shifting universi

bon mot: such is life.

My friend Riley had on one occasion launched for me my own alternate universe, my only stipulation being Clarke's most tenebrous vision of the future, Childhood's End, was neither written or supposed.
Stepping through I became impelled to have coffee with a woman in heels carrying cream to her Lexus;
she paid obviously foregoing a meeting, but never forgot the minutes frivolously spent with a stranger who wanted nothing and had nothing to give. The moment was enough to chink the equation, turning one world into a purposeless cog in the universal machination. Elsewhere a black hole spat festoonery from its arse end and a further spark of imagery coalesced, one where Clarke must doom the suspect civilization. Do not ponder the whys or fret whatifs—all earthly decisions are programmed in the heat of an empirical singularity light years beyond our control. My return to Clarke's universe was to gather intangibles and to leave a rose the variety of which was never meant to be adored and on its petals bloomed a tenet of humility: that humanity is doomed be certain; the door to there is shut and the reality is that here we are living an honestly ongoing futile existence of neither here nor there.