Driving Einstein's Bus

God’s pendulum is that squalid lie you tell yourself driving into non-being. Einstein’s bus picks you up at the womb driving you away from Time’s clock tower. You age with distance, yet you hardly notice till you shatter the mirror. Clocks are not of your choosing. Neither is place. The bus is full at the start. One by one they all get off. They watch the scenery of their pains pass in the little square panes. They gaze intently wondering if it’s happening at all. How would they know? They never chose these disturbing scenes. Where’s the paper work? The affidavits? Their Scantron bubbles are all empty. No one gave them a #2 pencil before birth. They are bereft. Then they see it. The end of the line. Little tan sailboats hurry home. Their brave green and white sails flutter against dark rain filled clouds belching lightning to show a way to the weary. The bus speeds by that woman holding a lantern while her son chops the wood. Bagpipes scream for everything to stop, but no one can hear them. Therefore, nothing stops. The bus is inexorable. Who’s your daddy?

You're clock is dripping. There’s the lilac bush, but the sun blinds you. It smells so good you try to eat the flowers when a hidden bee stings your tongue. A small betrayal but the blood tastes good in your mouth. Like sucking pennies. There it is again. That clock tower. We must have passed it a dozen times by now. The hands have yet to move. How can that be? I knew it was a trick when that doctor slapped my ass to make me cry. “Welcome to the world, fool!” he mused silently. It sounded like magic. How can the passing of my passing be passing? What does that even mean? Where’s my mommy? Stop the bus!

Men were arguing at the bar. One was a cop. He was the boy who chopped wood while his mother held the lantern. Now he was dying. Testicular cancer they say. It was too late. He had no children. He drank his pension and fed his cat religiously. Silly name for a cat. No one else was allowed to feed it. No one really knew the right food. No one understood how much the cat depended on him. Then, one day the cat stopped eating. The cat knew the cop was dying and simply refused to eat caviar. A ‘cat whisperer’ was called but was mugged before he got there. It was ruled ‘suicide by cat’. There never was a cat. They carried the cop up the hill and dumped him in a black hole. There never was a cop, nor a cat, nor a hill. And certainly there was no hole, black or otherwise. The bus passed the boy chopping wood again. This time his mother was missing. Panic froze his face. He never chopped again. So, he bought a cat and fed it. That’s how he became the cop that never was.

The bus was picking up speed now careening down a hill. It was going so fast it stared to slow down. The same hill where the cop was not buried. The clock tower passed by several times or so it seemed. It had no hands now. What time is it? No one knew for sure. Everyone was confused and started asking questions of the bus driver.

“Are we close?”

“Is this my stop?”

“Can you make change for a Benjamin?”

“Where’s my daddy?”

At each curve another would jump off the bus into the snow. Yes, it was snowing heavily now. Sails on the boats went from green to black turning to frozen sheets of white. They rocked with the grace of softened old ladies at tea. Like Lot’s wife that woman on the dock with the lantern was an ice sculpture now. She still smiled optimistically but the lamp was out. Rabid dogs were eating her feet leaving red trials as they carried off her flesh under a porch.

Struggling against G-forces you make your way through the now empty bus to speak to the driver. It’s Einstein alright. Big black and white foam dice swung wildly from the mirror. He has a maniacal laugh:

“It never existed. It never did. Not then. Not now. Not ever. You were tricked. That slap on the ass at the beginning should have told you something. The doctor was your uncle. God does play dice with the universe after all. My guess is they never told you your uncle was a doctor.

“But why? Why me?” you wonder. Has God nothing better to do than take me on a bus ride into non-being where the bus does not exist? How can it be valuable for clocks to exist in a single inertial frame? That’s ridiculous! Smartphones disprove Einstein’s theory of Time. They display the same time throughout the universe. We are an app on God's digital device. No one gives a damn about synchronization of clocks. Does a cat consult a clock to know its feeding time? Does a cop synchronize his drinking to the clock of his pension? Balderdash! Tummy-rot! Eyewash!

There’s a portable TV bolted to the bus driver’s seat between his knees. A sudden shock grips your mind.

“Hey kids…what Time is it?” says a terrifying Einstein is dressed as ‘Buffalo Bob’

Black and white TV camera pans to the ‘Peanut Gallery’ as freckled faced prepubescents scream in unison:

“It’s Howdy-Doody Time!”

You can finally hear the bagpipes now that the ‘scream of being’ has subsided. They stir your bones. Like an arctic wind cutting your flesh raw to your soul. You’re nude. You’re in a hole six feet under. A decrepit Archbishop is dumping dirt on your face and then your genitalia. The bagpipes swell to a shriek as he intones;

“…extra Ecclesiam nulla salus!”

(…outside the Church there is no salvation!”

Thus, is God’s pendulum that lie into non-Being? Does anyone know? At birth you left clock 1 @ ^T1. But at death, by means of a mirror. Your arrival time back at clock 1 is ^T2.

Fool! Who told you you were meant to be happy? How would you know? You are on a bus that does not exist driven by Albert Einstein who also does not exist away from a clock tower that never existed except in the mind of someone who never existed. Or, to put it more precisely you are;