The Review

Interior of a low-rise office park. A nameless DEPARTMENT HEAD is sitting by himself in a small, sterile conference room. On the whiteboard behind him, a diagram of a nondescript computer system is scribbled across.

The door opens.

DEPARTMENT HEAD: Ah, Johnson, isn’t it? Have a seat. How’s… (shuffles notes)… how’s the family?

JOHNSON: Thank you, sir. My wife’s pregnant with our second. Due in May.

DEPARTMENT HEAD: (nods curtly) Right… well, Johnson…

JOHNSON: Yes?

DEPARTMENT HEAD: There is no easy way to say this. Johnson… this meeting… (clears throat) this meeting is not taking place.

JOHNSON: I beg your pardon?

DEPARTMENT HEAD: I want you to think about the cosmos. It all flows from order to chaos… from Big Bang to heat death. The march of entropy… the thermodynamic arrow of time!

JOHNSON: I’m not quite following.

DEPARTMENT HEAD: (gestures wildly) Yet, even amidst decay, random fluctuations happen! Particles pop into existence, stars form, planets! Give it enough time, Johnson, and something as improbable as us comes to be!

JOHNSON: The meeting, sir?

DEPARTMENT HEAD: Well, Johnson, consider the odds! What’s more likely from chaos — a planet of eight billion people hurling through space, or a single brain hallucinating a world that doesn’t exist?

JOHNSON: Ah! But I must object. Wouldn’t such a brain quickly shut down? How could it ever live a complete life?

DEPARTMENT HEAD: Oh, shut down it would. But what is a sense of time? A collection of memories, accidental imprints on a solitary mind. Think of the probabilities, Johnson! A universe or a dream? You were never here. I never spoke these words.

JOHNSON: (stammering) I don’t know… I don’t know what to say.

DEPARTMENT HEAD: Looks like we’re at time. That’ll be all for today. Please give my regards to your wife.

Other short stories: eternal life, the rapture, a new beginning, true love.