I have a new collection of stories available, Memetic Infection Hazards, which is available on Etsy for £4 including UK postage. More at the bottom.

Who Made the Stars

It was that time in the evening, everyone drunk, and the Devil steps outside the bar to consider the evening’s lecture in silence.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare cigarette?”

“My pleasure.” A young academic has followed him out, had almost crept up on him. The Devil offers a small flame to light the cigarette, and the man is drunk enough to miss that the Devil didn’t use a lighter.

“Do you teach here? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Shane.”

The Devil always feels awkward when asked about who he is. “It’s a long time since my, um, university days. I was actually sent down, a long time ago now. But I maintain an interest in physics.”

He comes to the physics department’s public lecture every year. He is dressed down, wearing a tweed jacket to fit in - although the advantage of university is being allowed to be a little eccentric. He could get away with his leather jacket, but he prefers not to stick out here. The Devil is not recognised when he doesn’t want to be. Today, the tail is hidden.

“Do you ever wonder about all those stars?”  the academic asks him. “I can understand how people get religious.”

The devil is a little wary about these sorts of conversations - after all, he knows the answers to most of the questions. He remembers the world being created, even the light being separated from darkness. He remembers things the physicists don’t think about, like watching the first djinn being formed from smokeless fire. The Devil still feels sad about how the djinn refused to bow to Adam. They’d meant it out of respect to God, but that was not how it had came across, because God was mostly made of ego. Dick. Eternally, ineffably, a dick. The Devil had done his best to salvage things. Back then, the Devil hadn’t known how things would work out, that he too would be cast out in time. Maybe he could have done things differently, and then Jesus might still be alive.

“Can I have your lighter again, please?”

Somehow the man’s cigarette had gone out. The devil hesitated. He was unlikely to get away with the trick a second time - that’s the secret to any trick, not repeating it when someone is watching. But not lighting the cigarette would be awkward.

 “I’ll light it again,” says the Devil, “As long as you don’t tell a soul”.

The man laughs, puts the cigarette back in his mouth and leans forward. Openly, deliberately, the Devil kindles a flame at his fingertip. The academic shakes his head, as if that will make it make sense. He lights the cigarette and only then jolts backward. “How did you do that?”

He doesn’t tell Shane: the same way he doesn’t tell the man how he was the one who put most of those stars in place. “It’s just a trick,” he says.

But he remembers falling through the universe, past all those stars, with the echoes of the big bang still ringing in his ears. Sometimes he thinks he can hear it still. So many angels were deafened by it. A physicist would never believe that these things had happened.

And he remembers setting those billions of stars in that place. And The Devil decides he should tell Shane about this, give him a glimpse of the mysteries. But he turns to see Shane already staggering back into the bar. It is late, so the Devil finishes his cigarette and makes the stub vanish. The moonlight is bright, enough to follow the paths home by. The Devil can see in the dark, but on a night like this he is happy to see the same way anyone else does.

Background

This story plays with something that fascinates me - the idea of passing close to a great mystery without noticing.

Shane is another recurring character, who last appeared in Ghost Particles and also turns up in the collection A Foolish Journey. I wanted to use him write about physics and walking. When I was 18, about the only thing I wanted to be was a physicist. Quantum physics seemed like magic, but studying it for a degree turned out to be a drag.

The other element of this story is the Devil’s relationship with Jesus. This is going to be one of the big themes of the South Downs Way overall. I was given the full religious education as a child, and most of it has stuck in my head. Based on the priests I’ve met, I moved on from atheism to all-out maltheism. I still find something charming about the Jesus described in the gospels, but I suspect he would not have liked the Church of England much either.

Recommendations

I have dozens of ‘favourite ever records’, but my absolute favourite is the KLF’s Chill Out. I actually own a physical copy of the CD, which was one of my long-sought-out treasures, in the days when you had to search every record store for your heart’s desire rather than simply looking online. The record is broadly themed around a journey across America, and filled with lonesome sounds. I thought, in the years since its release in 1990, someone would have made something else that charmed me in the same way, but I’ve not found it yet. There’s an edited version on Spotify, which the KLF released in 2021, but you can find the original audio on Youtube, accompanied by some beautiful, lonesome comments.

Memetic Infection Hazards

I’ve just published a new collection of short stories, Memetic Infection Hazards. This is a collection of 25 stories, going in length from 1000 words down to 130. It’s a compilation of things I’ve written in the last few years, including a few that were published along the way. It’s available on Etsy for £4 including UK postage. I’m very pleased with how this has turned out.