Exclusive story: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis; Forgotten Suns art; Poem: Being Chris; House/Disco Mix: BC Zero; Tales From The UniversE 48 - newsletter penned while driving up and down the Pacific Coast
An arcadia of imagination
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1. Short Story
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
63 years old and he sat on the tree swing by the brook and considered again how it had still not happened for him. What he yearned for. To be released. From the job working at Aldi in Poynton. From having to take orders, answer to another person, the invention they called the worker’s life.
He lived alone. His children were grown. He had two marriages behind him and no savings so grafting until he died more or less was the future and the present and the past. All the world was rich and full of bright things and he had no money and lived payday to payday to payday.
Dayoff to dayoff to dayoff.
A personal kind of misery the world shared around.
He swung and the swing took him up and through the low hung branches of the oak and over the brook where the water burbled prehistoric notes and back again, the winter sun shafts of ochre through leaves, and he thought a thought near as as old as he was.
Why could the world not conjure a magic which in a single moment would transform his existence and vanish the £125K he owed on the mortgage and the cottage become his?
He still had dreams. He wanted to learn how to fix cars. Strip them down and reconstruct them. What stopped him had been what always stopped him. Himself and the world. It was difficult to know what was the greater force.
Himself or the world.
He swung more and looked through the trees to the cottage where it sat in the meadow. A kitchen and living room downstairs and bedroom and bathroom above. The place crumbling and in need of repairs ongoing and he the repairman self-taught which caused a smile.
How these last years he took hold of a powerlessness at being unable to pay for home repairs so learned to rewire the cottage electrics and how to knock down walls to extend the bathroom and reconfigure the kitchen and living room.
It showed they kept the practical stuff from you. Starting at school and continuing. They meant the governments and the societies governments built. He saw how if he saw this it was incumbent on him to act and tear up the existence he got born into and this was how he started to live these past years.
The postman walked the side of the cottage and looked across the meadow and saw him in the swing and he walked up through the grass and placed a parcel and his postbag down and sat on the bench across from the swing.
‘How you doing?’
Walter nodded. ‘What you got there, George?’
The postman handled the parcel. ‘Book again is a guess.’ His breath stood out in the cold. ‘You like the swing don’t you? How are old you again?’
Walter pointed beyond the postman to a cream-coloured Ford stood on concrete blocks.' ‘Younger than that.’
The postman looked at the Ford. ‘What year is it?’
‘It’s a ‘55 Consul.’
Walter got off the swing and walked over to George and took the parcel and unwrapped it and looked at what he ordered.
It was a manual of a faded red colour that was dogeared and entitled Ford Consul 1951-57 and showed a pictured of the motor pointing out the cover.
‘You’re finally going to work on it?’
‘Think so.’
‘What you know about car engines.’
Walter tapped the manual. ‘Nothing.’
George nodded. ‘You’re telling me you’re 68?’
Walter grinned. ‘63. You ever ask yourself something?’
‘Like time for a pint, yet? Everyday.’
‘About this.’ He waved at the scene around them, indicated the wider scene beyond.
The postman got up off the bench. ‘About trees and your cottage, you mean?’
‘The world we live in.’
‘This I can answer easily. No.’
‘You ever think it is set up the way it is because no one really knows.’
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