Preface: Why Augusto Giovanni d’Elea Missed School
The following short is the preface to The Unexpected And Highly Misguided Theory of Everything, allowing for readers of The Insider to get an exclusive excerpt from my upcoming Novella. For more information and to be notified upon its availability for purchase, visit www.facebook.com/junerossaert/ and like the page.
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FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, in the small town of Coanesbury, Ontario, in classroom 33B, on the second and highest floor of the elementary school on the 55th of Maine Street, a young boy raised his hand. His name was Augusto Giovanni d’Elea. Augusto was twelve-years-old, had hawkish, piercing blue eyes, an outrageous love of vibrant colours, and something of a quality about him that invariably caught (and retained) the attention of those around him. He held, without meaning to, the very vibration of the air around him. He had built himself what one might realistically call an accidental halo.
Unfortunately for the state of the universe, it just so happened that Augusto d’Elea was a complete and utter moronic fool.
Of course, his teacher responded to the interjection immediately, ignoring, in doing so, another child who stayed quiet despite their inner frustrations. No one noticed that they had been begging for attention for the better part of half an hour: they were not the main character of a third-rate science fiction novella. Augusto d’Elea, clearing his throat as the room fell into deafening silence, stood up and said this:
“Miss, to walk to the end of the room, I always need to walk- half of the distance I need to walk. And then half of that distance- and then half of that distance, and half of that other distance, and then half of that again forever and ever and ever. So, that’s impossible, right? Like because you always have another half to walk so you’re walking infinity steps all the time! So shouldn’t it be just as easy to walk to the moon? Since everything’s always just half of half of half of everything forever, right?”
Miss McGregor, his teacher, stared at him blankly, wondering how it was that she continuously listened to a boy who was so consistently and incredulously idiotic. The rest of the class had a similar reaction.
“Don’t be silly, Augusto. You can’t walk to the moon – there’s no bridge.”
However, that very afternoon, while walking home from school, Augusto tripped. And in that instance, the universe made up for all of its endless and tiresome nothings with a great big something. Amidst a shake and a sigh, the universe pulled a spontaneous wormhole under the child’s wandering feet. And in the most infuriatingly and inexcusably brilliant of coincidences, the child fell directly on an incredibly small, blueish moon situated 2.5 million light years away from earth.
This moon orbited a strange, indigo-red planet whose atmosphere was coincidentally very similar to that of the earth, mostly because the author was too lazy to think up of a more interesting contraption to excuse his survival. The specific location of Augusto’s landing did, however, happen to be very precarious, especially for a human child. Luckily, travel between the indigo-red planet and its moon was very frequent, and hence, the boy was rapidly rescued. It was then due to his incredible talent of appeal, which graciously seemed to extend to most aliens, that he was promptly adopted by a loving family of Gorgonite immigrants.
And thus, Augusto Giovanni d’Elea became the first human to ever set foot on planet Number Five.
Written By: June Rossaert
