Challenge 823

No Turning Back

In Charles C. Cole’s Hello, Future:
1. We learn that the visitor’s name is Daphne. Why might the narrator’s name not be mentioned?
2. When was the narrator not lonely?
3. Is Daphne’s church ecumenical or non-denominational? For Albert Schweitzer’s motto, the same question.
4. What persuades the narrator to accept Daphne’s invitation? Is his conclusion an ending or a beginning?
In Oonah V. Joslin’s I Know a Secret:
1. Is the narrator a teacher or a pupil?
2. What “secret” does the narrator know? Might one say she also knows the opposite “secret”?
In Robin Helweg-Larsen’s In the Doorway of Her Smile:
1. Who or what is “she”?
2. What might “she” discover “downstairs”?
In Tyler Marable’s Upload and Reboot, the epigraph says: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed.” That is not the whole principle. Here’s an easy linguistic challenge:
Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée. Dans la nature, tout se transforme.
A hint: Rien ne se perd = “Nothing is lost.” What does Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier — “the father of modern chemistry” — tell us really happens? Is Michael Denton’s “transmutation” a transformation? A botched transformation? A cosmic joke? A miracle? Incidentally, is Jason Wesker transmuted in his turn or is he transformed normally?