Excerpt: Maintenon and the Art of Murder. WIP.

The Pont Marie, circa 1903/04


“Hey, Andre.” Levasseur nodded at the floater. “Anything special?”

“Nah.” Sergeant Levain shrugged. “Just another poor and anonymous soul who couldn’t take it anymore.”

A small group of onlookers on the street above stood in contrast to the pedestrians with umbrellas and faces to the wind, refusing to even acknowledge their presence as they scurried past to their workplace. A line of buildings, windows impenetrable due to glare and grime, ignored the disruption and reflected and amplified shouts, bicycle bells and car horns. A few bleary-eyed faces could be seen in a brightly-lit café on the far side of the street as they read the morning papers and sipped scalding coffees.

It was another morning in Paris and life had its logic and a certain pace of its own in spite of all distractions.

He shivered involuntarily. The slanting grey rain hissed down, making puddles jump and splatter with its violence. The Seine, serene in its relentless push to the sea, made its own contribution to the wetness of the sounds all around them as it lapped at the shoreline and gurgled past a few small rocks at the edge. His shoes squelched as he shifted from side to side on the narrow shore.

This sort of weather always made his back ache. The dead man bobbed face down in one of the recurrent eddies along this stretch of the river. They stood looking on as one of the attendants reached with a borrowed boathook and dragged it in a little closer. The junior looked reluctant to grab it, but waded out into the shallows when it hung up on a snag. They were all soaked anyway, even the boys in blue with their glistening slickers, always dripping down the necks in his recollection. Even so, he wished he had one now.

Grabbing the corpse by the collar, the attendant dragged the thing up as high as it could go. Heavy and limp, probably weighing fifty or a hundred kilos more due to the passage of time and resultant soakage, he was going to need help.

This one didn’t look likely to come apart at the seams, and that was always a blessing. Andre pulled the sodden fedora up a little from his forehead, where it chafed from sheer weight and a long night.

“So where’s Gilles?” Hubert Levasseur and Maintenon went back a long time.

They were both in uniform together. It was hard to visualize either one of them as a young man of twenty. Levasseur was tolerable, unlike some others, and treated Andre with familiarity. It was a kind of professional friendship. You would never know, with Levasseur, whether he liked you or not. He gave no one any cause for complaint, whether they were a colleague or a customer. His partner, whom Andre didn’t know, stood gazing silently at the far side of the river, appearing oblivious to his surroundings.

“The dentist.” Levasseur gave a nod of sympathy.

“Yes, it would take a lot to keep him away.”

“Hah!” Andre grinned. “What are the odds this bugger is going to have a wallet?’

“Slim to none.” Levasseur was probably right. “What are you doing here?”

“Swapped shifts with Couteau. His sister’s getting married.” Levasseur nodded.

“Just your luck.”

“I’ll be home in a couple of hours.” Andre was philosophic, and he might need a favour someday.

“Something’s got him real good!” The fellow, Jaques, wrestled with the weight.

It was probably a dead tree trunk, whole and entire, with one stout branch sticking out just so.

Whether it was suicide, accident or murder, these folks never seemed to make it easy for the police. Genial cursing came from the senior ambulance attendant as he waded into the chill green water. His arms held high, he sighed deeply when his crotch submerged. With a hold under the armpits, one on each side, they dragged the decedent in and unceremoniously flopped him down beside the stretcher. They looked down at themselves, and Andre saw the younger one’s knees knocking from the cold. Excess water flowed out from their shoes. Their lips moved, but they had some sense of propriety, mostly for the sake of the audience. They kept it quiet as they got a proper grip on ankles and shoulders. An officer moved in to assist Hubert at the heavy end.

“Ready?” The younger fellow nodded, giving a flick of the head and a brief grin. “Heave, ho.”

“Up we go.” They put it down again at the base of the concrete seawall.

Andre Levain nodded grimly at the macabre cheerfulness of the meat-wagon boys. When they got home from work, no one ever asked how their day had been. They probably had an answer, though. It’s just that no one ever asked.

“He’ll be along shortly.”

Levasseur waited for them to carry it up the embankment, an affair replete with more carefully-studied cursing, not so good-naturedly now, for the mud and the filth on their obligatory hard leather shoes was as slippery as hot oil on marbles. An officer up above had a rope tied to the guard rails, and even that didn’t help much, but Andre was used to such things.

After he and Levasseur made it up, they tied the rope onto the top of the stretcher for additional pull from above.

With pushing and shoving from a pair of uniformed officers below, braced by whatever footholds and cracks in the concrete that they could find, the heavily-strapped corpse was soon at street level.

“Let’s have a quick look, then.” Levasseur studied the face and then shrugged. “Have you ever noticed they always lay them face-up?”

Andre rewarded Levasseur with an appreciative grunt.

“Oh, look, it’s my uncle Raoul.” Levasseur’s tone was priceless, and one of the gendarmes, face haggard in the early light, laughed out loud.

The onlookers muttered softly in the background, as Andre smiled for the first time since coming on shift at eleven thirty last night.

Hubert, having borne the brunt of unpleasantness this morning, squatted by the body and began checking the pockets for personal articles.

“He’s got a watch.” Hubert checked more pockets, pulling out coins and some small bills from the gentleman’s right front trousers pocket.

He pulled a small silvered flask from inside of the jacket breast pocket.

“That’s a nice coat.”

One of the attendants looked sideways at the senior police officers.

“Good shoes.”

“Thank you, Jaques.” Levasseur pulled one off and took a serious look at it.

“Well, it’s not a robbery, anyway.” Levain pulled out his notebook. “No wallet yet?”

“No. Gin.” Jaques’ nose was legendary, although he could be a pest at times.

Levasseur put the booze aside with the watch and the money. The man had no rings, but the cufflinks looked nice, perhaps even expensive.

“Huh.” Andre was unmoved.

“Yes, thank you, Jacques. Francois.” Levasseur’s eyebrows rose at the thought of the heap of missing persons reports, a heap replenished every single morning, in every town of any size or significance across the entire country. “Oh, boy.”

The boys put him in the back of their little van, bickering back and forth about who was wetter and more miserable. The voices of the crowd, and the people themselves, faded away. There was nothing more to see.

The hiss of the rain and the pushing of the wind through the sycamore branches, barely showing the first hint of green buds breaking open, lifted his hair and warmed his neck as a thin shaft of April sunshine cut across the city from the east.

***

'Quai Montebello before the storm.'

The resources available to writers today are wonderful. The photos are presented for scholarly and critical purposes.

As the reader can see from the top photo, I have links to other pictures which show an actual earthen riverbank, with rocks, maybe some snags, and a mucky edge, which might have been found approximately in the correct time period, and the actual location isn't mentioned in this short scene.

When writing a first draft, the important thing is to build a logical plot structure. Descriptive detail can be lavished in later, what I want is to complete the plot, invent all the characters, lay out a nice balance between action, dialogue, characterization, action and repose.

It is really only later that I worry about what the city actually looked like on that rainy morning, or what a certain Levasseur might have looked like. yet even now, some aspects of his character come through, including a sense of humour. I'm not trying to consciously leave things out at this stage. The big goal is to advance the story. Holes in logic, even miss-naming a character, can be fixed later. (I have been known to call comeone Bert in one chapter and then forget the name, and call him Fred. This can be confusing to fix.)

Lonely.

(Photo: Morguefile.)

Sometimes I come here because I am lonely.

There are living, breathing, thoughtful people here.

They are your friends if you want them to be.

Manchmal komme ich hier weil ich einsam bin.

Gibt es Leben, atmen, nachdenklichen Menschen hier.

Sie sind deine Freunde, wenn Sie sie sein wünschen.

It's better than wandering in the desert.

Es ist besser als in der Wüste Wandern.

Here is my book of poems: (Hier ist mein poesie-buch.)

Art for art's sake.

As a boy, I wanted to be a great painter.

Even now canvases like Monet’s “Water Lilies,” impress my soul although there’s not much clarity. I can even paint – I have sketches like old naval victories, paintings in the style of Picasso or Cezanne,  Thompson, although Rembrandt’s detailed soul-analysis is a stretch. It’s not even that hard. Not really.

Where is the market? I mean, why bother?

Art teachers, jealous as they were, always assumed I was some kind of expert, a “ringer” who just showed up to show off and make fun of the untalented but sincere persons who take lessons and pay the bills.

They were right. Like the guy who can really play the drums, but makes a living selling shoes – not enough courage to get out there in the trenches, or get one’s head stomped in by critics and fans alike. I figure in order to succeed, i.e. make money, one would have to grab the world’s attention and hold it long enough for someone important to decide you are “in fashion” as a painter. That you are “marketable,” and “collectible” and “in vogue.” Like as in “Good Investment.” Maybe I was just too lazy to do it—to put

the time into learning the craft.

Hey! If I was to get some frames, and stretch huge expanses of white cotton over them. Rent the Public Library and Art Gallery – how much could it cost? Bolt or screw them up on the walls, put paint in pots on tables, or on the floor in buckets. O.K. I know what you’re thinking. “It’s already been done! Lots of artists have public participation in their painting projects, and the Old Masters had half of their work done by

apprentices…and so called installation art consisting of neat rows of bricks, toilet seats, or even buckets of paint on a table is old hat.”

Yeah, you’re right. But then…you always are. (I’ve never heard you ask a question, or even express an opinion. You know everything.) It is abstract, and expressionistic, and therefore derivative. It’s even nihilistic, and therefore anti-Canadian.

The very first guy that walks in there and says, “Bleep! Any bleep-bleep could do that!” I’m going to grab him by the scruff of the neck, dip his head in the paint pot and bounce the mouthy bleep off the bleeping walls for a while.

It may not be entirely original. One heck of a piece of performance art, eh?

“I couldn’t do it without your help.” Eventually we’ll get this work of art finished.

I may even be able to sell a couple of them. But that’s not really important right now. 

Try to think of it as “art for art’s sake,” and you have to admit; the medium of performance art has really been lacking in some essential quality lately. You know – like violence? Think of it as a great naval victory without the water; ships and smoke and stuff.
                                                    

From quiet contemplation comes chaos.

Henri Farman Shorthorn.

        Henri Farman 'Shorthorn.' Wiki Commons.


     A group of us stood watching on the badly cracked paving outside the hangar. A lad by the name of Harry volunteered to be first. He was pretty insistent.

     He had a strong desire to prove he could fly. That’s what the rest of us took it to be.

    We muttered and chuckled amongst ourselves, something ‘Mr. Muggs,’ our instructor, had learned to tolerate well before we ever showed up.

     Muggsy learned to talk a little louder, and that was about it. There were two or three Canucks there, knuckleheads all of us.

     I would say we all thought we could fly, although a quite a few of the boys did show some signs of a very rational nervousness. The instructors gave all of us about two or three hours of time in a dual-seat Farman. These planes, the ones the instructors used, had slightly more powerful motors; and they were a lot newer to boot.

     When the instructor took off, we sat and watched how they moved their hands and feet as the plane responded. It wasn’t exactly dual control. I’ve written about that in my story, ‘Death Amongst the Clouds,’ which appeared in the School Chum’s Review, April ’24, I think.

    Harry was quickly strapped in. I still wonder ir he was all hung over, and if that had anything to do with it. There was some nervous chatter as we all impatiently waited for our turn. Soon the motor was running loudly in our ears, and the blast from its prop put up a lot of dirt and crud in the air. It stung the eyes. You could feel the grit hitting your face, and it was necessary to blink and turn your head.

    Our classmate Harry put on the gas and she moved away. He was blasting it as hard as it would go. This was a tired old machine, and the supposedly seventy horsepower motor was marking time as it built the revs. Harry trundled along, and you could see the wing-tips going up and down in some syncopated beat,a tin-pan-alley kind of beat.

     Finally the plane staggered into the air. I checked my watch again out of habit. The man had taken so long to get going, he was waiting so long to pull up. He took off at ten fifty-three a.m.

     We watched the back end of Harry’s plane. It bobbled in left and right bank some, and with the wings waggling, he beat through the turbulence over the long line of trees at the aerodrome’s verge.

     “Hold her, laddy…” breathed the instructor.

     “How high is he, sir?” someone asked.

     “Shush, boys!” he mouthed in frustration.

     “Looks like about one-fifty,” I murmured to tow-headed little Dicky.

     Dick Littlehampton, nice fellow from Exeter. He was nineteen, I was seventeen and a half, but had lied about my height. Hah! That’s a joke. Yet I stood as nervous as anyone else as we watched Harry diminish in size over the south. Then he tried to turn. He almost made it.

     He must have been about a hundred eighty feet.

     “NO-o-o-oh!” ground out the instructor. “Shit!”

     Harry had turned left, and was diving into the turn. He was ninety degrees through the urn and coming back around. The top of the wings and tail were about all of the plane that was visible, as the booms are just a spindly framework, although it was said the twin-boom design was stiffer than some other aeroplanes.

     Some cursed and some held their breath. I strained with all my might to pick out the tone of Harry’s engine, not so easy with all the other things going on at our busy field.

     The tail wind. The tail wind was such that the plane had dropped out of its flying speed range…

      Harry smashed into the tree line after disappearing in a heart-thudding beat of time. A frozen mental image that will stick with me forever. Harry crashed at about ten fifty-four and thirty seconds a.m.

    

     We stood quiet as the instructor slumped his shoulders and wouldn’t look at us for some long moments. We could hear a siren’s wail and the sound of engines and voices calling from three quarters of a mile off, but the voices carried on the wind.

     “Cor!” someone began.

     “Shut the fuck up!” barked Muggsy.

     Ashen-faced, we stared at the trees. Then we broke and ran for it, without a thought or word or a command. I guess all the wild horses in the world couldn’t have stopped us, although there probably wasn’t much a gaggle of untrained boys could do to help old Harry.

     Smudges of black smoke streamed up and over the windbreak of tall spruces or firs or something. There was a farm over there. We used to go over to the fence and talk to the horses sometimes; at least I did.

     “Get your asses back here!” bellowed Muggs, and while it took a while to sink in for a couple of the lads, we finally slid to a halt in confusion.

     Muggsy was muttering and cursing something outrageous, and we double-timed it back to the concrete apron in front of the hangar.

     “All right, who’s next then?” our mentor asked in resolute resignation.

     He looked at the list on the clipboard in his hand.

     “Alexander,” he called, and a quiet, shy lad of unbelievably rakish slenderness stepped forward. He snapped off a quick salute and pathetically stood to attention, and it looked as if his knees were about to give out on him. He’s ready to shit his pants.

     “What did he do wrong, Alexander?” sighed the instructor. “And relax, would you?”

     “He turned too soon,” said the boy. “Not enough height.”

     “Do you think you can do any better?” asked the instructor.

     He didn’t want to send anyone that’s not ready. Or didn’t he care anymore? He seemed kind of burnt out to me, but then I’d seen it before.

     The rest of us paid rapt attention to every word, every comment, every inflection, every nuance. We moved along the line to another machine that the mechanics were busy preparing.

     Alexander took a hell of a long time to fasten up his flying suit. To get the gloves, and the fastenings just right. The poor guy was borderline hyperventilating.

     “Next one better get ready,” suggested the instructor.

     Alfred, a thick-set kid from some little village in the Midlands started, flushed, and looked guilty. A lot of eager beavers here today.

     Finally Alexander was in the hot seat. The prop was flipped over and it was time for his initiation.

      As we watched it warm up for a while, it was a strangely subdued bunch of lads. We know this had to be done, and that it would be our turn soon. Yet we felt curiously detached from Alexander.

     It’s like watching a lab rat, the pounding of the heart a kind of guilty pleasure, bearing in mind poor old Harry. Every so often we would glance over there, and while Muggs tried to ignore it, there wasn’t much he could do either, since he couldn’t help taking a glance himself from time to time as Alexander mucked about.

     Then his engine suddenly revved up and he was going across the grassy aerodrome.

     The plane pulled up to ten feet, and dove down five, then back up to about fifteen or twenty. The engine burbled along, and I thought he was smart to pick up as much speed as he could. I was going to remember that.

     He was approaching the tree line, and just when we expected him to pull up and out, the engine note died down suddenly and he flopped the plane down and it went sliding towards the trees.

     What did he do? Did he shut the throttle off in sheer panic? I couldn’t believe it, and I still don’t know even now. Yet that must be what he did…that engine was running fine.

    There was a crunching sound, and there was the impression of a big heavy object, dark and limp, flung out of the machine as it hit.

    “Fuck,” said our instructor.

    It’s difficult to say if Alexander throttled back in panic, or if the motor just coughed at a bad time.

    “All right, who’s next?” came the question as we moved along to the next Henri Farman.

     This was one of our reserve machines, a spare we kept around in case a plane broke down and was taken out of service. Soon another lad strapped in and with heavily-beating hearts we watched his takeoff.

     This time the man got it right. He made the turn from an altitude of at least five hundred feet, although we held our breaths when he lost a good two hundred or two-fifty in the turn. His plane roared overhead as he passed down the runway at about three hundred feet.

     “Yay!” some guys yelled.

     “Shut up!” bellowed the instructor, but they couldn’t restrain themselves.

     “Shut the hell up!” he barked in anger.

     Finally the noise faded into sullen silence, a silence which became suddenly ominous with the realization…

     The lad did not return. He’d gone behind us somewhere, muffled or blocked by the hangars lined up in a row. He must have made the second turn, right?

     But we never saw him again. The next two guys seemed to do better, and made a successful takeoff and circuit. They both made a successful landing. Then it was lunch.

     After lunch, it was a couple of more boys, with one more crash. Ben, who was maybe twenty-two, walked or rather hobbled away, looking surprising chipper about it all.

     “It’s the hospital for you,” said Muggs, and Ben climbed aboard his bicycle and painfully wove his way off in that direction.

     Then it was my turn. All eyes were one, a bit of a cliché but the most pleasant feeling.

     At that point I didn’t really care what they thought. The trouble was that I knew what they were thinking and I didn’t like it one bit. For whatever reason I looked up from the crib notes in my hand, and gave the boys a theatrical grin and a big thumbs-up. Them guys laughed when I made them notes, but Muggsy never said boo…

     “Buggah me dingo!” I said, and they cracked up, only Muggsy glaring at me like he loved me and I was his only son.

     “Smarten up, Paul,” he said in a surprising gentle tone.

     That one hurt, for some reason.

     “Yes, sir,” I replied.

     Well. I must say; it was quite educational. Watching all them other guys, man, if I have to fly a dozen miles, I don’t plan on doing that. My guts flipped over a few times when he pointed at me, but then the calm came. I noticed a new sticker on the side of the engine casing, and it somehow reassured me. A little.   

     When you stand beside a plane, you can hear certain things in the engine noise, when you sit right in it, it’s pretty loud and anonymous.

     Tweaking the throttle a few times, I waved the men away from the front of the wings.

     As she idled, I pulled my mask down and gave our instructor, Mr. Alan Muggeridge, lately of a small town in the west, a serious sort of a nod.

     “Relax, you’ll live longer,” I told him in a shout.

     He didn’t smile, just nodded back.

     “Make us proud, boy,” he mouthed.

     I could barely hear him.

                                     *                                 *                                  *

     I checked the windsock, advanced the throttle gently, firmly and in a linear fashion.

     Not jerky. Feel the power and watch the little clumps of grass begin to pass by under me.

     At some point the breeze begins to tug at your clothing. Watch the speedometer.

     Hmn. I should have asked the mechanics if it was a good one. No time for thinking, things are beginning to happen. She felt light, and I wanted to hold her down till she read forty-seven on the dial, if not even a little more. But she was definitely up now.

     The wings rocked but it’s insignificant. I don’t even try to steady it, for the plane has dipped first one way then the other. But it almost corrects itself. The plane is a smooth four feet up from the grass, and so I took it back another notch on the elevator. Smoothly, yet pretty slowly she picks up more altitude. At this point I was looking at treetops about one hundred yards away, and realized the thing has made it up to about twenty five or thirty feet. I risked taking a look down and over the side.

    It was deceptive. I certainly wouldn’t like to fall from even this low height. It was also clear that I would in fact clear the trees. The speed picked up a smidgeon, and the trees passed below. The thing bucked a little. My heart skips, but no problem.

     I already knew there’s bumpy air here. That’s all the talk these days, ‘bumpy air.’

    The altimeter wasn’t even registering, so I just held the throttle tight against the stops and waited some more. The speedometer registered an even forty-eight, so I relaxed, and let just a tiny little bit of elevator out of it.

    The engine roared serenely. Sitting there, I risked a backwards glance. I wonder if them other guys felt this sense of triumph. The altimeter showed about two hundred feet, and so for a moment I studied some houses below. What an odd perspective. And how small they get so quickly. The buildings seem flat from above, a two-dimensional world.

     The plane achieved an altitude of about three hundred feet. The village was coming up. Without even really thinking about it, just a touch on the rudder pedals. Zoom directly down the full length of the High Street, past the church steeple. I wished I had more throttle, it would be nice to make more noise if possible. It was possible to see a number of people coming out of doorways as I flew by and looking up at me. Children in a laneway, under a line of trees, waved and shouted. I could see them jumping up off the grass as if to reach out and touch me.

     Glance at the clock, forty-nine knots, four hundred feet, three-fifteen p.m. The village was about two miles down the road from the gate. We walked it once or twice.

     “Focus, Tucker!”

     Yes! I felt like God up there. I knew I could do this, everyone else showed what not to do. The plane seemed strong, and the Henri Farmans weren’t known for their neck-snapping acceleration. The key thing is not to panic. To stay ahead of the plane. To anticipate that it stalls if you go too slow, or turn too tightly.

    The altimeter said six hundred, better keep an eye on that thing. Yet I had a full tank of fuel. I knew exactly where I was. There was a girl’s school up there somewhere, where the little stream went under the trees and entered the forest.

    The wind tugged and tugged at my clothes, and seemed like sandpaper on the exposed parts of my face. Half the noise came from the engine, and the other half seemed to be pure wind noise. It was a bad idea to open your mouth, it was a surprise to learn how hard it was to close it again…always the taste of castor oil, in them old planes. I have to admit I laughed when I saw all the flyboys with their white scarves, big long things hanging around their necks. I thought it was an affectation.

    It had to be experienced to be believed or even understood. It’s not like one or two of them didn’t explain it to us…but maybe we really weren’t listening. We were so young.

    The girls were out playing field hockey and I wished I could tip my hat to them, but it was too tightly strapped on. I waved and a couple of girls waved back, and I could see the matron sternly stride forward with her mouth opening up. Nothing wrong with my eyes.

    I’ve been up for what seems like ten minutes. Yet I doubt the instructor will give me heck if I bring it back in one piece.

    A gentle turn, wide, maybe a quarter of a mile wide, as I centred up on the road that led to camp. Soon the guardhouse and the gate were in view. On my left the aerodrome proper, with it’s long line of hangars, and a small and intense group of individuals standing in front of a row of aircraft just like this one.

     I gave the rudders a kick and waggled at them briefly. Hope they saw me.

     I put down and then up into it; and bucked like a steer being roped or a horse being broken. I put in left rudder and did a circle over the field, and came out of it again right over the guard houses. To be honest, I was delaying my landing for some reason.

     I just didn’t want to come down. And then to have to stand there, and watch the others fly. One at a time, will he live or will he die? Very depressing, very hard on the back and legs. Your feet just ached sometimes.

    Finally it was time to reduce the throttle. With a thrill I recognized that she responded like any other machine. She does what should be expected. She began to gently and slowly descend, and I stared at the throttle lever, trying to memorize just where it should be set.

     Might need that information tomorrow. And ‘we’ touched down about seventy yards from the class watching on the concrete. I throttled way back, there was no sense in crashing into them or the hangars. I brought her gingerly to a stop, only ten yards from where it had started.

     And that was my first flight in a Farman Shorthorn. Ultimately it turned out to be a very dangerous plane, for our side, anyway. I think the Germans should have pitched in and bought us a lot more of those trainers. They might have won the war.

     The first Canadian Division loaded up thirty thousand men and sailed across the Atlantic. Due to training accidents and a lot of sickness, we suffered ten percent casualties, more than ten percent, before we even got to France.

     The Allied flying services took about fourteen thousand casualties during the war.

     They say about eight thousand of those casualties were in training. I’m just glad I wasn’t one of them. Judging by what I saw during my own very brief little training course, the figures are accurate enough. And that was in the early part of 1916, when the war had already been going on for quite some time.

Author's Note: This was originally a part of 'Heaven Is Too Far Away,' but was cut from the book due to length considerations.

Time out of whack.

(Excerpt from interview with Dr. Ran Muthan, PH.D., Cambridge University.)

by Raphael Fitzpatrick, Journal of the Southern Ontario Philosophical Society

     Max Planck said at certain levels, for example at very short distances, or very high temperatures, under all sorts of unusual conditions; the regular laws of physics just don’t apply anymore.

     While most believe that time cannot be changed, sometimes cause and effect don’t mean much because effects sometimes happen before their causes. It is generally believed that the universe is infinite in time. It has lasted forever and will go on forever.

As a philosopher, I find myself defining my terms with ever-greater precision. So one has to ask, what is the difference between infinity and forever? Is there a difference, or are they the same thing?

     There are those who believe in creation by God in six days. Some scientists have speculated in a continuous creation. Stephen Hawking described time like an anaconda, one that has swallowed a pig. He likens us to microbes, as if humans were e. coli in the belly of the pig—no matter how far we look, no matter which direction, we will never see anything more than the inside of the belly of the pig. He even speculates that the anaconda might swallow several pigs in succession, each of them traveling down the body of the serpent. It has been speculated that time might run backwards if and when the universe begins to contract back to its point of origin, a singularity.

     No matter what you know about a system today, you have no way of predicting what it will be like tomorrow.

     Was the universe created by vacuum fluctuations, where particles appear out of nowhere, and then subside, and energies go back to a zero state, with the universe going on unchanged? These particles have been described as ‘temporary,’ which in this case can last anything up to 10 to the power of 66 hours.

     Some speculate there are multiple dimensions in space-time. My favorite is the fifth dimension, but some believe there are nine, eleven, or even twenty-six dimensions, and in theory the likelihood is that there are an infinite number of dimensions…and yet we simply don’t know how or where to look for them.

     If a particle appears from ‘nowhere,’ and then disappears again, where did it come from? Where did it go to? Did it come from ‘null-space?’

     There is no such thing as empty space. It has been supposed there is some kind of universal frame, a vector rigging field which pervades all of space. The term ‘neo-ether’ has been used to describe the invisible something that fills the universe. We have to accept the notion that something exists everywhere. Some kinds of data remain forever unknown, for example the proofs of the existence of God. The ontological argument is that God cannot be proven not to exist, so therefore He must exist.

     If you put a slot in a bead, and make a Moebius strip out of paper, and put a dot of ink on the bead, and then thread the bead onto the strip, you will note that after one revolution the bead is rotated 180 degrees. In order for the bead to return to its original position and orientation, it must go twice around the loop. A geometric circle has 360 degrees. For an electron it apparently has 720 degrees. In this case the circle is a two-dimensional abstraction that has many, or even infinite dimensions rotating around its radius…at least that’s what I say.

     A force is that which makes things do things. There are so far only four known forces in the universe. These are the electrical, of which magnetism is a manifestation, then there is gravitation, which is different from magnetism. Then there are the weak and strong nuclear forces. It is theorized that all these forces existed as one super-force in 'Planck time’ at the moment of creation, which is described in event terms at something like 10 to the minus 54 seconds after the Big Bang. If all four forces evolved from the ‘first force,’ what is the likelihood that further evolution will occur? Perhaps we are witnessing such an event in our lifetimes. Time has often been described as the fourth dimension. Objects have height, width, and depth, and exist over a period of time. But

 t
his is either an assumption, or perhaps it is simply dead wrong.

     The temporal force may be considered the fifth force discovered thus far in the universe. It is speculated that another force exists in the universe, one that cannot be measured or quantified in any way. It has been called ‘God’s Love,’ for want of a better term.

    Much effort has been expended in the search for the so-called ‘God Particles,’ but to no avail. As a scientist and a philosopher, I have no problem with the notion that God created the Universe, but I doubt if it can be proven except anecdotally.

     With the Planck force, there would be more energy than you can safely imagine.

     Wormholes have been described and accepted theoretically by scientists. They are about 10 to the minus 33 centimeters in diameter, with a duration of 10 to the minus 43 seconds. You can create a wormhole by heating a volume of space to 10 to the 27^th degrees Kelvin or compressing some matter down to the black hole or neutron star densities. Don’t try this at home.

     Heisenberg stated the ‘uncertainty principle.’ It is a statement of probabilities, and uncertainties. You know the electron must be there, but you can never say where it will be at any given point in time.

     According to the Feynham diagrams, when a particle goes from point A to point B, it splits into two and one of them must being going into a separate universe. Essentially what he’s saying is that a particle can be in two places at once—but where?

     A diagram of all possible paths the particle may take looks like a girl’s braid of hair.

Just as when you sprinkle iron filings around a magnet, revealing magnetic lines of force, it has been postulated that there are temporal lines of force.

     If you follow the lines of force—i.e. timelines, no problem. If you cross the temporal lines of force, energy builds up and a puncture is made in the fabric of time. At some point there is too great an imbalance in the system, but reality heals the wounds made in itself.

     An object crossing time lines builds up potential as it moves. The pull of an object snapping back to its own time would release a huge amount of energy in the space-time continuum or matrix. Hence the mass limitations, which permits only very small objects such as the particles mentioned in the vacuum fluctuations part of our theory to elude the laws of space and time conservation. Time is subjective, perhaps even imaginary.

     Time is closely linked to our perception of it, although many would tell you ‘there is only one 

moment’ as a fundamental truth. This is ‘the past is gone, the future never gets here’ line of thought. Perception is reality, and truth very often depends on who you ask—or who is asking. An acceleration is a force measured over time—therefore time must exist—or you can’t actually have an acceleration. Is it the same time all over the universe? Or the further away from the singularity you go, is it earlier? Or later?

     If you burn 100g of matter, you may well end up with 10g of ash, and release 90g of gasses, which should be confirmed by Avogadro’s Law. If you put 100 Newtons of energy into a system, you shouldn’t get any more than 100 Newtons out of it. A body at rest tends to remain at rest unless some external force acts upon it. A body in motion tends to remain in motion unless some external force acts upon it. This is the Conservation of Momentum.

     Does time follow the laws of conservation? One might assume that it does, however, if we know anything at all about the universe, is that ‘anything is possible.’ If time exists in the form of quanta, then it may be likened to a dotted line. In the gaps, the norms of physical and chemical laws may not apply.

     This may be written as a corollary of Murphy’s Law. “If anything can happen, it probably will eventually,” in a universe where nothing is impossible. If we believe that the universe sprang forth from a singularity, either time existed before it, or it was created at that moment. Also, was space created at this time? Or did it exist previously, therefore giving the new universe somewhere to expand into?

     If time sprang forth from the singularity, there is no such thing as a parallel universe.

They must all be on a slight angle from each other. There might be an infinite number of alternate universes. Each of these would be reality to an observer encapsulated within them. Incidentally, if there were two singularities, then two time-lines might cross or intersect. This would allow crossing from one time line to another, but only theoretically.

I can’t prove that. My instinct tells me there would be paradoxes that are irreconcilable.

Privatization and Sponsorship.

Dear editor;

     Sometimes, when the cost seems a little too much to bear, you might need is some sponsorship.  If the trend towards privatization is to be successful, it must be employed across the board.

     Sammy’s Police Services, Achmed’s Fire Protection (2004) Ltd; Bob and Doug’s Welfare Office. Hank’s Jail, Acme Hospitals Inc. RJR-Macdonald Cancer Clinics, Timmy’s Soup Kitchen. (Poor people could drive through in their 4X4’s.)  McDonald’s Elementary Schools. Coca-Cola emblazoned on the tail fins of CF-18’s.

     Bids for cabinet positions are now being tendered. And they’ll be wearing Nascar-type coveralls splattered with sponsor’s patches.

     “Join the Intel/Pentium Navy and see the world.”

     Oh, yeah, eh, I hear the Royal Bank/Kia Canada/NAPA Auto Parts/ Gov.Can.Com Legislative Session will be running this spring. Looks like we got us a game. How can you tell when a politician is lying?

     Their lips move.

     And what if smart bombs demand better contractual conditions? Chrome tail fins and a racing stripe, a retirement plan? It’s the least we can do for them, if they agree to carry our corporate logo.  Hey: a new career path might open up: ‘Unexploded Bomb Negotiator.’

     “Hey, little buddy…you know you want to do this…it’s your destiny…of course you’re scared…who wouldn’t be…”

     If all them little drone aircraft attempt to bargain collectively for bigger engines, higher octane fuel; let’s label them “terrorists” and shoot ‘em down ourselves. We created ‘em, you know.

     Don’t ask what you can do for your country. Just go to Disneyland, spend lotsa money. War is heck, eh?

     But if we can consume stuff faster than everyone else, we win.  And we had a lot of spare bombs laying around gathering dust. No good to anyone.  But I have other worries, too.

     What about that Canadian cabinet minister, boasted to the microphones, “We broke the secret Afghan code!” (This was some time ago. –ed.)

     It’s called, ‘Sanskrit,’ buddy. Here, this stone tablet holds an important clue. Take it firmly in both hands and whack! Yourself in the freaking head with it. Now  promise me you’ll never, ever, ever tell anyone you broke the secret code…if you can remember.

     It wouldn’t confuse most of us if the cop cars had ‘Labatt’s’ or ‘Jimmy Dean Smoked Sausage’ painted on the doors and hood. (Promise you won’t monkey with the restrictor plate. That’s cheatin’.) Guess if we wanted to save money real bad, we could always try a little harder. There are lots of ways to save money. Put a couple pounds more air pressure in the tires.

     Clean some of the useless junk out of the vehicle.  There’s never any air in the spare so why carry it around?

     When you search someone’s vehicle, keep all the winning tabs – you know,  like…winning tabs…?                           

     Someone said they didn’t want to fight over oil. I got an idea. Why don’t we fight over something sensible…like religion? 

     Like that Noah guy coming down the mountain: “I bring to you direct from God Himself these Fifteen (Kersmash!) Oops! I mean Ten Commandments…”

     It caused a big controversy.

Moses and the Ten Commandments. Mel Brooks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAtRCJIqnk