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Kirt Marse stretched and rose from
his desk. His second novel, Effect,
delivered to his publisher. He hadn’t meant to write a sequel to his first
book, Cause, but one thing led to
another. Cause was a murder mystery
based on Chaos Theory: “when the present determines the future, but the
approximate present does not approximately determine the future”, as defined by
mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz.
In Cause Kirt twisted the fates of five characters who all attempted
to kill the same man for different reasons, by assorted methods, at separate
times. Each character’s actions started a trajectory of events that eventually
ensnared each of them. Their carefully planned approximations with room for
error was the logical despoiler of the expected result, an intended untraceable
death. The approximate actions of the present did not approximate the result in
the future because wildly different tangents became initiated. The success of
the book demanded that another follow, and Kirt had obliged within a year’s
time.
Effect
began with in-depth narratives surrounding the widely diverging outcomes
seemingly spreading from the ‘five stones’ dropped in still water, the ripple
effect, of the five murder attempts. The satisfying conclusion was the
surprising eventual death of the original intended victim based on all he had
done to deserve it, but by unpredictable means.
Kirt made his money as a
pharmacist, though he boasted a scorned minor in English at River University in
New Hampshire as well.
“There’s a reason for everything,”
intoned Kirt to himself as he thought of the nay-sayers in his life.” He resigned his position at SNH Pharmacy.
He arrived at home to find Lindsay,
his wife, sitting on the floor surrounded by pricey housing development
brochures in several states. She hurried over and threw her arms around him.
“Take a look at these beautiful
homes! I thought we’d also need a bigger place to entertain family than the
pied-a-terre in New York we were talking about.”
Kirt poured himself a glass of Gaja
Langhe Conteisa and picked up a brochure for New Hampshire farms in mountain
country. You reap what you sow after all.
Six months later, Kirt never could
have envisioned the course of events that occurred. Lindsay left him for a
former lover. His first book, Cause,
was contested in court as a past colleague’s idea. The scandal caused its
removal from Oprah’s book club list. The hefty down payment on the Chelsea
brownstone almost purged his royalties, and legal fees would decimate the rest.
On his way to an interview at a
rival pharmacy, Kirt focused on his next book with a working title of Crap Shoot. His life had indeed suffered
from the wiles of chaos but he knew that all theories were defective. Life is random. (464 words published on Aug 5, 2016 on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/flash-fiction-fridays/)
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