His leathered face turned up to see
nothing but ubiquitous light, curving toward him in all directions. He
arched his aging back, feeling the popping and hating it more than
usual, before wiping his neck and replacing the handkerchief. He had
that feeling that he'd better drink something and sit down or he'd end up
in that damn hospital again. Twice last year, whether he needed it or

not, he went in for a check-up, and twice a year, some intern treated
him like the village idiot. Truth be told, everyone who knew about him
had treated him that way for nearly eleven years, except his niece. With
a sigh escaping from the bellows of his withering chest, Justin shuffled
back to the porch he had added onto his small two-room home. In the
distance, a plume of dust was billowing off the road. Mail truck. Must
be time for breakfast. About time I ate something.
Tired legs maneuvered Justin's frame to the rocking chair, where both
of his strong, chapped hands gripped the chair arms as he strategically
placed his rear over the seat, then allowed gravity to do its work. As his
ass plummeted, he was reminded that gravity yet to be reckoned with
electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force, the
other fundamental forces of the universe. Strange that he would
remember a detail ike that just now. Something he would have taught
to his senior physics class and explained as best he could - the one-eyed,
cataract patient leading the blind. Gravity, he would explain, was the
odd one out, and would be until somebody found a way to take the
known model of the universe apart and put it back together. And when
they did, he thought, wiping his face and neck again, they'd make some
interesting discoveries. So much so that our explanation of space and
time, the one that was "real" and "true" and had superseded every other
theory since the beginning of history, would have to be rewritten once
again. Be hell on all those science-fiction programs, having to reinvent
how those cock-eyed transporters worked.
The dust whirled in the air, passing before the green truck as it drove up
the road. A shadow, a large one, passed beside it. Dust doesn't make
that big of a shadow, he thought. There's something up there. He
looked up again,