From the Back Nine: Hawking in the heavens

Dear Stephen:

What are you witnessing now? What answers are igniting your imagination … what new questions are you spurred to ask? Who will do our cosmic thinking for us now that your point of view has so colossally shifted to the other side?

Have you found what is in those black holes? Is one full of missing socks? Another stuffed with all the ethics that don’t matter to us anymore?

What about Big Bangs? Are they going off all around you now? Are you inspired by the explosive beginnings of other worlds without end? Parallel universes? Did you have a smooth exit yourself? Do you see a red Tesla passing by? Is it time we all make plans to get out of town?

I did not receive the same long distance vision as you when potential was handed out. I will never comprehend all you tried to teach about gravity and space-time and collapsing stars and other mysteries of the cosmos. I catch glimmers in bursts: I get it and then it is gone, the way your eyes lock for a nanosecond on the eyes of a stranger as a passenger train flashes by.

The loss of intelligence is always inconsolable … through undeveloped potential or age or disease or wanton misuse. The very last thing we need is to lose any more of it. As a species, it feels we are willingly clambering onto the back nine of evolution. For the first time ever, we may have to turn around to see the better view. Can dumb-downed humans create AI that is smarter than we are?

Be all that as it may, Stephen, can you now shed some light on the great questions of life? Do you know the way to San Jose? How much is that doggy in the window? Can one-size-fits-all pantyhose actually fit anybody? What is behind door number three? Where is Jimmy Hoffa?

You could not have a Nobel Prize without proof of your beliefs. But can you, at the very least, now have the last laugh?

Linda B. Myers is a founding member of Olympic Peninsula Authors and author of the novel Fun House Chronicles, and the PI Bear Jacobs mystery series. Her newest novel, The Slightly Altered History of Cascadia: A Fantasy for Grown Ups, is now available at amazon.com. Contact her at myerslindab@gmail.com or Facebook.com/lindabmyers.author.