Famous Misanthropes of Tomorrow

twisted tortured sheets and
pillows stuffed with feathers
fallen from countless flights
against the setting sun
with her midnight lovers
and her sky blue eyes
that held the sights of
storms and showers
between the equinoxes

a march of progress
into a pit

The coach

It started like this—no one gave a shit about the wrestling team. They were the outcasts of the school’s sport-industrial complex, looked down upon by the baseball players, ignored by the basketball team, even made fun of by football players—until Damon. He was a freshman trying out for the junior varsity team, when he wrestled the coach—an immense man, over 250 pounds, broad shouldered with an immense stomach, a grey goatee, and a tattoo of a flaming rose on his bicep, himself a former football player who had never gotten over the fact that his life had peaked at 19 and had been downhill ever since; rumors spoke of a car accident, an injury, physical therapy, walking with a cane before his 20s were over, a marriage to a pill-popping bride, the drowning of his first born in a pool, a nasty divorce, Alcoholics Anonymous, a string of increasingly less dignified coaching jobs, a growing waistline, a second-born who hadn’t spoken to him in a decade.

This was a man who consistently pretended that, despite being in his 50s and despite having a shattered kneecap that had sidelined his college football career and forced him to use that cane, pretended that the best was right around the corner, that the future would be bright because a call from the Dallas Cowboys was coming any day now, any second, a call that would finally draft him into the NFL where he would have a last late flash of glory in the sunset of his life.

This coach liked to ‘test’ the incoming freshmen when they tried out for his wrestling team by shaming each of them in front of their peers, casually tossing around the word ‘faggot’ as he used his immense bulk to pin them to the ground and leave them there until they began to gasp for breath. Damon wrestled this man to the ground in 15 seconds. It was so fast that the coach was in a neckbrace for a month and ultimately forced to retire.

"t-shirts of the rich and famous"

Another Kind of Paradise, 1

Eugene Green:
The alligator’s name was Molly. That was what we called her. It all used to be Everglades land, back a long time ago they, the engineers, drained the swamp and dug the canals to channel all the water so that you could build houses on habitable land. From the air the maze of canals cutting through the Florida suburbs like a glistening string of wet pearls. But up close, the canal water has a murky burnt brown color, like tea left steeping for days. And the smell—the water table was so high you could dig a hole in your backyard and within four or five feet it would start filling with water—you’d smell it every everyday when the sprinklers went off because it was the same water as the canal, like if you cracked an egg and smoke poured out of it.

When we were kids, the neighborhood was still being built, it was mostly sandy lots, a couple of box frames going up, and a few finished houses where the early residents lived. It was common for animals—fish, frogs, skinks and snakes, herons, alligators, someone even said they saw a shark once—to travel the waterways from the glades and find themselves lost in suburban backyards. Nobody worried too much about Molly. In fact, whenever there was a gator sighting, everybody would gather along the canal shore with binoculars and sandwiches, toasting frosted cans of cola in the thick, humid air—my sister not yet born, old Phil Carver with enough hair to still try the comb-over.

Damon tried to throw Molly a hot dog one time. It landed with a wet little plop that was hardly noticeable but still loud enough to halt all conversation on the shore. The neighbors froze, the kids sat up in attention, the parents looked around worried, all eyes finally settling on Damon. People started packing up their picnics, rolling up the towels and tablecloths they were sitting on. Damon’s dad looked at him in disbelief before he rushed down to the shore and used his t-shirt to try to fish the hot dog out of the canal before the alligator noticed meat in the water. Damon was maybe eight, watching his dad hustle out of the water shirtless and dripping, panting for breath. His old man threw the wet hot dog, reeking that canal smell, right at Damon. “Eat it,” he said and stormed off.

Damon was crying as my mom tried to explain to him that the alligators didn’t care about us, probably didn’t even realize we were gathered there to watch it or that we even existed at all—but you should never, ever feed one. Because once you fed an alligator, it was aware of your existence, it knew you were watching it, and it knew you had food. It would keep coming back for more. It would expect you to feed it. It would come to humans any time it was hungry. She started telling this story I’d never heard before, about these boys.

Joan Grossman-Green:
These boys—I think they were the Douglas twins, Jimmy and Bobby, but I’ll have to ask Susan about it, her boy was a friend with them. Anyways, over in Coral Acre,s the Douglas boys found a baby alligator in their canal. They brought it into their home to raise as a pet. As first it was all cute and playful, like a little scaly cat. But it gets bigger and they’re feeding it chicken nuggets and then hamburgers, keeping it in the backyard, in that nice hot tub they had by the swing set.

When it outgrew that, they tried to put it back in the canal. Tried to put it back in the Everglades, but it kept coming to their house, laying on their stoop in front of their door, waiting for food, for pork chops and steak. And so one day, Susan tells me that Mrs. Douglas, their mom, told Jimmy and Bobby that they had to stop feeding the gator because the family grocery bill was ballooning up to hundreds of dollars each week. And this animal is literally sleeping on their doorstep. The poor family had to sneak out through the back door or a side window. Until they stopped leaving the house at all. Susan said she was so worried, she was calling their house. Her son stopped seeing Jimmy and Bobby in class.

When the police arrived they found an alligator large as a pony in the house. It was in the boys’ bedroom, lying on the bunk bed wrapped in their Star Wars sheets, chewing their dismembered bodies. Skin made of steel, mouth full of razors, belly filled with flames. Don’t you ever, never feed one, Damon. Do you hear me? Molly is a cat that—when she comes looking for another snack and you disappoint—will tear you apart and eat you instead.

Remember, Damon—and Eugene, you listen to this too, you hear? You boys remember that the alligator didn’t just wander into our backyard. We’re strangers in her neighborhood.

Damon’s dad came back dressed in dry clothes, camo shorts and a t-shirt that said ‘I’d rather be a smart ass than a dumb shit,’ and stood there angrily. He sat down next to Damon, wiped the kid’s tears away, told him it would be all-right.

He handed Damon the stinking wet hot dog again, closing the boy’s fingers around it for him. Damon looked at the old man for a minute before he lowered his eyes and took a soggy bite.

Rejection letters, 2

Ryan,

Thank you for sending us “Limits of Oceans and Seas”, which was shortlisted for publication. Unfortunately our editors could not come to consensus and, upon careful consideration, decided the work wasn't a good fit for our next issue.

I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding a home for this piece and we certainly would be pleased to hear from you in the future.

Thanks again. Best of luck.

---

Dear Ryan Boyle,

Thank you for sending your manuscript to us at ––––– via the online submission manager.

After careful consideration, we regret that this submission does not meet the editorial needs of the journal at this time. We do hope you will send to us again in the future as we could not publish ––––– without the many quality submissions we receive.

Although we would like to send an individual response to everyone, the number of manuscripts we receive makes it difficult for editors to respond personally to each submission. Please know that we are devoted to giving each submission to ––––– at least three reads and an editor personally reads each submission. We do appreciate your interest in –––––, and the opportunity to consider your work.

Thank your for supporting our journal with your writing, reading, and subscribing.

Sincerely,

——————————————

---

Dear Ryan,

Thanks for giving us the chance to read your work; unfortunately, it doesn't meet our needs at this time. However, we promise that if you keep writing, we'll keep reading.

All the best,

The Editors

–––––––––––

---

We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it.

Sincerely,

The Editors

---

Dear Ryan Boyle:

Thank you for sending us "Common Features of Mammals in Captivity."

Unfortunately this particular work was not a right fit for
––––––––––––––, but we were very impressed by your writing. We hope that you'll consider sending more work to us soon.

We look forward to reading more.

Best regards,

–––––––––––––
Assistant Editor
––––––––––––––

---

Dear Ryan Boyle,

Thank you for sending your manuscript "Common Features of Mammals in Captivity," number 26652, to us here at –––––––––– via the online submission manager.

We are sorry this particular manuscript was not selected for publication in ––––––––––. We hope you will send us another soon, though. We could not publish –––––––––– without the fine writing submitted to us. While we regret that the large number of submissions we receive makes it difficult for the editors to respond personally, we want to emphasize that an editor personally read your manuscript. Devoted reading is part of the –––––––––– editorial mission; it is also our own personal one.

If this manuscript was a prize entry: we are sorry this prize entry was not selected for the –––––––––– fiction or poetry prize or for publication in ––––––––––. We receive many fine prize entries, so it was a difficult decision to make. Thank you for sending us your manuscript to read, and thank you for supporting the nonprofit –––––––––– with your entry's subscription. By the end of May we will announce the prize winners and finalists on the –––––––––– website, by e-mail list, and by SASE if you included one with your entry.

Thank you for supporting the journal with your reading, writing, and subscribing,
The Editors

---

Hi Ryan,

Thank you for your interest in –––––––––. We are going to pass on your
submission, but we hope that you will consider us again in the future.

Best,

–––––

Sasha Hathaway, 2

I didn’t expect to hear from Sasha ever again in my entire life. But she showed up knocking at my door the very next night. My mom answered the door and called me down and there was Sasha, her cheeks pale and her eyes outlined in red.

“My Dad is missing,” she said. Her father had looked worse and worse as the days passed and the tests mounted—rings growing dark around his eyes, mouth sagging into a worried frown. Since being laid-off, he mostly sat around the house in plaid shirts and read conspiracy theories on the Internet—so his being gone from the house for hours was strange.

“The phone rang,” Sasha said. “He looked like he was about to crumple into a ball. Then he hung up and left and he hasn’t been back since.” I looked across the street. The car was missing from the driveway. “He ran away. Just like mom.”

I told my mom we were going out for a bit. The streetlights were just coming on as we grabbed our bikes and set off. I tried to question Sasha about the phone call but she knew nothing. We stopped at all his favorite hangouts: the coffehouses and parks of our neighborhood, the pool halls, arcades, and bars around the docks. The sky grew darker with each stop, the air grew colder. No one had seen him.

We walked our bikes along the docks, our breath steaming into the air, the city lights pooling together on the surface of the bay.

“I give up,” she said. “I’ll live as an orphan.”

“You can live with us,” I said. “In the basement.”

“The basement? Yuck.”

“Ok, you can stay in my room.”

“Where will you stay, Andy?”

“The basement.”

“Yuck! No, we can share your room.”

I smiled. We were walking by the place where her dad used to work in better times, when he still managed the stevedores and smoked cigars as he watched the ships come in from far-off foreign ports—riding low in the water because of the weight of exotic goods—and watched them leave again for those same ports almost empty. Back when he came home every night to a wife and a healthy baby girl.

“Is that our car?” said Sasha, pointing into the gloom of an open warehouse. Sticking out of the shadows was the beige nose of the car I’d seen parked in Sasha’s driveway day after day. The engine was running. We checked the car and the dark warehouse and found that they were both empty. We heard a noise coming from the outside. The city lights reflected off the water like spirits, and we could see a man outlined in that dazzling light. He was sitting at the end of the pier, hunched over with his head in his hands.

We crept closer, careful not to let the boards of the pier creak. When we got close enough, we could see it was Mr. Hathaway.

“Sasha,” I whispered, pulling her sleeve. “Let’s go.”

She moved closer, looked she like she was about to speak to him but stopped. The noise we’d heard was clearer now, but still distant. It was sobbing. He wiped his eyes on the back of his hands, looked up at the moon, and told it he was sorry.

Rejection letters

from Diane Smith
to ryan
date Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 2:27 PM
subject Re: Grey Sparrow submissions

Dear Ryan,

Loved your writing--not a good fit for Grey Sparrow and please think of us again.

Best,
Diane Smith

---

from upstreet
to exadore@gmail.com
date Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 10:00 PM
subject Your submission to upstreet

Dear Ryan Boyle:

We’re sorry we can’t use "Limits of Oceans and Seas," which you submitted to upstreet number seven. We have received a great deal of work by writers who will not be included in the final selection, but certainly deserve to have their voices heard in other publications.

We wish you all the best with your writing; thank you for giving us the opportunity to read it.

The Editors

---

from Hayden's Ferry Review
to exadore@gmail.com
date Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 7:56 PM
subject Your submission to Hayden's Ferry Review


Dear Ryan Boyle:

We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but we will not be publishing your submission, "The Oral History of Impractical Devices." We wish you luck placing your work elsewhere.

Thanks very much for your interest in HFR!

Sincerely,
The Editors

---

from editor@barrierislandsreview.com
to exadore@gmail.com
date Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 9:46 AM
subject Your submission to Barrier Islands Review

Dear Ryan,

Thank you for sending us "Limits of Oceans and Seas". We are honored that you considered our publication worthy to receive your writing. We thank you for the opportunity to read your work, but we regret that we must pass on it at this time. After receiving so many equally wonderful submissions, it becomes impossible to print them all. Thus, we must make the painful choice between them.

However, due to the caliber of your submission, we invite you to submit new work next month. We wish you the best of luck in your authorial endeavors, and we hope to hear from you again soon.

Sincerely,
Rebecca Anne Renner
Barrier Islands Review

---

from awesome@pankmagazine.com
to exadore@gmail.com
date Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 11:44 PM
subject Your submission to PANK

Dear Ryan Boyle,

Thank you for sending us "Common Feature of Mammals in Captivity".

Unfortunately, while we very much enjoyed your writing, we didn't feel it was quite right for PANK. While we respectfully ask that you wait at least one month before submitting more work for our consideration, we do encourage you to keep us in mind for future submissions.

Sincerely,
Roxane

"He had discovered that the earth itself was breathing."

Definitely a human being

Kyle Tiller found the bloody remains in a field across the road from his house. Tiller, who was 16, called us breathless on the phone saying he'd heard a loud crash and we should get there immediately because we wouldn't believe what he'd discovered. "I think it's a person," he said.

Isaac Phillips and I rushed over on his moped. Isaac was only 15 but he was already nearly six feet tall and couldn't have weighed more than 130 pounds, his limbs stretched and spindly like mosquito legs. His head was topped with curly red hair and round glasses. His clothes never seemed to fit, pant cuffs always ending before socks began, jean jackets not quite making it to his waist. The moped was no different, and seeing him ride it around town reminded one of an adult on a child's tricycle, all elbows and knees projecting at odd angles.

When we got to Tiller's, we found the body was terribly mutilated, like a piece of fruit someone had given up trying to peel—bruised flesh coming off in sheets, jagged shards of broken bone piercing through uneven holes that slowly leaked their reward. Spreading around the body was a red halo that was melting the light frosting of snow on the ground and staining the soil beneath.

"Well, that's definitely a human being," I said as the three of us looked down at it.

"No shit," said Tiller. "It's wearing a shoe." We could also make out what appeared to be a belt and a pair of pants scattered through the mess. As far as we could tell, the rest of the body was unclothed.

Isaac, standing between us, pulled a small red camera from his pocket. "I've never seen a dead person before," he said. The flash reflected off the white snow around us, painting the body in lurid tones. "Looks like it was beaten by a team of baseball bats."

"Looks like Guernica." I said.

We speculated about what could have happened to him: piranha attack, hit and hit and hit and run, swallowed a cherry bomb, stood under a landing UFO, hit by a bulldozer ... or a steamroller, spontaneous combustion, pop rocks and soda. Tiller, his arms folded across his chest, pronounced with some confidence that it was a drug deal gone wrong, that they met in the woods around here all the time, this guy had probably cut the drugs with rat poison and they had taken their revenge by crushing him under a pile of cinderblocks and dumping the body here.

We heard something crunch in the snow behind us and my heart leapt. I immediately thought about the drug dealers, their teeth gleaming, eyes shadowed, returning to the scene of the crime to dispose of evidence, to dispose of witnesses. We turned to find a cop car pulling up—almost as bad—lights turning but siren silent.

"Aw shit!" said Tiller, waving at Isaac. "Put the fucking camera away. We're caught at the scene of a drug murder."

The cop said the same thing—"Aw shit"—as he got out of his car and caught sight of a smashed ribcage splayed out like broken keys on a piano. "What the hell happened?"

I watched the planes fly overhead and wished one of them would take me to California.

"A young man dancing, swiveling his hips. He has dark hair, short and slicked up a bit. He wears an unbuttoned band-collared jacket over a shirt with bold black-and-white horizontal stripes. Behind him, on either side, are a pair of barred frames, like prison doors."

Sasha Hathaway, 1

On the morning of September 10, Sasha Hathaway woke up with blood in her mouth.

She was thirteen years and three months old and, even though she lived across the street from me, there was a lot I didn’t know about her. I did not know what she wanted to be when she grew up. I did not know which boy had kissed her at the last church youth party. I did not know what she thought of me or why I couldn’t keep my eyes off her or why she smelled like a vanilla cake all day—even after gym class. Her powers were immense.

Here is what I did know: The boy she kissed was not Billy Costers—who she had a crush on. Her favorite game was Uno and her favorite night was taco night. Her mother had left six months ago, without a goodbye. She said 'my life is over' all the time, whenever something went wrong, whenever she got a C. And I know for certain that when she woke up that morning with her mouth full of blood she didn't realize her life really might be over soon.

"I tasted something funny," she said, wrinkling her nose that morning on the way to school. "Kinda bitter. I thought I was still dreaming. But then I sat up. It spilled out of my mouth all over my pajamas and my sheets."

I wasn’t paying that much attention, I was thinking about her lips, how they seemed like they were made out of cotton and down, the stuff of bonnets and blankets, how they seemed like the softest, most delicate things imaginable, how if I could just find the nerve, just reach out and…

She spit on the sidewalk and wiped her chin with the back of hand.

I’d never seen her do anything so rude and it surprised me. "Totally gross," she said and I nodded at her. "No," she said, seeing my shocked face. She pointed at a wet red stain on the pavement. "Andy, it's still happening."

I spent the day at my desk, staring at her back—thinking about her hair, pulled back behind a headband, still the longest, prettiest hair of anyone in school, like a waterfall of ink spilling from her scalp—while she stared at Billy Costers. She seemed uncomfortable in class all day, holding a napkin to her mouth and taking frequent trips to the bathroom, but she didn’t mention the blood again.

We walked home silently after school. Her dad was waiting for her at the front door when we got home, holding the bloody pajamas in his hand. He had a worried look on his face, under the scruffy beard he started growing after Sasha’s mom left but before he was laid-off from the factory. He mostly sat around the house in plaid shirts and read conspiracy theories on the internet.

“Go home, Andy,” he said to me. He turned to Sasha, clutching the blood-stained cloth in his fist. “Is it woman problems?”

“Oh god,” said Sasha, turning bright red. “My life is over.”

“You can tell me if it is. Maybe it’s time we talking about … you know, birds. Things adults do. We can go to the lady doctor.”

“Andy,” said Sasha, without turning to me. “Go home.”

This would make great flap copy for a novel that has not yet been written: "Little fish spread their wings, pets on hormones, and the modern art detectives."

write a story about failed attempts at utopia. maybe seperate them by age, but link them by theme: the shakers, the 1960s, today.

"we're like those uncharted continents in the sky, clouds passing before the sun. we are vast and unknowable, billowing in many directions at once, capable of either drifting peacefully or exploding into great fits of grey violence. but in the end we are only mist, molecules of water that happen briefly and coincidentally to exist in the same place at the same time—but not forever. we are only mist, capable of being pulled apart, capable of disappearing completely in the face of the wrong gust of wind or the slightest change in pressure. and yes, sometimes we do get to bathe in that bright warm sun but other times, we cover it up completely."

wandering through the night while bodies disintegrate.

"The Great American Memory Hole"

"We all went to bed that night in the same world in which we had woken up."

The Zookeeper's Daughter, 2

June 14, evening.
Edie was knocking on my door. She was dressed in jean shorts and a tight blue shirt that was unbuttoned a little too low. The skin of her chest was empty and soft like the underside of her arms. There was a hint of blush on her, a dash of red blood swirling behind her little cheeks. Eyeliner was driven in a perfect line across her lids but her lipstick was smudged.

“I need meat,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Can I borrow some money?”

"Didn't your parents leave you any?"

"They're not dead yet."

"No, I meant while they're away."

"Yeah but I'm almost out and I need food. A lot of food. I'm really hungry. You wouldn't believe how hungry I am. I could eat a horse, or elk. I could eat an ostrich. I am so hungry right now."

"I can make you something if you want. Sandwich? Linguini?"

"That's really nice but a $50 bill would be nicer.”

“And what do I get in return?”

She smiled, leaning on the doorframe. “Anything you want,” she said.

“Your lipstick is smudged,” I said.

“Shit. Where’s the bathroom?” She pushed past me into the house and disappeared around a corner. When she came back out, she lifted her glasses to the crown of her head and batted her eyelashes up at me. Her lipstick was perfect, her shirt was unbuttoned even lower.

“So what do I have to do to get some money?” she said.

“Did you just unbutton the top of your shirt?” I asked.

“No.” She took a step towards me. “I really need that meat,” she said.

“But its unbuttoned,” I said. I took a step back. “I can see your sternum.” She giggled a little in a way that seemed like it was supposed to come off sexy and innocent at the same time, but was just fake instead.

“Are you hitting on me?” she said, taking another slow step.

“Are you not wearing a bra?”

“Of course not.” She touched my arm.

“This is getting weird,” I said.

“You’re telling me.”

I handed her a $50 bill.

June 16, sometime before dawn.
There was a scream in the night, a roar that shook the windows like the breath of some dread monster shuddering down the darkened streets. I looked out the window—trying to catch sight of anything that could have made that paralyzing sound—but the street was blank and empty.

A light blinked on in the Owens house across the street, then turned off just as quickly, leaving the neighborhood suddenly bathed in the wet light from the river of stars above, tributaries twisting through the dark.

I left the house, went out to the street. I wondered if I had heard anything at all, if it had been imagined, a figment fluttering across a dream but I could still remember what it sounded like: low, dense and rising, ringed with fangs and sorrow.

I strained my ears hoping to hear anything, to catch some last echo springing back off the houses. Instead I heard movement in the Owens house. The light blinked on again, casting a soft yellow rectangle across the lawn. I ducked close to the garage. A girl’s shadow passed through the rectangle. I could smell something, something thick and wild, bloody almost. It was coming from the garage.

I checked the side door. It was unlocked. The smell inside the garage was rich and dirty. Dark shapes seemed to swing in the gloom. There was a clatter of chains twisting. I blindly searched for the switch. The light turned on to reveal stacks of meat on a tarp, animal carcasses swinging from hooks over pools of blood, waiting to be butchered. Sides of beef, legs of lamb and of pork, streaked with rich veins of fat. What could have been maybe ostrich, maybe elk. What might have been horse. Waiting to be eaten. A large freezer hummed in the corner.

I left the garage and realized that for the first time I could remember the house was silent. Edie’s laugh spilled softly out of the illuminated window, as if to underline the silence.

Looking for God in the Particles

A thousand physicists working together at the National Accelerator Laboratory, draped in lab coats and standing in a dignified line, reported in Paris on Monday that they had not found the "God particle"—yet. But they are beginning to figure out where It is not.

One by one, the physicists in the line offered places where It is not found: in the dripping rocks of caverns underground, said one; in the visible breath emitting from a warm mouth on a sunless winter day, said another; and It most certainly could not be found on a beach at night watching the reflection of the moon play across on the tips of the waves. The scientists as a group, all 1,000 of them nodding their heads in unison, can confirm that the God particle was completely undetectable from a sidewalk on a hill watching the sun rise.

They can say with 95% certainty that Its mass—in the units preferred by physicists—is not in the range between 158 billion and 175 billion electron volts. They can confirm that the Grand Canyon was untouched by the God particle, the Amazon rainforest barren. And even though it is theorized that the particle created the mass for all these things to exist, It was found in none of them.

Over the last decade physicists working on two separate experiments have combed the debris from a thousand trillion collisions of protons and anti-protons looking for signs of this God particle, the Higgs boson, which is said to be responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass. In 1964, Peter Higgs, a shy scientist in Edinburgh, explained how two classes of particles which now appear to be different—energy and mass—were once one and the same. His theory proposed the existence of a single particle responsible for imparting mass to all things—a speck so important and precious It has come to be known as the "God particle," the particle that set the universe in motion. This imbuing of mass happened in the moments after the Big Bang, as the universe expanded and cooled, and thus eventually led us to the Big Bands of the 1930s. Yet so far no one has been able to find the Higgs boson in the stream of debris emitted when two particles are smashed together at high speeds, or at the top of a mountain above the clouds on a crisp windless day.

Rumors abounded in recent months that God could be found in the fossil record, in shapes left in ancient rock by trilobites and jellyfish, crocodiles and ferns. That It could be found somewhere deep in the human brain, buried under mountains of grey folds and pulsing with electricity. That It could be found in math or language, in music or in dance. And yet the scientists on this small stage in Paris debunked them all.

The new results, combining the data from two separate experiments, narrow the range in which the Higgs, if It exists, must be hiding. Physicists had previously concluded that It must lie somewhere 115 billion and 200 billion electron volts. By comparison, a proton, the anchor of ordinary matter, weighs in at about a billion electron volts. Other previous predications by physicists included that It might lie somewhere between the scales of a fish, or in the air beneath the wings of a falcon, that God could perhaps be found in the darkest, deepest, densest part of the bottom of the bottom of the sea, in a hole somewhere miles below civilization, hidden from the light.

Theories do exist that do not anticipate the God particle at all, described elsewhere as the Higgsless model. Scientists who supposed the Higgsless model explained that perhaps we are free to our own fate, to make our own decisions. Perhaps we are free to indulge our whims and find the embodiment of God, Its very idea, to exist only in ourselves and our desires, to exist in the ecstasy we can generate in our own lives.

But the scientists on the stage in Paris that night refused to believe this existential notion, that we could possibly be alone in this world, unwatched by the Higgs boson or anyone else, unobserved by the heavens. One of them—in the back near the end of the line, outside the illumination of the stage spotlights—chimed up to posit the possible existence of whole families of Higgs bosons, as opposed to a single Higgs particle of the Standard Model—whole families of gods existing together, flocks of angels and cherubs, swarms of demons and imps swimming together in the cosmos, breathing mass into benighted particles. Another scientist mentioned that perhaps there is some kind of Higgs trinity, that perhaps Higgs boson has a son.

Proof of the Higgs boson would provide us with some hope and solace that beauty and unity really do exist—however rare they may seem in our world—at the very foundation of the universe, at the very center and source of all has existed and all that ever will. And so, said the lead scientist downcast, his lab coat drooping nearly to the floor of the stage, the most intensive particle hunt in the history of physics must go on.