Greetings
Dear Reader,
Some weeks
ago my beloved editor, RJ requested that I publish an excerpt from my current
novel in progress. Since I plan most of my BLOG ahead of time it took me a bit
to get there. RJ means more to me that
she realizes and so here is the answer, though late to her request.
“The world decays around me. While
I sit here in my private bookish domain tamping in one of the last bowls of
McClelland I will ever smoke, the rest of the world falls headlong into
barbarism and dystopia. I realize that I
contribute to the decay as I puff on my hoarded tobacco in my cherished
churchwarden, for I sit hear pondering and punditing the decline of man without
doing anything to hinder it.
In the early years of study, when
I was young, brash, and foolish, I often wondered how long it would take for
our society to crumble into madness. I
would sit at the pub with my colleagues commentating proudly on our solutions
to the world’s ills. Even taking up pipe
smoking back then was an act of bravado.
But I was determined to mold myself as the sage amongst his books;
knowledgeable and wise. I am sure that
journey began when I was just a boy reading science fiction.
I gathered around me knowledge and clung to the quote from one of my
early readings. “Trouble rather the
tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you kings and armies are things mighty
and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment to be overturned with
the flicking of a finger.” This lead to
a philosophy of theory instead of philosophy of life. I became adept at theorizing for others but
very poor at living my own life.
All that the knowledge did was blind me and make me swollen with
pride. The more I was secure in my own
vast stores of knowledge, the less I courted his all important mistress,
wisdom. Lonely for the sweet love of
wisdom that humbles him, knowledge became a raging megalomaniac within me. I dismissed the vital truths of my knowledge
for the hunger of possessing its vastness.
My friends, my loved ones, and my lover were all driven away as I
squandered my God-given intellect pondering the great questions without ever
really believing in the logical, reasonable, and true answers that lay before
me. Book by book I en-tomed myself into
a world that was all mine, and like Mr. Dickens’ Scrooge, ‘as single and
solitary as an oyster.’ I used to say
that everyone abandoned me. In truth, it
was I who abandoned them.
Excuse me a moment while I light this.
Ouch! I miss the bowl with the
match and catch my thumb more and more these days. Ah, there we are; a nice clean cherry on top
of perfectly packed McClelland. This is
the Cavendish; one of their best it is.
Dark, sweet, and moist; It will burn slowly and provide a good half an
hour’s pondering. I will have to see if
blending the last of this with some of the lesser tobaccos can stretch out the
flavor. War took the tobacco farms four
years ago and the Virginia
soil will never grow anything this sweet again.
My oldest son would scoff at me for that, and he would be right. Outside of this hidden sanctuary of mine
people die of starvation and worse causes daily. There is no more FEMA or Red Cross. The broken world will not mend itself this
time. All this is true and yet I worry
about my supply of McClelland. My son
would cock his head to the right; always the right, and take on the tone of a
teacher. Then he would say something
like, ‘Father, I do not think that your pipe tobacco really matters with all
that is going on right now.’
I miss his fiery gaze and the crystal clarity of his thinking. It just occurred to me that I will never see
those eyes again, nor his brother’s. Maxim, the older has eyes like the Caribbean sea on a
cloudy day, blue but struck with enough grey to show the intelligence there. My younger son Joseph has blue eyes as well
but they are the same sea when the sun shines high and the wind is still. His charm shines through those eyes and many
women fell into them when we were all much younger and there was time for such
things.
They are brothers but as different as night and day. We often jousted over words and their place
in the world, but it is obvious I digress.
I was talking about the decay of the world; how our society got to this
point and what needs to happen. I must
focus on that and not chase too many rabbits or our time will be gone and the
Cavendish wasted.
The worst of it, the decay of social structure occurred at the end of the
second decade, right around 2019. It was
the discovery of true cold fusion that ultimately doomed us. That happened after the oil scares in the
first decade. The scientists were
determined to find a source of clean energy and they did. It could have been nice. We could have worked to build the society
imagined by Rodenberry and his ilk, but man is depraved. He may be civil when the situation warrants
it, but man is selfish, proud, sinful, and wicked.
I know those words fell out of favor back in the end of the previous
century. The current wisdom, ha, was
that we were all basically good and we could make a tolerant world. If I had manure that pure now, I could grow
my own Cavendish. The thing is that we
are evil. We have rotten souls that care
only about whatever petty thing we want right foot-stamping now. You wish proof. It sits here before you. I will mourn the passing of my last pipe of
McClelland much longer than I have the passing of so many of my fellow
professors. I will think God cruel to
deny me my only true friend, the pouch and pipe, while giving little thought to
the carnage around me. We are all fallen
depraved fools thinking that God owes us something to merit our favor with him.
He gave us something. He gave us
limitless energy. Few realized that this
was a gift from God and not the brilliance of man. Most were too busy demanding God prove his
existence to see his actions. We could
have made the world lush and green again.
The skies could have been sparkling.
Water could have been safe to drink and bathe in.
We used the limitless energy of fusion to power our greed and
consumption. As with all things bright
and beautiful, we found a way to rape and pillage it. When we could have cleaned up the planet, we
instead amped-up our consumption. The
first sign of societal collapse was the economy. Most bought on credit and found themselves
unable to pay. Limitless energy yielded
limitless laziness.
Those nations with power began to further their manipulations of those
that did not have it. National debts and
resource tension grew until 2023 when one of the South American countries
figured out how to make the fusion power generators into bombs with little
effort. Nations once powerful were now
held captive by their own energy resources.
This last war over energy consumed so much food, materials, and life that
it just ended because no one cared any more.
The global village became a frenzied animal-farm cum lord-of-the-flies
nightmare that consumed human life as greedily as man consumes resources. The raid on this university left only Jared
and I alive. I have never had a better
or more loyal research assistant. I am
not sure why I was not found before now.
I was content to stay in here with my books, my tea, and my
McClelland. Jared still needed what
passes for sunshine and fresh air.
It has been three years since he went out for some air and did not come
back. I only have a voice still because
I talk to myself all the time. I
probably should have checked on Jared, but I could have been spotted. He went out and never came back. That just reinforces my opinion that my
choice to stay sequestered in my basement suite was a wise one. These three years have been quieter but my
routine has not changed much. The vast
stores of the larder and supply rooms down here will last one man a lifetime. But then what is a lifetime without a good
bowl of McClelland?
My personal fusion generator seems quite healthy and I have a backup. The
water recycling system is fully operational and so I saw no reason to
leave. Oh, there goes the kettle. Do you wish sugar and milk in your tea? I will bring some biscuits too.”
The visitor, in his late fifties, smiles at the old scholar. His voice is gravely and rough, but still
kind as he offers, “Let me get the tea.
I was taught how to make it properly by an expert. You have
already burned your thumb once today. We
will enjoy a cup of hot Earl Grey and then we can discuss how to help you with
that failing eyesight.”
Wishing you
joy in the journey,
Aramis Thorn
Mat 13:52 So
Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of
Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new
and old things from his great treasure store."
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