#alternities

Review – Cowboy Angels, by Paul McAuley

Adam Stone is an ex-Company man, living the good life on a farm in a ‘wild sheaf’ where homo sapiens never achieved technological civilisation. Unfortunately for him the Company is the Central Intelligence Group, The Real’s version of our CIA.

The Real is a parallel world in which the Second World War never happened, where Alan Turing emigrated to America in the 1950’s and laid the foundations…

Alternities* You and I 

Two irreconcilable universes Spinning next to one another - once against each other Amidst million other worlds Then in a stroke of quasi-cosmic design We meet again at a very crucial point of our journey And in that singular moment, we clash again However, this time, it's different Towards the end, we meet again At a single point where we could share each other's existence Not out of enmity - we no longer belong to the opposite polarities As if it were the natural course of things  To turn enemies into friends To convert fiery fireworks into softened feelings And fireflies into wishes But then again those fleeting moments are about to end very soon... Time will come when those fireworks will evaporate into melancholic goodbyes and those fireflies will just be another twinkling memory And like parallel universes It would take light-years before we could meet again Uncertain where or when; it might in a entirely different galaxy You and I  Two irreconcilable alternities Spinning next to one another Each belonging to separate realities