Read Online The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl by Brigid Brophy - Free Book Online
Authors: Brigid Brophy
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accident to be an act of aggression, and retaliated. Counter retaliation followed automatically .
The Western Emperor’s Palace, a prime target, received one minute’s warning from the improvised alert system. The occupants rushed to the cellar, tripping, in their rush, over the ex-Emperor, who was sitting drunk on the steps inside, happily mouthing that he’d at last seen a way to refute John Stuart Mill’s aspersions on the syllogism. However, the cellar was notprotection enough. All the occupants perished when the Palace, and with it most of the capital city of the Western Empire, was obliterated.
Certain retaliatory devices continued to be despatched, on both sides, automatically; and in consequence the human species became extinct.
It is possible that some of the weapons continued to shoot about in the depopulated world after the species which had designed them had ceased.
The resulting world-wide fallout soon extinguished the other animal species – the more rapidly because the other animals, during mankind’s brief bout of tolerance towards them, had given up shunning human habitation.
Only a plastic dolphin, floating at the remote centre of an ocean now emptied of mind and instinct, bobbed on, its gay and silly nods slandering the intelligent animal in whose likeness it was shaped.
However, the stopper in its inflation valve, constructed to allow for the presence of a tiny machine, was no longer, in the absence of that machine, completely airtight. Little by immeasurably little, as the years passed uncounted, the only unpolluted air in the world leaked away. The dolphin shape collapsed, and the plastic eventually shrivelled.
The Pasiphaïst Version
1
Pausing in his daily task of sweeping the miles of intricate intersecting and redoubling corridor, and leaning for a moment on the handle of his broom, the Minotaur said:
âIâve been in this Labyrinth now, man and beast, 30 years.â
2
When Theseus saw him, he commented:
âI donât mind having a fight with the human component in him, but Iâm not going to harm the element thatâs bull.â
âToh!â Ariadne scoffed: âI thought you were a hero.â
âSo I am,â Theseus replied. âThat means Iâm all human, and no bully.â
âBad puns will get you nowhere with me,â Ariadne said. âI thought youâd want to avenge your fellow Athenians â all those Athenian youths and maidens whom the monster eats as tribute.â
âYour fatherâs fascist propaganda would be more credibleâ, Theseus said, âif he werenât so ignorant. Bulls, like me, are vegetarians.â
âThe only reason I smuggled you in hereâ, Ariadne said sulkily, âwas that I hoped to witness the bullfight of all time. I did it at great risk to myself. Indeed, I canât go back to the palace now. My fascist father would tan the hide off me.â
âAll right,â Theseus said. âIâll get you out and take you home to Athens with me. But weâre taking the Minotaur too, in case your fascist father should turn spiteful on him. Give me the end of that thread.â
So saying, he gently wound one end of the thread into a collar about the Minotaurâs bull neck; and by following therest of the thread back to where they came in, he made good his own and Ariadneâs escape, while the Minotaur followed them quietly.
3
Almost as soon as they had put out from Crete for the voyage back to Athens, the Minotaur became sea-sick.
Theseus patiently held his bull head. Ariadne said it was disgusting, but Theseus replied that she was in no position to object, as her mother had been a good deal more intimate with a bull than that.
4
Meanwhile, in the royal palace in Crete, a junta of colonels armed with pistols arrived one dawn outside the royal bedchamber and arrested Queen Pasiphaë.
She was arraigned on charges of unnatural sexuality and contempt of the
The Western Emperor’s Palace, a prime target, received one minute’s warning from the improvised alert system. The occupants rushed to the cellar, tripping, in their rush, over the ex-Emperor, who was sitting drunk on the steps inside, happily mouthing that he’d at last seen a way to refute John Stuart Mill’s aspersions on the syllogism. However, the cellar was notprotection enough. All the occupants perished when the Palace, and with it most of the capital city of the Western Empire, was obliterated.
Certain retaliatory devices continued to be despatched, on both sides, automatically; and in consequence the human species became extinct.
It is possible that some of the weapons continued to shoot about in the depopulated world after the species which had designed them had ceased.
The resulting world-wide fallout soon extinguished the other animal species – the more rapidly because the other animals, during mankind’s brief bout of tolerance towards them, had given up shunning human habitation.
Only a plastic dolphin, floating at the remote centre of an ocean now emptied of mind and instinct, bobbed on, its gay and silly nods slandering the intelligent animal in whose likeness it was shaped.
However, the stopper in its inflation valve, constructed to allow for the presence of a tiny machine, was no longer, in the absence of that machine, completely airtight. Little by immeasurably little, as the years passed uncounted, the only unpolluted air in the world leaked away. The dolphin shape collapsed, and the plastic eventually shrivelled.
The Pasiphaïst Version
1
Pausing in his daily task of sweeping the miles of intricate intersecting and redoubling corridor, and leaning for a moment on the handle of his broom, the Minotaur said:
âIâve been in this Labyrinth now, man and beast, 30 years.â
2
When Theseus saw him, he commented:
âI donât mind having a fight with the human component in him, but Iâm not going to harm the element thatâs bull.â
âToh!â Ariadne scoffed: âI thought you were a hero.â
âSo I am,â Theseus replied. âThat means Iâm all human, and no bully.â
âBad puns will get you nowhere with me,â Ariadne said. âI thought youâd want to avenge your fellow Athenians â all those Athenian youths and maidens whom the monster eats as tribute.â
âYour fatherâs fascist propaganda would be more credibleâ, Theseus said, âif he werenât so ignorant. Bulls, like me, are vegetarians.â
âThe only reason I smuggled you in hereâ, Ariadne said sulkily, âwas that I hoped to witness the bullfight of all time. I did it at great risk to myself. Indeed, I canât go back to the palace now. My fascist father would tan the hide off me.â
âAll right,â Theseus said. âIâll get you out and take you home to Athens with me. But weâre taking the Minotaur too, in case your fascist father should turn spiteful on him. Give me the end of that thread.â
So saying, he gently wound one end of the thread into a collar about the Minotaurâs bull neck; and by following therest of the thread back to where they came in, he made good his own and Ariadneâs escape, while the Minotaur followed them quietly.
3
Almost as soon as they had put out from Crete for the voyage back to Athens, the Minotaur became sea-sick.
Theseus patiently held his bull head. Ariadne said it was disgusting, but Theseus replied that she was in no position to object, as her mother had been a good deal more intimate with a bull than that.
4
Meanwhile, in the royal palace in Crete, a junta of colonels armed with pistols arrived one dawn outside the royal bedchamber and arrested Queen Pasiphaë.
She was arraigned on charges of unnatural sexuality and contempt of the
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