The Twin Paradox

by Charles Wachter

The standard academic track was like anywhere else in America, a mix of hormones and hazing—teenagers learning their first hard lessons about all the ways they will fail when they are adults.

The housing development held a unique kind of poverty—a poverty of spirit—specific to the American South. Banks and insurance companies owned the maze, having built a thousand paper walls out of promissory notes and sadness.

Now, with ARF, there were too many trees to bark up, so no one bothered. The truth was lost in a forest of nothing.

Here’s the thing: with real evolution, sometimes the solution might not include humans at all,” Milk said. “Nature is agnostic.”

“Monsanto?” Milk started counting on her fingers. “Dioxin. DDT. rBGH. PCBs. Aspartame. Agent Orange. Agent Orange, Alastair!”

Alastair liked it when he was surprising. It was a function of always feeling like an imposter.

It was the melancholy with which he now faced the one inexorable truth about life. The only truth. There are doors, once passed through, that lock forever. His youth, that long hallway of endless open doors, was behind him, apparent only in hindsight. Alastair couldn’t even see thirty feet into his future.