Bioflash: "Meeting in the Aisle"

Twenty-three years—that’s the last time he had seen Vera, her face flushed and skin glowing. Now, she pushed a cart with fruit loops and spaghettiOs. A girl of ten or eleven, platinum blonde just like her mom, trailed after Vera.

He noticed her face, hardened somehow, the skin tighter. Softness is what he remembered; smooth cheek, supple breast. This gaunt mother gave him—her past life—a brief glance, an old building long-since torn down and built anew.

He watched her move away, rubbed clammy hands on a pant leg, and emptied his basket at the self-service checkout.

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Bioflash archives

Bioflash: "The Life of Blood"

Arteries and veins—our fluid freeways—provide a direct line from the lungs to every living cell. One red blood cell shuttles a billion oxygen in its donut-shaped disc, stacking capillaries with the breath of life. No DNA guides this cell. Born in the bone marrow, he is slave to a merciless heart. One hundred days later, broken and beaten, the red blood cell disassembles. A new car is made from his old parts, this vital transport racing along dilated vessels. And so blood flows with every beat, carrying life from lung to tissue, artery to vein, heart to cell.

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Bioflash archives

Bioflash: "Broken"

The bus from Williams Lake was late.

Stu sat in the idling car, waiting for his son. They hadn’t spoken in over ten years. What could he say? What possible comfort could this old curmudgeon offer?

The bus finally pulled in. Tim was one of the last to get off. Stu saw it in his eyes, and held back tears last shed twenty-nine years ago. Tears for his son’s birth. But this time, birth had taken two lives.

Stu said nothing and hugged his son hard. He held him for a long time, but he did not cry.

Bioflash: "Microscope"

This crystal ball waits in the biology lab, ever-patient in her mounting curiosity. Through her glasses the world is clear: a beaming, unblemished full moon. Lenses and light make the invisible visible, the tiny titanic. One dot resolves into two, one cell a bustling city of constant construction, movement and repair. To an observer, looking through a window at the building blocks of life, the small appears infinite, like God staring down at his divine elements, mesmerized by the miracle of his makeup. Thus, this optical opus blesses the naked eye with the power to gaze into creation itself.

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Bioflash: "Destiny's Fate"

“Don’t worry, be happy,” said Fate. “What will be will be.”

Destiny shook his head. “How can you say that? Luck is something you make.”

“Excuse me,” said Luck. “I was made by the divine.”

“I guess that makes me a heathen,” said Chance.

“Fortune favours the bold,” said Fortune boldly.

“You would say that,” Freewill said to Fortune. “It is the choices in life that are important.”

“Only the ones I make,” said Fate.

Destiny smiled. “And you make those choices because of me.”

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Bioflash: "Gravitational Waltz"

In her fullness the moon shines, touching water without touching, the gentle caress of a distant lover. Sunlight ripples on the ocean, solar rays reflecting off Luna—a mirror for a star.

Eternal waves slide over a shifting shoreline, tides drawn to the glowing sphere above. One circles the other in a coy dance, always reaching for what is out of reach.

The sea waits for Luna’s nightly visits. Sometimes she wears a crescent smile, or shows her wide, beaming teeth, and once a month she disappears completely. But the sea always waits. Luna gives her life.

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My writing companion this morning...

Bioflash: "Centrifuge"

The Great Beings lived above space and time. They saw universes the way a whale considers a grain of sand. One of these Beings became curious, much like a human scientist.

“Let’s spin a universe in a centrifuge!”

So he ground down a universe with a giant mortar and pestle and spun it at a trillion G’s. Stars settled near the top, comets further down. A dark pellet of iron and nickel—planetary cores—clumped at the bottom of the centrifuge tube.

Picking up his mortar, he cleaned out the crushed remains of the Milky Way and started again.

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Bioflash: "When Trees Fight Back"

When the trees decided to reclaim the planet, the great firs dropped cones onto human heads. Moss released spores full of bacteria. Sword ferns claimed their namesake.

But humans proved surprisingly resilient. Even falling coconuts didn’t deter them.

Flowers released hyperallergenic pollen, but could not defeat Benadryl. Angiosperms stopped producing fruit, but apples and oranges were replicated in laboratories. Finally, plants slowed photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide started suffocating the air.

Humans had only one choice. Give up their cars, factories and air conditioners.

Thus began, amidst a long and quiet verdancy, the Great Age of Green.

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More of Gaia's creations...