Cal Harding

When I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts and wires hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that tenuous hold of safety and of substance, left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear. How tightly should one hold onto life? How loosely give it rein? What gain was there for such a risk? I would have to pay in money for hurling my body into space. There would be no crowd to watch and applaud my landing. Nor was there any scientific objective to be gained. No, there was deeper reason for wanting to jump, a desire I could not explain.

Imagine you have two balls. These balls really don't want to touch each other but if you put a lot of energy into forcing them to, they explode releasing tons of energy.

This is called nuclear fusion. The balls are certain atoms and the energy is usually extremely high temperatures(millions of degrees). Instead of making the two atoms touch you are combining them into one larger atom. This process is what the sun is doing to create all of its energy.

Cold fusion is the term for a Nuclear Fusion reaction that can be done at a relatively cooler temperature and other conditions that we can create on earth. Although currently there is no cold fusion technique that produces more energy than what is required to sustain the reaction, Emc2 is currently working on a Polywell fusor that seems to produce more energy than it consumes. It is currently being funded by the Navy.

I'm pretty sure, though, that they wouldn't want to be associated with the term cold fusion, owing to its pseudoscientific stigma.

Let's say you cut a piece of stainless steel in half with a magic knife that maintains the structure of all the atoms but just separates them. That would be an ideal cut; just breaking the chemical bonds that hold the material together. Now, what if you tried to put it back together a few minutes later? Somewhat surprisingly, the pieces wouldn't stick together. The reason is that the surfaces of many materials are different from the bulk material on the inside. In the case of stainless steel, the surface gets oxidized by the atmosphere to make a layer of iron oxide a few atoms thick. This prevents the surfaces from making a perfect match again.

So why does this happen? There are two reasons, really. The first is that oxygen will react with pretty much anything it can get its hands on. It makes especially strong bonds with iron. The second is that when you break a bond, you're actually adding energy to the atoms, and this energy can be used to facilitate a chemical reaction with something else that they come in contact with.

Now you decide to get clever and do this same experiment in space, or a good vacuum chamber. If you still use your magic knife so that there is no grain (crystal lattice, really) mismatch when you put your pieces back together, they should stick.

This phenomenon of separate two pieces of metal stick together does happen in our atmosphere, especially with stainless steel. It's usually not a good idea to use stainless steel screws to hold together something made of stainless steel. If you screw it in really tight, you can scratch off the protective layer of iron oxide on the surfaces, exposing the pure metal underneath, which can then, over time, form new metal-metal bonds. This process is called galling.

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Kurt Gödel found a solution to Einstein's equations for General Relativity where time is meaningless, because every point in spacetime can access every other point in spacetime through Closed Timelike Curves.

In other words, he found a solution to Einstein's equation where you can trivially time travel to any point in history from any point in space, a clear violation of Einstein (and most every other physicist's) views on the nature of time.

It can be defined as follows:




where ω is a nonzero real constant, which turns out to be the angular velocity, as measured by a nonspinning observer riding any one of the arbitrary points.

Gödel never explained how he found his solution, but there are many possible derivations. Let's see one here:


Start with a simple frame in a cylindrical type chart, featuring two undetermined functions of the radial coordinate:

I've pumped enough Quetiapine into myself to kill you three times over, but you're still here. Still mocking me with your lingering and your deadbelly comminations.

Rest assured, your days are numbered. I will kill you, one way or the other.

Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory was created by Adolf and Rudolf, two brothers. They specialized in track/athletic spikes. They became estranged during the rise of Hitler, during and after the war, and, as a result of this, Rudolf left the company and Adi renamed the company after his own nickname: Adi-das. His brother went across town and started a new shoe company known to us as Puma.

In 2009, both companies decided to bury the hatchet by playing a friendly game of soccer football to end the 60-year rift. The match took place between workers from both companies within the framework of the “Peace One Day” initiative, an annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence.

The ensuing riot killed 3 and injured 18.

Change fucking everything.

Look at your life; it's not a buildup, it's a countdown. You're in a doped up antipsychotic haze which you're trying to pass off as a life. Are you suicidal? No, but you are busy killing yourself through crimes of omission. But take heart: only through disaster can we be truly resurrected.

An exploding universe contains nothing but the remnants of what could have been, but is not. Everything else is wasted potential and wasted matter. Nothing is quite as sublime as an unrealised ideal.

Are you socially isolating yourself? No? Is what you have any better? Look at the people with whom you surround yourself. Are they people worth emulating? No? Then why are they still there? To be fully couched in the comfort of a friend is a mode of existence with severe implications. To please you perfectly, she must understand you perfectly. Thus you cannot defy her expectations or escape her reach. Her benevolence has circumscribed you, and your life's achievements will not reach beyond the map she has drawn.

Are you in a job you can't stand but are too afraid to leave? At the end of every day, is the overarching question, "Was this day a complete waste?" Nothing is ever solved when the day is over, but nothing matters.

Take a long, hard look at your life, your routines, your peers, your job, your family. Are they yours, or are you theirs? You need an emotional response of some type. Something to remind the world - and yourself - that you are still, despite everything, a human being. It's easy to cry when you realise that everyone you love will reject you or die. This is therapy. Tears are salvation. Pain is resurrection. A little suffering is good for the soul.

Drive off a cliff, fuck someone, go on a shooting spree, do anything, but don't just sit there with a stupid, self-satisfied smirk on your face waiting for the clock to run out. What are you? Nothing. You just are. The cancer you don't have is everywhere now.

Change fucking everything.

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

Somewhere, parently, in the ginnandgo gap in between antediluvious and annadominant; the axenwise cleft in the dontmind; the gap in between you and me; is there found a puir spring of scribicide.

one by one we're all becoming shadows, and i will die and you will die and we will all die and even the stars will fade out in time. tis as human a story as paper could carry well, but the cluekey to the worldroom is the honeying of the lune: love. the waxing of the moon above. uncertain comets chancedrifting into one another, exploding like spiders across the stars. together. transient as the pure cold light in the sky: from round to crescent from crescent to round they range.

Parked so dark by her kindlelight, I'm frisqued by her frasques and her prytty phyrrique. This mischievmiss burns an incandescending indigonation; a feroxysm in the uncorked cor.

For those of you who actually read my blog (bless your hearts), you've no doubt come to accept me as an eccentric individual at the best of times. Unfortunately recent events have ascribed a disturbing aesculapian dimension to it.

I've had what most would not be loathe to describe as a nightmare month: I've lost my father; the very next day I was involved in a car accident; a week later a childhood friend died under violent circumstances; and a little over a week before the writing of this post one of my best friends took her own life. All of these calamities coupled with the typical difficulties associated with a high-stress line of work have most recently led me down a dark path.

I have experienced symptoms associated with psychtotic mental disorders: visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, extreme paranoia, etc. The nature of these symptoms has varied from benign (voices commenting dully on my actions) to malignant (refusal to eat due to a delusional fear of being poisoned). I was passed from doctor to doctor and eventually made my way to a psychiatrist who, upon reviewing my medical and psychological history, diagnosed me with schizophrenia.

According to the physician in question, the condition has most likely been with me for a long time - possibly years - but due to its mildness has remained largely asymptomatic (or, at least, with symptoms mild enough that they cause little distress and are easily managed without ever triggering the urge to seek professional help).

Seeing as the condition has been wildly exacerbated by my recent prolonged period of intense stress, the headshrinker has opted temporarily to put me on a course of strong tranquilizers (benzodiazepine) in order to determine whether a relief in stress may bring about a relief in the psychotic symptoms. Unfortunately symptoms have persisted since entering into this course of treatment, so I will almost certainly end up on a chronic course of antipsychotics and intensive psychotherapy.

The status quo has obviously compelled me to do some reading which has alleviated some of the myths surrounding the illness, which - in turn - has made me a great deal less fearful and anxious about the entire situation.

Attaining a higher state of consciousness is a bête noire for the unready; regressing to a former state of being surpassing our occupied reality. We give it labels because we're haughty, but the awakening of the formerly abandoned recesses of the mind expedites some species of emendation in us. Fear is a natural reaction to being well adjusted in a profoundly sick society.

 Don't be afraid. You're regressing to a primative but desirable state of being, akin to the amorphous mass of consciousness which predates the ostensibly objective reality which you choose to occupy.

We loved each other so much that sometimes it hurt, even when we were close. I wanted to be her and she wanted to be me. Sex never felt complete, and afterwards we talked carelessly about easy subjects to avoid discussing the ache that bruised us both. So one day, in the kitchen, she cut me and I cut her; gently, slowly, too easily. It was the knife we used for onions and our tears were painful but expectant. We dripped the blood into coffee mugs, then bandaged up and went to bed. We fucked and there were stars but we saw different constellations.
The next day the blood was dry and rusty in the mugs. We scraped it diligently onto sheets of paper. We looked at each other silently and lowered our heads to snort each other's dust. Afterwards we both carried a pouch of powdered blood, and when we were low and apart we would retire to a restroom and sniff, sniff, sniff.
Oh my darling, we went on and on. Our blood was there always, red and viscous, burnt ochre and blowaway. My blood in your nasal membranes, filtering into your capillaries, finding its inexorable way to your heart. Your blood. My nose. My heart. We belonged to each other and we had made our love tangible, real; something that could be weighed and consumed, taken and enjoyed.
It wasn't a surprise when we used the scalpel to shave flesh from each other's upper arms. We dried the flesh, though it was difficult to dessicate it completely. We used the airing cupboard. The powdered flesh was better ; cocaine to blood's speed.
Did it end badly? Did we go too far? Was our love replaced or deleted by want or need? In losing ourselves in each other did we lose the essence in ourselves that the other loved? Did time simply bore us with its slow wearing-down? I have no answers to any of those questions. But now, sitting here in the kitchen, I admit I am scared of the knife, that I can't dig deeply enough to draw blood, that I will have nothing in the morning but red, raised scratches on my arm. I don't want her to cut me.
Did we kill each other, or are we living happily; but only as happily as you are?

Like most people of the time, I find myself falling into love to the soundtrack of famine and war. The object of my adulation is bequeathed a recondite beauty. A transcendant presence. Oddly, she never looks directly at me. Skittish. Uncertain. Scared. Occasionally I catch glimpses of her bare soul through a reflection of a reflection, but her reckless aloofness drowns me in the realisation that my fault, my failure, is not in my passions, but in my lack of control of them.

If only she could let go. Dive into absolution from the weight which fastens her gaze to the safety of her feet. If only she would look up, I imagine she'd see the scattered evening sky reflected in my dark pupils.

Has this happened yet? No. Will it? I don't know.

Are you worried? Because I'm not.

In today's glorious world of mobile computing and smartphones, the line which separates "mobile devices" from actual computers is becoming increasingly blurred and will soon disappear entirely.

Many individuals have taken to using their smartphones as broadband connections for other devices such as laptops and netbooks in a process commonly known as "tethering". As far as convenience goes, the benefits are pretty clear: a single, portable Internet access point for use with whichever device is most readily available at the time.

Unfortunately many providers in various countries have taken steps to either reduce or profit from this activity by either making tethering a violation of their terms of service, or offering a separate "tethering package" - which essentially amounts to making you pay an additional service overhead whenever you want to use your phone as a modem for another device.

Legality and ethics aside, this article isn't meant to focus on the why, but rather on the how. Specifically, how can they tell you're tethering, and what can be done to circumvent it? We'll approach these one at a time.

1. Click on Start and Run (or Search) and type "regedit" to open the Windows registry editor.
2. Navigate to the following registry key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
3. In the right-hand pane, right-click and select "New - DWORD (32-bit value)" and set its name to "DefaultTTL" and its value to anything between 0 and 255.

So a friend and I were bored the other day and played some Jenga. After what seemed like literally minutes, we got bored and gave up, at which point I completed construction on a monument that would make the Druids themselves weep: Jenga-henge.

Have you noticed how everyone and their mother claims photography as a hobby nowadays? Do you know why? I'll cut right through the bullshit: because it's easy.

Okay, that's a bit of an explosive statement; good photography is everything but easy, in much the same way that good abstract expressionism is - I would imagine - extremely fucking difficult to pull off, but that doesn't stop anyone capable of projectile defecating paint from calling themselves an "artist".

Recently I was asked by a client to develop a load balancing solution over two of their ADSL lines, but only for http traffic, and only for specific users. Sounds like a pain in the ass, right? Well, it was.

Essentially they've got four ADSL links:

• eth0: 111.111.111.111 (main uncapped line)
• eth1: 100.100.100.11
• eth2: 100.100.100.22
• eth3: 100.100.100.33

So, earlier today my friend and I end up talking over coffee about some fond childhood shows. He mentions an old show broadcast for a short time here during the 80s, but originally from the early 70s I think. It was called Candle Cove, and was about a girl who's friends with imaginary pirates (played by puppets) with an incredibly creepy villain. I'm talking the stuff of nightmares, here. Unbelievable what they passed off as kids shows back then, but I digress.

What triggered my curiosity - and nostalgia - was when he mentioned that it gave him strange recurring dreams. I was too young to remember exactly - so maybe it's just a false memory brought up by the conversation - but I'm rather sure the show gave me nightmares as well. The last episode in particular was, well, odd.

I looked into it, and I've never really experienced a comparable level of being both nostalgic and freaked out at the same time.

After scouring the net for a while, I came across a few articles on the show, including the following discussion taken from a forum thread from about four or five years ago:

Candle Cove
NetNostalgia Forum - Television (local)

Skyshale033
Subject: Candle Cove local kid's show?
Does anyone remember this kid's show? It was called Candle Cove and I must have been 6 or 7, I never found reference to it anywhere so I think it was on a local station around 1971 or 1972. I lived in Ironton at the time. I don't remember which station, but I do remember it was on at a weird time, like 4:00 PM.

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
it seems really familiar to me.....i grew up outside of ashland and was 9 yrs old in 72. candle cov...wasit about pirates? i remember a pirate marionete at the mouth of a cave talking to a little girl

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
YES! Okay I'm not crazy! I remember Pirate Percy. I was always kind of scared of him. He looked like he was built from parts of other dolls, real low-budget. His head was an old porcelain baby doll, looked like an antique that didn't belong on the body. I don't remember what station this was! I don't think it was WTSF though.

Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
Sorry to ressurect this old thread but I know exactly what show you mean, Skyshale. I think Candle Cove ran for only a couple months in '71, not '72. I was 12 and I watched it a few times with my brother. It was channel 58, whatever station that was. My mom would let me switch to it after the news- Let me see what I remember.
It took place in Candle cove, and it was about a little girl who imagined herself to be friends with pirates. The pirate ship was called the Laughingstock, and Pirate Percy wasn't a very good pirate because he got scared too easily. And there was calliope music constantly playing. Don't remember the girl's name. Janice or Jade or something. Think it was Janice.

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
Thank you Jaren!!! Memories flooded back when you mentioned the Laughingstock and channel 58. I remember the bow of the ship was a wooden smiling face, with the lower jaw submerged. It looked like it was swallowing the sea and it had that awful Ed Wynn voice and laugh. I especially remember how jarring it was when they switched from the wooden/plastic model, to the foam puppet version of the head that talked.

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
ha ha i remember now too. :) do you remember this part skyshale: "you have...to go...INSIDE"

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
Ugh mike, I got a chill reading that. Yes I remember. That's what the ship always told Percy when there was a spooky place he had to go in, like a cave or a dark room where the treasure was. And the camera would push in on Laughingstock's face with each pause. YOU HAVE... TO GO... INSIDE. With his two eyes askew and that flopping foam jaw and the fishing line that opened and closed it. Ugh. It just looked so cheap and awful.
You guys remember the villain? He had a face that was just a handlebar mustache above really tall, narrow teeth.

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
i honestly, honestly thought the villain was pirate percy- i was about 5 when this show was on. nightmare fuel.

Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
That wasn't the villain, the puppet with the mustache. That was the villain's sidekick, Horace Horrible. He had a monocle too, but it was on top of the mustache. I used to think that meant he had only one eye. But yeah, the villain was another marionette. The Skin-Taker. I can't believe what they let us watch back then.

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
jesus h. christ, the skin taker. what kind of a kids show were we watching? i seriously could not look at the screen when the skin taker showed up. he just descended out of nowhere on his strings, just a dirty skeleton wearing that brown top hat and cape. and his glass eyes that were too big for his skull. christ almighty.

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
Wasn't his top hat and cloak all sewn up crazily? Was that supposed to be children's skin??

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
yeah i think so. rememer his mouth didn't open and close, his jaw just slid back and foth. i remember the little girl said "why does your mouth move like that" and the skin-taker didn't look at the girl but at the camera and said "TO GRIND YOUR SKIN"

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
I'm so relieved that other people remember this terrible show! I used to have this awful memory, a bad dream I had where the opening jingle ended, the show faded in from black, and all the characters were there, but the camera was just cutting to each of their faces, and they were just screaming, and the puppets and marionettes were flailing spastically, and just all screaming, screaming- The girl was just moaning and crying like she had been through hours of this- I woke up many times from that nightmare- I used to wet the bed when I had

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
i don't think that was a dream. i remember that. i remember that was an episode.

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
No no no, not possible. There was no plot or anything, I mean literally just standing in place crying and screaming for the whole show.

kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
maybe i'm manufacturing the memory because you said that, but i swear to god i remember seeing what you described. they just screamed.

Jaren 2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
Oh God. Yes. The little girl, Janice, I remember seeing her shake. And the Skin-Taker screaming through his gnashing teeth, his jaw careening so wildly I thought it would come off its wire hinges. I turned it off and it was the last time I watched. I ran to tell my brother and we didn't have the courage to turn it back on.

mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid's show?
i visited my mom today at the nursing home. i asked her about when i was littel in the early 70s, when i was 8 or 9 and if she remebered a kid's show, candle cove. she said she was suprised i could remember that and i asked why, and she said "because i used to think it was so strange that you said 'i'm gona go watch candle cove now mom' and then you would tune the tv to static and juts watch dead air for 30 minutes. you had a big imagination with your little pirate show."


EDIT:
Thanks to the wonders of the communication age, I was able to find a couple of episodes online.

Here is the infamous last episode... I told you it was, erm, odd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2h5ym6ZlVY

Here's another episode from the show... the part where he talks about "to grind your skin" really creeped (creeps) me out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjP6eVDjuIM

"That bitch. That fuckin bitch."

"Easy now, Mr. Coetzee," Clinton said, "save it for your lawyer. Hmm... Assuming of course that's where you want to go with this."

"Yes, yes of course," Coetzee replied, rifling through a stack of grainy black-and-white photographs of shadowy figures like thick tendrils of smoke from some unseen cigarette, with exciting curves an lurid coils. At least one of the photographs indisputably showed the face of Mrs. Coetzee, and at least one showed the face of an attractive young man who was, in every respect, not Mr. Coetzee.

"You know," Coetzee continued, "with this... She won't see a bloody penny."

The harsh rain had returned to the region. Persistently it pattered upon the awning outside the window. The shine of an indifferent sun barely broke through endless ashen clouds and suffused the room in a dusky half-light. Clinton's office was small and unstately; it had been a general practitioner's office before the inexorable tide of conurbation had turned a formerly pleasant Durban neighbourhood into a run-down cog in the city-machine. Those old ghosts were gone now, but the air the oak walls breathed still sometimes smelled of ether and stale yesterdays. Clinton's desk was spartan save his stationary, telephone, an overflowing ashtray, and a framed picture of his deceased son Andrew. The room was bedecked with a cabinet at the far end. It housed various types of liquor, and the drawers below contained papers and files with notes on past clients. The wall behind Clinton's desk was chequered with framed photographs and awards from his career with the South African Police. Among them a diploma for attaining the rank of Lieutenant, a certificate for outstanding service in the Criminal Investigation Department, and a photograph of him shaking hands with former cabinet minister Chris Heunis, both smiling broadly. The latter taken after the successful resolution of a corporate blackmail case in the town of Somerset West to where Heunis later retired. Clinton did not display these documents out of pride, but rather as attestations to his ability. Advertisements. Although someone hiring a private investigator would be allayed to see that he is, at least by nature, a family man, that is not why Clinton kept the picture of Andrew on his desk.

"Forgive me for saying so," Clinton said as he rose out of his chair and walked around the desk past Coetzee towards the cabinet, " but it sounds like you've had this idea for a while. Leaving your wife, I mean."

"I'll be honest with you, Mr. Durant-"

"'Clint,' please. We've been over this before."

"Hrm. Clint," Coetzee continued without swiveling in his chair to make eye contact. Speaking as though Clinton were still sitting across from him, "As you know I've been, ah... suspecting... my wife for a number of months now. We've, well, been having problems for a long time."

"So what's your poison, Mr. Coetzee?"

"What?" Coetzee turned to look at Clinton.

"A drink. Can I pour you a drink?"

"Ah. Hmm, I shouldn't drink, really."

"Oh, come. It's almost five o'clock, and we're discussing a pretty sensitive personal matter. Some bourbon, maybe?"

"Well," Coetzee paused for a moment in indecision, "Scotch, if you have."

"Coming right up." Clinton reached into the cabinet toward an expensive bottle of Glenfiddich eighteen-year-old single malt before pausing, then reached past it for a comparatively cheap bottle of blended Famous Grouse. He poured a shot into a tumbler and handed it to Coetzee before pouring himself a Jim Beam on the rocks. Coetzee took a big sip and wiped his moustache with a handkerchief.

"As I was saying," he continued, "Gerda and I have been having problems for a long time."

"Since before you suspected her of... being unfaithful... or do you think it's the other way around? That she felt distrusted, pushed away, forced into the arms of another man, as they say."

Coetzee's eyes seemed to scan his brow from the inside as he mulled what Clinton had said. "No, I... Okay, we've had problems before I suspected her of..."

"Of cheating."

"Of cheating. Things have been cold between us for months. I tried everything, but... you know."

Clinton pretended to be interested as he sipped his bourbon while sitting on the desk near Coetzee. He was convincing. "She didn't want you to try?"

"Yes, basically. It was like she gave up. Like she wanted our marriage to end but didn't want to make a move herself," Coetzee said.

"How many months?"

"What?"

"Well, you said that things've been cold between you for months. You've suspected her of infidelity for maybe half that time, and you only came to me a week ago. So how many months have things been cold?"

"Oh, well, since December I think."

"You think?"

"Uh, yes. You see, we... Gerda, the kids and I... we normally go to my brother's farm near Stellenbosch over Christmas. She usually loves the trip. And the farm. Last year, however... she didn't seem all that interested. Disappointed, almost. That's when I first picked up on it, really. That things have changed."

"I see," Clinton said as he got up off the desk and sat down again at his proper place in the chair behind it. "Mr. Coetzee, it is my belief that your wife has been having affairs since at least December."

"Affairs? You're saying more than one?"

"You didn't really think this was the first time, did you?"

"Well, I-"

"Look," Clinton interrupted, "I took these photographs less than a week ago. Only a day after you  first came to see me. If you recall, we agreed to the night when she usually goes to her Bridge game."

"That's right. Tuesday."

"Tuesday. And you know what I saw on Tuesday? This." He picked up the photographs Coetzee had been rifling through earlier and tossed them back onto the desk closer to Coetzee.

"I'm not sure I follow."

"On the first night night I tailed her, on her very first night by herself since you came to see me, she slept with another man. Now, Mr. Coetzee, I would not presume to know how your wife conducts herself in the bedroom, but in my experience a woman does not behave that way and do those things with a man she's been seeing for at least three months. There's novelty in those pictures. Passion. This guy she was with... he's new to her."

Coetzee fidgeted with his hands, downed the last of his Scotch and wiped his brow with the handkerchief. "I don't think I understand, Clint. What you're saying... about it being passionate and new... it doesn't fit with what you said about her being unfaithful for months. How can you be so sure it's been going on that long? Are you really saying there's been more than one man?"

"I'm saying that, yes." Clinton stroked his chin, staring at Coetzee, "How long has your wife been having her weekly Bridge game?"

Coetzee had a look of shocked revelation on his face.

"If I were a gambler, Mr. Coetzee, I'd wager your wife has never played a game of Bridge in her life."

"Fuckin bitch."

Clinton got up from his chair and walked over to Coetzee. "Look," he said as he amicably handed Coetzee his coat, "this is all a lot to take in. Bad decisions were never made on a cool head, so why don't you take some time to think about it? Talk things over with your wife before rushing into something you may regret. And if you want me to follow her around again and take some more pictures, I'll do that for you."

"Thank you, Mr. Durant- ah, Clint," Coetzee smiled, "but I don't think she can say anything to change my mind at this stage. God knows, she can only make things worse. If that's even possible. No. No, these pictures are more than my lawyer'll need. My mind's made up. As I've said, she won't see a penny of my money."

Clinton led Coetzee out of  his office and into the small, adjacent reception area where his elderly secretary, Gwen Lawson, was already putting on her sweater and preparing to go home. "Speaking of pennies," Clinton forced a chuckle, "when can I expect you to settle your account for services rendered?"

"I'll send you a cheque at the end of the month. Is that in order?"

"Perfectly in order, Mr. Coetzee. Have a nice evening and try not to think too hard. That's what mornings are for. If you need anything else... well, you have my card." he said as he ushered Coetzee towards the front door.

Coetzee greeted Clinton and Gwen, picked up his umbrella from next to the door and opened it as he went out to his car. Clinton closed the door quickly to keep the rain out.

"It sounds like we won't be seeing him again," Gwen said.

"No, Gwen, I don't think we will. But we'll be seeing his money," he said with a wink.

She whimpers. She floats in the darkness like a majestic thing, this little girl of thin frame. The plain white dress she wears, torn into a mere tattered rag, contrasting against her black skin and reflecting the light of some moon to give her the semblance of an angel.

She drifts in space among a myriad of stars that seems to go on forever in every direction. Each one nothing more than a speck of light on an endless blanket of darkness, but each one a massive and powerful furnace, undulating with prominences, roaring silently with activity. Each one of those countless specks of light representing a source of life to countless civilizations upon countless worlds; some, unimaginably different; some, not unlike our own with joy and sorrow and day and night and love and hate and kindness and cruelty and life and death.

As she breathes, the universe breathes. As her heart beats, so, too, does reality oscillate itself into existence in a constant unfolding, like an eternally blooming lotus blossom.

All of her days until now have been filled with these things: joy and sorrow and day and night and love and hate and kindness and cruelty and life, but now nothing exists but this moment. The beauty and the peace of it all have consumed her entirely, and no thoughts or memories traverse her mind other than awe at the magnificence of this spectacle. Drifting amid the vastness of space, the empty, silent coldness embracing her, she keeps her focus on only this moment.

She whimpers. She exhales one final time. The cold embrace has swallowed her. With her last breath she destroys the universe. As her heart stops, so does the endless dance of creation. As her vision turns to blackness, so all that was, and is, and shall be disappears into a void so striking in its emptiness that it is almost tangible.

The seemingly endless vignette of stars in which she drifts is a mere reflection on the surface of a lake. A lake so calm and still that it is like a mirror. A lake on which the little girl of thin frame with the torn white dress floats motionless. A lake in the African wilderness, many kilometers from civilization. The cold embrace - not of space, but of the water - has mercifully kept the pain of her wounds from her mind, and the night has mercifully kept from her vision the red tinge of the water around her. Her last moments were calm, at least. The cold and the dark her only comforts.