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This report is taken from PN Review 219, Volume 41 Number 1, September - October 2014.

A Most Unlikely Present Frank Kuppner
What else is there to say? One slips into the years of one’s earliest existence by what seems to be, by what seems to have been, an utterly unique side-door. Yes. The real, rare Universe really starting up at last! And only decades later (if at all) does it strike one, with perhaps such a casual shock, that even the Universe of all these complexedly existing beings has originated in no more than a vast, chaotic collection of just such loosely inter-connected, intertwined side-doors, such almost secret entrances opening and closing, broadly together in general choreography, but hardly unified within any specifically shared principle – (mere survival as such?) – for everyone in this latest overwhelmingly unknown crowd too, whoever they may more particularly be.

And how many of them, for instance – at a guess, presumably bizimillions – how many of them might not at this more or less same moment as mine (as it happens) be permitting their attentions to ricochet through some trash- or treasure-filled drawer – this time actively searching for God knows what, if anything – only to stumble (dippity!) across (somewhere among all those, what, those usable but decommissioned keys, ripped-off buttons, guarantees and instruction booklets for long-since superseded domestic appliances, and batteries which no doubt still have a fair bit of life left in them (probably not all of it? (what? all of life? (rather more than I can claim for myself!))) – and what’s this next? – hmm: well, to be specific in one case at ...


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