A.D. 260, somewhere in Campania, a Neoplatonist sleeps among a multitude of empty amphorae after a heated debate with a Cretan who also happened to be a Cynic and a follower of Menippus. This was his tangled dream…
Mind (Nous) and Soul (Psyche) take a stroll through paradise on the newly minted Earth. And there they come upon the 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?”
“Oh, I plan to make two beings that think and feel,” says Demiurge. “I call them ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ and I will bestow upon them the gift of free will.”
Soul looks to Mind’s worried countenance then to Demiurge’s beaming face. “So how goes it with the casting of patterns?” she asks worriedly.
“Honestly I used the best stuff shaping all the animals, the Earth, and the heavens everlasting. All that remains is this red mud.”
“Do you think that’s safe?” says Mind gravely.
“Oh, indeed! Indeed! What could possibly go wrong?”
Kent Gutschke 2018.
MARTIAN DEATH RAY 