The Late John Brockman

It’s Short Story Monday and here’s another short short from my past archives. Interestingly enough, according to the “real” John Brockman, the past does not exist, so I’m not sure where precisely these former stories came from. It would be a strange thing if the universe were created as a whole piece of cloth in every new instant, unto perpetuity. Yes, truth is stranger than fiction but even that would be a hard nut to swallow.

Contemplating the nature of time/space reality does become fascinating the more one digs into it. When the bills come in tomorrow’s mail, however, even though you hope they’re a fiction you pay them anyways, just in case… In fact, one who stops paying his or her bills because they were for services in the past, which purportedly does not exist, would soon be considered a nut case. And being commited to a nuthouse would be a real hard nut to swallow.

Aw, nuts. Let’s just move to the story.

On The Late John Brockman

He passed away and left us his legacy: a finely crafted volume designed to relate the truth. He called it The Late John Brockman. Since all our experiences of the Present come through the senses, and this delays our direct experience of them by a fraction of a moment, then by the time we experience the present, it is past. Since the past does not exist (because it is gone), so are we.

He wrote the book before he was dead, but said that we are all dead because we live in the past and the past is gone, does not exist. He explained it like this. There is a time delay between the thing perceived outside our bodies and the actual reception in our brain of that perception. While it is infinitesimally small it is, nevertheless, a delay. Sight, sound, taste, smell, and the tactile senses -- all undergo the same phenomenon, a space of time is required for transmission from fingertip to brain acknowledgement, from retina to inward scene. The external world is past. He took a whole book to scientifically demonstrate what I have here reiterated twice.

In the end, John Brockman pronounced his death.

Unfortunately, the tome failed to produce an income and his parents pressured him to secure a job to pay his bills. (He had borrowed three thousand dollars to produce the six hundred hardbound originals that were offered to a disinterested public.) He refused to take employment, and his father refused to feed him.

There were other disagreements. He told them they were dead and that it did not matter whether they loved him or not because everything is meaningless once it is part of the irrelevant past. The oceans of time are too salty to drink for one who is so fully persuaded of their brininess. His mother became ill over her son's hardheartedness. His father and mother fought much and regretted many things they said to each other.

On a cold December night he left the house barefoot and without a coat. The next morning his blue body was found in the forest behind his home where he had nailed his hand to a tree.

I don't know why I am writing all this. Perhaps because his book made an impression on me once, though I never stopped paying my bills. Nor have I forgotten that there are consequences for behavior.