Typically Human

The Ballad of Dave

There once was a man named Dave

Who quickly became greed's slave

But sadly for him

His hundred million

Could not save poor Dave from the grave

Two Fools and their Picnic

Our story's main characters, Rafael and Mikhael, were in Town Park enjoying a splendid picnic. When they finished they realized that they did not plan on enjoyable things to do after the picnic. They decided to compile a list titled, "A List of Enjoyable Things to Do After a Picnic." Mikhael suggested the first thing to write down should be "compile a list of enjoyable things to do after a picnic." Rafael agreed, and they wrote it down, then immediately crossed it off. They could not come up with anything else. And so they sat down on the grass and pondered what to do. It was then that Rafael pointed to a nearby hill, saying, "Look, Mikhael, look! It is a goat pushing a boulder up a hill!" Mikhael squinted at the hill for some time, then replied, "No, Rafael. That is not a goat pushing a boulder up a hill. That is clearly a boulder pulling a goat up a hill." Rafael looked again and said, "No, that is clearly a goat pushing a boulder up a hill." Mikhael scratched his head and said, "You see a goat pushing a boulder up a hill. I see a boulder pulling a goat up a hill. Which one of us is right?" "Here, let us ask that apothecary, he will know." Rafael replied. "Apothecary!" "Yes, my good man?" replied the apothecary. "Apothecary, do you see that goat pushing a boulder up a hill over there? Well, I say it is a goat pushing a boulder, but my friend says it is a boulder pulling a goat. Which one of us is right?" The apothecary looked at them in surprise and said, "Neither! Why, neither the goat nor the boulder are moving!" "They're not?" asked the two friends in amazement. "No, of course not. They are standing still. It is simply the mountain that moves." This confused our good friends even more, and they were about to question this when a bespectacled old man who had been silently observing their argument stepped in. "You're all fools! Squabbling back and forth, and none with the right answer! Can't you see? That's not a goat pushing a boulder, nor a boulder pulling a goat, nor a mountain moving! It's an orange and a kangaroo swimming laps in the Atlantic!" Rafael was just about to reply that that was utterly insane, ludicrous and ridiculous when he stopped for a moment and thought about it. He looked at what he had thought was a goat pushing a rock up a hill, then squinted, then squinted harder. Finally, he saw. He did not see with his eyes, but simply saw. The trouble with seeing with your eyes is that everybody sees only what they want to, and when confronted with a different view, their vision fails them. He saw that that scene was just as much a goat pushing a boulder up a mountain as it was an orange and kangaroo swimming laps in the Atlantic. He stopped and smiled, and enjoyed the comical fruit and marsupial duo's aquatic displays. What was actually going on on that hill, we'll never know.

The Void Stares Back

John gazed blankly at what lay ahead of him. He took a deep breath, took two steps forward and hurtled over the razor's edge of logic and reason. He fell through a wormhole and crashed through several planes, finally landing on the Sphere. The Sphere stood bold and round, never rolling, never moving, atop the Plane. The Plane was like a chessboard, and John pondered this. He knew the Plane was infinite, but the Sphere was not. The Sphere was matter and anti-matter, non-existent and existent. It was simply the Sphere, an eminent wonder of all things spherical. Suddenly, space-time twisted into a strange doughnut shape, and John felt himself thrust through several dimensions, shattering the barriers of the Universe and the laws of physics like glass plates. He stood on the edge of the Universe, and leaped. Space-time swirled around him at a dizzying rate, when he found himself in the Void, and the Vortex yielded a black hole. He felt himself being sucked into the black hole, and retained only a few billionths of a dimension when the black hole did a curious thing. The black hole turned itself inside out and began spewing particles into the Void. The black hole began to implode with its reversal. The sudden energy in the absence of energy created a gamma ray burst which tore John apart molecule by molecule, then tore his molecules apart into atoms, then tore those atoms apart into sub-atomic particles. These sub-atomic particles were sent hurtling across the Universe at .01% of the speed of light, and by sheer coincidence, all ended up at point Alpha AB111111, where they reintegrated into a very surprised John.