A.D. 260, somewhere in Campania, a Neoplatonist slept among a multitude of empty amphorae after a heated debate with a Cretan who also happened to be a Cynic. This was his tangled dream—
Mind and Soul take a walk through a garden on the newly minted Earth. And there they come upon Demiurge still busy in his work.
Mind hooks his thumbs inside his toga and takes in the view. “The place looks swell, but what make you with a potter’s wheel?”
“I plan to make two beings that think and feel,” says Demiurge. “I call them ‘man’ and ‘woman’.”
Soul looks to Mind’s worried countenance then to Demiurge’s beaming face. “So how goes it with the casting of the patterns?” she asks worriedly.
“I used the best stuff shaping all the animals, the Earth, and the heavens everlasting. All that remains is this here red sludge.”
“Do you think that’s safe?” asks Mind gravely.
“Oh, indeed! Indeed! What could possibly go wrong?”
Kent Gutschke 2018.
MARTIAN DEATH RAY 