[Naked City] The following piece is written for Naked City with the theme of "Oblivion"

Hello there from another world.  I'm Rhombus Ticks.  The voice you hear is not my own, but it wasn't when I read to you before.  TC, my regular host, is located in Miami, while Len has agreed to read this piece to you.  I shall endevor to be a gentleman while here.

Oblivion.

[Pause]

Alright, now pretend I just filled five minutes with awkward silence.  That was my first idea.  And as much as it appealed to me, the recent podcast I did not do that involved nothing but numbers pushed the envelope enough for my tastes for a while, so I thought I'd speak about something else.  The space between worlds.  I write a lot about Fairy or Terra or Wonderbreadland but one doesn't simply wander to the nearest bus and order a ticket back and forth.  

The moon is so far away it takes a second for light to travel there.  That means that if you look at a piano falling on some jerk blocking you in traffic, an astronaut on the moon with a really powerful telescope wouldn't see it fall on the guy until a second later.  It takes fourteen minutes to see it with a magic telescope (because let's be honest that would have to be one damn big telescope, or maybe a telescope linked to an ipad or something) anyway, that guy on mars wouldn't see the piano fall for fourteen minutes.  That takes a full year for it to reach Alpha Centauri.

The gaps between atoms and sub atomic particles are even more staggering in their own way.  So much space between everything but it doesn't even hold a candle to the space between what you consider real and what you consider merely fictional.  I mean, metaphorically it is right next door, a heart beat away but all interesting uses of chemistry aside, Sauron isn't going to be playing golf on the course tomorrow morning with....well, you know.  People.  On your world.  Who are the kind of people who would likely hang out with Sauron.

You know.

Anyway, where was I? Time breaks down here.  The very concept of space, the thing that you share in common with a sun or a black hole or the farthest bit of light in the sky, so far that it goes to the edge of your ever expanding universe.  Your dreams are with you every day but they are also farther than the beginning of time itself.  No wonder so many obsess about death.  When entropy claims us, there is only the memory and the dream of what was.  Is there an afterlife? There is here, but there? Its a grayer area.  And whether or not you believe it real, for practical purposes its as far away as I am.

Oblivion.  It's a hell of a thing to overcome, but there are tricks.  Journals.  Stone monuments, astral projection.  You know.  Find creative ways to work around it.  Because despite the distance between you and the impossible, I speak from experience when I say that exploration of it is worth it.

That's all.  Good night.