The Forty Year War
Prologue
If I am ever moved to forgive God for what It has done and continues to do to the human race, then my life will have finally served a greater purpose. Throughout the years I have stood by and have watched an endless line of human beings–both the intelligent and the stupid, mind you–march right on up and kiss the asses of their various Supreme Beings of Choice; not surprisingly, it is the stupid ones who have demanded that I do the same.
Looking out at this glittering Universe of infinite possibilities, yet, in which, at the same time, pain, loneliness and hopelessness are all as abundant as hydrogen, I concede that Something that thinks is quite possibly behind the start of it all; if so, I think that the project probably got out of hand, like a kitchen fire, and that this god, sensing the fallout, vamoosed ASAP, and is still too embarrassed by the debacle to come anywhere near the place until the whole mess finally blows over.
I prefer my bumbling god to any of the feckless handmade sons-of-bitches connived by the cold, reptilian minds of the so-called messiahs, prophets and apostles. Every single one of those gods remind me of that creepy little kid in the old Twilight Zone episode who wished infidels into the cornfield. The way I see it, we all end up in the cornfield, by and by. Why go out there with the taste of a fake god’s ass in your mouth?
My name is Sarah Elizabeth More. (Just one O; apparently my ancestors couldn’t afford the second.) I was married once, but that surname, like both my appendix and tonsils is as gone as never was. I will turn sixty on my next birthday, which is an age that sucks even harder for a woman than it does a man, but I guess that’s just the way it goes. I have no children; which I do not regret. You see, it took from the onset of the Big Kitchen Fire on up to my birth only three score years back for the human population to go from zero to about three billion. In the infinitesimal interval that had lain between the Universe’s 13,719,999,940th to 13,720,000,000th birthdays, the human population has increased 133%, and the people who need to be fucking least seem to be fucking most. That too is just the way it goes. I wish I could take credit for my responsible behavior, but the Useless Somebody had wished my reproductive system into the cornfield early on.
My father died in a stupid workplace accident prior to the dawn of my memory. He left behind my mother, me and my younger sister, Tess. Of those three I am the only one left alive. Tess is the only person whom I have ever loved without qualification. I cared about Mom, but we had similar personalities, and for whatever reason, we saw only the bad things about ourselves in each other. I have no doubt that she felt the same way about me. Everybody loved Tess. And that may have very well contributed to her early death last fall.
The pages to come span the personal events of better than half a century, in which the most significant event is what I call The Forty Year War. I hope that some good may come from this history; despite my cynicism, I would like to leave something that might help. The way I see it, the worst possible Universe is a godless void in which humankind is nothing more than an accidental and eternally lonesome result of a toxic spill. Yet although they are the rarest elements in the cosmos, love and hope and selflessness do exist, even though there may not be enough for everyone. These are small powers which have short reaches, yet when they do appear it profanes existence to not do your best to acknowledge and record their passing.
As always, however, it remains the right of the reader to decide whether something should be extolled or taken to the nearest goat-footed god for a divine wishing into the cornfield
(END: Chapter One is scheduled to appear by 30 May, unless the Useless Somebody smites little old me out of the game. L.A.)
