A Brief Moment of Time

IBA has ended at last, and unfinished tasks have been unceremoniously dumped back onto the laps of those who issued them, even as completed ones have, in perhaps imperceptible and unseen ways, aided in the smooth running of that particular branch of the vast maritime empire of this nation.

Truly do the holidays begin now. If only the rotten weather would let up. When I say rotten, I mean rain. Rain rain rain. McKenna's All Weather Haulage has never seen a wetter fall. The sky god trembles in a capricious drunken fit, and colossal pots of his carefully-prepared rain plummet in droves onto the ground as his mad raving knocks them from their hallowed shelves.

I remember reading (from one of Clarke's novels, I believe) that John von Neunmann once predicted that accurate weather prediction and control would become possible, but computers would become so monstrous and expensive that only governments would be able to afford them. The situation is pretty much reversed, evidently. Sadly.

***

After two months that will seem both an eternity and a fleeting whisper; after the healing wind blows, the cycle will start again. That is not what gives me trepidation. It's that after a brief two years, the eternal and comforting cycle will be impossibly broken. And what then? I ask myself, how well-prepared will I be to face that time?

Human life is a brief moment in time.

And I've been meaning to watch Firefly, after all the good I've heard about it and Serenity. I'm still looking for it.