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From: derek
Date: Tue Nov 9 16:39:19 MST 2004 Subject: Meaning of the Universe, Part 1: A Short Story

Meaning of the Universe, Part 1: A Short Story
Derek Hugen, 11-8-04

Bang! Here it begins: some misshapen baby-like cosmos swirling around planets, shifting and slowly building up around itself. Two men sit at the patio of a donut place, one is smoking a cigarette. He holds the cigarette between his legs, every so often bringing it up to his lips for a drag of the contents of its smoke into his stomach. It is cold outside the donut place. They wear long-sleeved shirts and baseball caps. Both of them. Like it was their dress code.
Books have been written on less than this.
There once had been a third member. The three had sat there with them, the empty cup remnants of coffee now drunk polluting wire-mesh tables near their chairs. Then the third had finally spoken this:
“Well, I'm off.”
And of pure nothingness, another spoke cryptically:
“Not staying here until two o'clock?”
Each began to do the math inside their heads. One had a calculator feature attached to his brain. Another used some kind of internal slide rule that was still left there from grade school. A final one finally stares into stars while the stars, in their turn, start to spin in the sky. One star blows up in an elaborate implosion which humanity will not recognize for more than one hundred million years on Thursday. And even then, would we still count night stars and constellations to know if one more star might have gone MIA in the sky? We will have better things to do by then. This man now tries to tell the time. He pretends he is an American Indian, judging the placement of all things relative to their current time. He nods soberly. He estimates that two o'clock is, perhaps, still far away. He would make a great Indian, he suspects.
The slide rule now speaks:
“I have to work tomorrow. Besides, whenever I hear the radio play, I fall asleep.”
The calculator and American Indian nod seriously as though this makes perfect sense to them. The slide ruler again:
“Anyway. I'll see you guys later.”
The statement comes after three minutes of silence. And with a ten-count, he then stands up to fish for keys. The others stare at a coffee cup. They choose the one furthest from the donut place doors, closest to passing traffic, like night ships. But this is the most interesting of all the coffee cups. It contains a stirring straw sticking from a now-empty coffee well. It's red and white stripes run the length of it's plastic tube. All the other coffee cups have only opened lids: certainly nothing as bright and shimmering as this straw.
They ignore their friend, now speaking his last goodbyes. It seems as a sacrifice to an ancient goddess of hearth that he must appease her that the other two men might continue until two A.M. within their donut place patio escapade of silence. The men could not bring themselves to look upon their slow retreating slide rule companion. They felt such a guilt, such an honor, in his willing sacrifice.
They could only suspect, in conjured images, that the pitiable slide rule would now slip into his bed (forsaken to this decent hour) only to hear one radio or another which should finally slit the throat of his consciousness. Yet, Hera would now be appeased, finally bending down from her place inside heaven, only to notice the sacrifice.
Two now remain, silent, still, inside the departure of their friend.
Eventually, they will begin to speak of work. One will cuss, complain of problems of being 6'5,” as well as the great cliche of “so many ways to skin a dog.”
And I will log all of this for posterity. I sit near them, wearing a brown leather jacket and a black knit cap. Abstract sketches of my sketchbook, a cup, half its insides drowned in coffee, a box of several donuts, an old photography magazine, several books written by ancient monks, somehow all chaotically take up the surface of the table.
This is how my story begins: with my own thoughts, my own head, and a depression that has lingered now behind my skull for three weeks or more.
Yet, I am amused. Two men wait for 2 o'clock. What eastern philosophy of wisdom do they own which is particular only to themselves? What knowledge of future have they oracled out behind baseball hats?
These must become my characters. This must become my plot. Two men sit. One holds a cigarette, drags on it every so often. For ten minutes, they have not talked. And still, they wait for two to come.
In the version of their story that I have written: at two o'clock in an early dawning morning, a calculator nods slowly, meaningfully to an American Indian. This will be the final sign of the cosmos to begin. Both will gather up belongings. Both will fumble for keys. Both will enter cars, turning keys in their various ignitions. They will cross opposite directions toward individual homes and to eventual sleep. And when they pull back thick, warm covers across themselves like strange blankets of planets, radios will turn on, flooding personal galaxies with advertisements for their corporate sponsored dream states. . . Such will sleep the giants into their afternoon.

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