Chapter Six: A Watchful Eye, A Tempting Proposal
If you read too many books, the ideas, the storylines, the characters will take root in your brain and you will risk never being able to think an original thought again. Aspartame toyed with the possibility, played a long game of chicken with it as he sat reading a delightful book full of all sorts of wild things.
Sometimes you get pulled too far into a story. Every story is it's own world, and when you visit that world you risk becoming a permanent resident. How long have you been reading this one? Do you need to take a break? Do you need to grab a glass of water?
Aspartame let out a yelp.
"Look," he said to Yoshebv. "I don't thing you really get what I'm doing here."
"Sometimes you get pulled too far into a story," Yoshebv said. "You risk becoming a permanent resident."
Aspartame let out a yelp. "No you still don't get it."
At the Earth's closest point to the sun it takes 490 seconds for sunlight to reach Earth. No matter how close we try to get to the sun with this little globe of ours, we will always be basking in light that is minutes old. The sunlight is stale by that point. But so it has to be, we couldn't handle fresh light anyway.
More troubling is how many of must eat food that is weeks or months old. You can move right next to a grocery store and your food will never get any fresher. Anyone who's had a personal garden can recognize the tragedy of that. Is it that we can't handle fresh fruit either?
Yoshebv reached out with his mind. Aspartame's psychic waves were all over the place. Lately that hadn't been too unusual. Yoshebv wasn't concerned at first, but at this point he was starting to worry.
"Is everything alright," Yoshebv asked, the master of courtesy. "You're thoughts have been very wobbly lately."
Aspartame let out a sigh. "It's just been."
"Tell me more," Yoshebv insisted.
"Do you ever get the feeling," Aspartame started, "that as everyone's obsessed with traveling to and exploring the surface of Mars, at the same time Mars reigns over the Earth as an ancient god of war? All our gods are war gods."
"Praise be to Pax," Yoshebv said.
"Pax was merely used as propaganda by the Roman empire to consolidate their rule," Aspartame said. "We can't let war rule over us in the guise of peace."
Yoshebv nodded. "Would you like a smoothie?"
"Yes, I would a lot," said Aspartame. "Like I always say: A smoothie before bed makes a smooth sleep."
"I agree," Yoshebv agreed. "They're also good with lunch."
Aspartame nodded. "I don't know if I'd say that."
So they sat and waited for the official Smoothie brand Smooth Smoothie Maker Robot 3000 to make their smoothies. It would be a long wait, they were smoothies worth waiting for.
To be continued...
Source