The 'Ands of Time
Causes, Effects, Conscience, and Consequences
by
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I was numbed…., a victim at the hands of time. I was stunned as I sat and stared unbelievingly at the newspaper headline. I felt light headed, disorientated; I was knocked off balance by this irrational, unpredicted and unexpected blow. My heart and my head felt empty and my brain was frozen inside. My eyes were opened but my thoughts were blind. I searched my state of being, my existence, and there was no joy, no happiness that I could find. I choked up on the cruel reality of life, I was dizzy with fright. My tears welled up as my sorrows climbed. All of my feelings, all my emotions were so fractured, so distorted, so entwined. My heart, my soul, and my mind, were battered and bruised by the hands of time. I was petrified, dumbfounded, dumbstruck, and just plain ‘dumbed’ by the ‘unreality’ of the headline that was grinning at me. I looked away quickly from the headline’s awful stare. My heart, my soul, my mind, my whole being, was beyond being pained and hurt. I was way beyond being confused. As I looked away, I was in a state of shock. The headline had electrocuted and stupefied me into suspended disbelief. I felt a sharp stake piercing my heart and I was an instant zombie. Instinctively, I took a quick sideway glance back at the newspaper, looked away again, and then slowly looked back again, waiting for time to pass as I tried hopelessly to regain equilibrium and my composure. I sat waiting, waiting on the tick of the clock; tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. I instinctively looked at the date of the newspaper and then quickly looked away again. The date was September 12, 2018. I was waiting, hoping for the vein of time to snarl the illogic of this totally unexpected news and bumped me out of this incongruous construct. This news, this event, this state of affairs was something that I thought was so totally inconceivable. It was a development in my rumbling, sad, disappointing, and chaotic life that was unprecedented and I was completely unprepared for. My mind, my body, my being, found itself impossible to grasp, believe, or accept this dreadful news. As I glanced at the newspaper again, my eyes and my mind zoomed in. It zoomed in pass the newspaper’s front page, passed words, passed letters, passed fonts and pixels, passed electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, passed strange quarks, and not so strange quarks. I zoomed in and my mind entered the twilight zone. I had zoomed pass particles and objects that I did not know and they adamantly refused to identify themselves. I zoomed down to a stage where the paper grains of the newspaper were like mountainous cold sores ‘irising’ on the pits of my eyeballs.
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About the Book
The story is based partially in the island of Jamaica and in America. It traces the life of a family from the 1970’s into the future and explores the relationship between individual behaviour, greed, selfishness, societal violence, organized crime, tribalism, gang and urban warfare, science and genetics as a consequence of the impact of the global village and ambitions of geo-politics and world domination. It explores how the thirst and thrust for world domination impacts on the lives and relationship of the family, and their neighbours, and how these factors affects individual’s actions which in turn affect the collective consciousness of a nation and lead to murder, mayhem, and social degradation. It explores the reactive and dangerous steps taken by members of this family in order to survive. Though informative and instructive, the book is a fast paced action pack story with lots of unexpected turns and developments as it builds up the reader with adrenaline paced narrative. You never quite know what is coming next. The story, though fictionalized, is predicated and inspired by true events, the composite of lives of real persons and the extrapolation of cause, effects, conscience, and consequences. It examines how the attitude and actions of individuals on each other can affect these individual and impacts on the wider society and the world far into the future with multiplying effects. It also looks at the role that science, religion, nuclear proliferation, and politics will play in the future world. Some of the names, locations, persons, and situations were changed, altered, and fictionalized in order to conceal the identity of some of the persons and characters, places, and to also add dramatic effect and to magnify and illustrate pertinent points and ideas.
About the Author
The Author is a graduate of the University of the West Indies with a Bachelor of Science with a major in Biochemistry, Applied Biochemistry and Chemistry and minor in Economics, Applied Physics and Commercial Law. He had also done post graduate studies in Management and a Diploma in Marketing. He has won the Gleaner Newspaper Silver Pen Award. He also writes music and songs, and plays and produces music. He is presently in pursuit of post graduate studies in Information Technology.