T.D. Event.etl
 A short time later, the writer happened to rediscover his somewhat ancient paperback edition of Slaughterhouse 5.
On scanning through it, he learned that the phrase 'so it goes' is used only when someone dies or is put to death. He realized that he had been guilty of remembering the phrase but not its context, and misapplying the phrase out of sheer ignorance.
Or forgetfulness.
So it goes.
In due course, the writer received from Jackie Sydenham, a complimentary copy of the first edition of her novel, which hit the nation's bookshops some 8 months after she had posted off the rest of the typescript to Virginia Frage-White.
Jackie had been less than impressed by Ms Frage-White's opinion that Chase was an excellent character and a main selling point, and that he had started off as mildly devious and ended up as downright duplicitous. But, as the writer pointed out, Jackie's main aim had to be to set her work before the public and let her readers make up their own minds about her favourite character.
As for the writer, he continued to follow the imperatives of his own muse and experience his fate, not knowing which of many potential paths he would follow.
Was it his destiny to marry Sally Lee and make it all go wrong by having an affair with Jackie Sydenham? Or vice versa? Or, even worse, marry one of the ladies and make everything go unimaginably horribly wrong by having an affair with the Feck!!!
Was he destined to marry someone whom he had yet to meet or someone from his past? Or was he destined to remain single and contented or single and frustrated? Or was it to be none of the above?
Was the course of his life supposed to be conventionally bumpy but free of spirit-shattering potholes? These and many other issues were bonded into the fabric of the past over time.
Of course, the writer explored many possibilities in his writing, including extreme ones, which he had no intention of building in to his real life. And there were a lot of surprises along the way, not all of them pleasant.
 One thing that the writer did not anticipate, even in his wildest imaginings, was that he and his closest companion would be abducted by aliens from a planet closer to our galaxy's core on the eve of the writer's 83rd birthday. Even less expected was that the alien craft would plunge into the event horizon of a temporal division event soon after leaving the Solar System.
As a result of this unlikely coincidence, the writer and his companion were plunged back to the starting points of their respective lives while the aliens were hurled into the far future.
And so it began all over again.
|
