The Watch On Venus
(Part Three)
Time, that dreadful behemoth,
Still tramples all in his
wake,
Is
as potent in his dotage,
As
ever he was in the full flower
Of
his youth, back when the world was young,
When everything was yet unnamed,
a marvel.
In
truth, we never 'made' Time to do anything,
Time was there all along,
ubiquitous, bored,
Waiting
for naught, hand-in-glove with Entropy,
Equally bored, but mischevious
in his ways.
Were
it not for Entropy, nothing would need naming,
For nothing would change.
Time does not ravage, Entropy does.
There. We gave names to Time
and Entropy seperately,
As
if it mattered. It's Time who sends my cup to the floor,
But Entropy who rearranges
the molecules to form wreckage
Out
of what was once a drinking vessel. No matter where
The fault lies, the cup
is no longer. And that, I think, is what matters.
But I ramble and blather
- is it Time, or Entropy that makes a fool of me?
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According to my son, Time
is the culprit. The Martians accuse Entropy,
And have been doing so vociferously
for a few 'days' now. Apparently,
There's a difference, ever since the
Grey Scientists invented this
'Chronon'
particle to explain to the uninitiated why Time seems to
Travel ever faster, despite
the slowing of the Universe's expansion.
Not that I ever understood
a bar of it in the first place. All I know
Is that I've done my Five
Hundred, and that either I've run out of Time,
Or Entropy. My son leads
the Earthers now, and I'm happy to leave such
Fine points to his discretion.
Either way, it appears the Martians'
Cloak has failed, and their Mothership
is now clearly visible from Venus.
On the bright side, they've
finally found the female who was accidentally
Impregnated during a routine
examination a while back.
She's
very close to term now though, so just as a precaution, we're
Sending a representative
from each race down to the surface to see that
The birth is as painless
as possible, and that the child is cared for.
To tell the truth, all this
Political stuff annoys me. According to the
Old Roms, we had no such
crap in the old days. As the New Kids, it was
Up to us Earthers to do
all the surface work, and the others would just
Monitor from their Motherships.
But since the 'Godfrey' incident a few
Thousand years back, the Greys
are insisting that we're all represented.
I can't shake the feeling
that it'll all end in tears though...
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With filigree fingers, Time
closes my eyes.
My
last thoughts are of the child; he will be
Different, half Martian;
he will be special.
He'll
have his father's Martian talents,
He will be able to Sing.
(C) Copyright 1999
DRAGGIE
All Rights Reserved
