after the beheading

They had a splendid wedding…

…after the beheading.

She went birdwatching…

…after the beheading.

A child held Snow White’s hand…

…after the beheading.

The vicar bought a red convertible…

…after the beheading.

It was a dark and stormy night…

…after the beheading.

Line after line spewed from Seagren’s algorithm, aiming for the precise juxtaposition: humanity and horror finely balanced to produce the lightest of dark humor. For it, like dark matter and dark energy, now defined the fate of the universe.

Seagren, a lit crit grad student, had determined that such dark juxta-precision could no longer be attained by random biologic genius. In his basement, he birthed the first compyouter, a double helix parallel processing device sequenced to his DNA. Seagren was entirely synced to his compyouter, and together they were writing the perfect first line from which the perfect novel would gush.

Twenty-two days of collation and Seagren had his first line. Perfection. Purefiction. He could see the whole of the text, like the cooling universe, coalescing into planetary subplots, nebulous characters, black holes of meaning. It belonged to him (and his compyouter) right down to the last lines which became as obvious as the branes displacing his brains.

“Do you think this is a joke?”

“No, just funny.”