This report is taken from PN Review 235, Volume 43 Number 5, May - June 2017.
Last Cries from a Man in Hiding
1. Don’t tell anyone else about the second door!
2. Couldn’t other things so easily have (randomly enough) effloresced into our places instead of us? [Which would therefore obviously [but – to whom?] not have been our places at all? (Yet, who could then conceivably have missed us?)]
3. No. What we have here is very clearly not the Universe that this [nonetheless otherwise matchless] Cosmos of ours quite deserves, is it?
4. Though how could any real entity ever be justified in thinking [hmm – can it think at all?]: ‘This is not my Universe? [As if there was [were?] a choice in the matter!
5. But, broadly speaking, Bradley, are we not nearly all waiting [in hiding?] for some tremendously significant figure to abdicate in our favour, consequent to an impenetrably obscure (but naturally incontrovertible) decision of its own?
6. Though absolutely every life is more or less much the same stuff [and nonsense?] even so, is it not? [Some piles of debris, Ray, catch the Sun better than others, I suppose?]
7. All the same, surely mere Existence could have turned me out as the generally acknowledged Ruler of the Universe, no questions asked – if it had really wanted to do so? (Which it unquestionably did not. Why not? Yes. Can anyone give me a single even moderately compelling reason for this? We’re just meant to overlook such a pulverising piece of treachery, are we?) (Well, Moira, I for one ...
2. Couldn’t other things so easily have (randomly enough) effloresced into our places instead of us? [Which would therefore obviously [but – to whom?] not have been our places at all? (Yet, who could then conceivably have missed us?)]
3. No. What we have here is very clearly not the Universe that this [nonetheless otherwise matchless] Cosmos of ours quite deserves, is it?
4. Though how could any real entity ever be justified in thinking [hmm – can it think at all?]: ‘This is not my Universe? [As if there was [were?] a choice in the matter!
5. But, broadly speaking, Bradley, are we not nearly all waiting [in hiding?] for some tremendously significant figure to abdicate in our favour, consequent to an impenetrably obscure (but naturally incontrovertible) decision of its own?
6. Though absolutely every life is more or less much the same stuff [and nonsense?] even so, is it not? [Some piles of debris, Ray, catch the Sun better than others, I suppose?]
7. All the same, surely mere Existence could have turned me out as the generally acknowledged Ruler of the Universe, no questions asked – if it had really wanted to do so? (Which it unquestionably did not. Why not? Yes. Can anyone give me a single even moderately compelling reason for this? We’re just meant to overlook such a pulverising piece of treachery, are we?) (Well, Moira, I for one ...
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