K. Marvin Bruce

An external disk crash is a tragedy.  You see, my computer doesn't have much memory.  The little it has is claimed by the increasing size of the operating system at each update.  I back my files up on a WD terabyte drive. The drive failed this week.  Although I hope to get the contents recovered, the remaining chapters of The Space between Atoms reside on that drive.  In fact, the thousands of pieces of my writing yet unpublished do. I don't trust the cloud.  How can you trust something where your files, like a Heisenbergian electron can't be precisely traced?  I like to know where my files are.  Right now they're nowhere.  The silly drive whirs and ticks like an electronic idiot, but it doesn't show where the files are. Data recovery, I've discovered, costs eight times the cost of a disk drive.  The lesson?  Buying half a dozen backup drives is cheaper.  If one disk fails your files are still somewhere. Months of my life went...

  Drew, Terah’s best friend at Grove City, tried to help.   “You only knew Wendy a week really.   How well can you really know someone in a week?” Deep inside Terah knew the wisdom of this.   Fred his stepfather had been kind to his three new tweenage children.   For about six months he pretended to be happy and carefree, joking and playing with the boys.   Then the mask fell.   Fred was a bitter and suspicious man.   When it was time to leave for college Terah was ready to go although Fred wouldn’t contribute a cent and Terah would be in debt forever.   Yes, he should’ve known a week wasn’t time to really know someone. He thought he knew Wendy.   Her glances, her words, her laughs all declared she was his.   At the very same time she was meeting Gary on the weekend.   Spending the night in his dorm room at Kent State.   Holding Terah’s hand but holding something else for Gary.   Even after she admitted as much and re...

  Nobody questioned why Terah didn’t show up again until the next gathering.   As unlikely as it seemed, life soon fell into a routine.   Terah’s leg healed.   He shared the tasks around Dickinsheet, and was elected the official chaplain.   It was odd.   He’d grown up with Bible-believing parents and had gone to college so he could become a minister.   His experience with Wendy wasn’t an obstacle in that regard since Methodist clergy married. Many people didn’t realize that Boston University School of Theology was the oldest component of the university—it had been founded to train clergy.   Even more didn’t know that it was a United Methodist seminary.   Terah had driven back to Boston, alone.   Wounds from Wendy still bleeding, he poured himself into his studies.   Graduated with high honors, but without ordination.   He was going to work on a doctorate.   His faculty advisors all saw the potential.   He’d never been...

  His breath clouding the air, Terah stood in the dark.   The sun shone green.   Green?   He glanced up, his mouth open in unbelief.   Hanging in the clear sky above him fluttered curtains of green light.   Slowly playing about as if a dreamy wind worried the troposphere, the lissome drapes were ethereal.   He’d seen plenty of pictures of the northern lights, but being bathed in them was altogether different.   A rational man, he knew it was silly, but he thought he could feel the faint play of their transient fabric on his face. “Unreal, ain’t it?”   How long had she been standing there?   He simply nodded.   “Look,” she said hardly above a whisper, “I think I need to explain a few things.   I know you were helpin’ Vince today.   Yesterday.   Whatever.   And I know what you’ve been thinkin’.   Not just since then, but since I let you in on my secret.   It’s not safe for me to come inside.   We can...