fiction: gravitational hernia

"There is a point at which space itself ruptures, and, when it does, it hurts like a motherfucker." 

The Howling Universe hadn't changed in several weeks. The quote, from Clacker's thesis, wanders like a kitten back to the fur and warmth of it's copyright. There were and are cosmic pains, comparable to human experience, but traumatic to celestial horseshit. Planets arcing around the sun get bruised, like an over-ripe peach. Space in which the planets roam is subject to ordinary wear and tear. As when the ball sack ruptures, and someone has to get surgery and wear a truss. The Earth itself, invisible to it's residents, has it's terrestrial ass in a sling. 

At the same time that a person may be overwhelmed with the power and beauty, he/she may be getting bored to suicide fielding resistance to a harmless train of thought, or to fair enough hope of landing a paycheck. It isn't enough to notice that certain honey bees would look nice in a tiny gaberdine business suit, one has to submit a cartoon that adequately proves people enjoy looking at silly pictures of a conjecture. A man has to look philanthropic by installing a library in his apartment. 

Irwin Clacker would be retiring in the same apartment he had been living in since Cedar Avenue changed from charming to hellishly obnoxious. The shift from worker to retiree will probably weigh in among other happenings much the way yellow jackets look cute when drawn in caricature. Clacker was still a person of hard science, and was worse for wear. Years of friction wore thin the patent leather bag that holds our secrets. His secrets, your secrets, too, assuming his work isn't completely a load of shit. Unless Clacker turns out to be a complete asshole, his work will help people to better love themselves, and in turn, everyone else. 

It is no longer stylish to carry a hard shell brief case. Clacker stopped wearing a neck tie to work in 1981, and it seemed like science itself had changed. It has. 

Irwin Clacker is facing a forced retirement from the state college, and he thinks he still has it in him to make hay out of his work, The Howling Universe. His pension should carry him to his expiration date. He'd fallen out with youth in the 1990s. By 9/11, he had become a tolerated relic in his department at school. Soon he would be the exact same person, by another name. For now, people should be content in accepting that his bullshit has some type of merit, and gears and wires inside it work exactly the same, in or out of school.