The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2548 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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The next day after work, I came home with the girls intent on making a decision on who I would shortlist. I made the girls a drink and a biscuit and after pouring a cup of tea, went down to my study with the file of applicants.

I needed a list of no more than five, and that was going to tough to interview. Stella had agreed to help, but I felt we needed three and was tempted to ask Tom or Simon except I knew they’d decline. Sammi wasn’t interested and Julie was too busy, which left Phoebe or Jacquie. When I asked Phoebe, she was horrified and said she’d go with my choice. Jacquie was my last hope and she reluctantly agreed to sit in on the panel. I suspect she felt a little embarrassed as the last time she’d been involved in interviewing at the house, she was one of the candidates.

Trish wandered into my study and asked what I was doing. When I told her she asked if she could help. I had picked three and needed two more. Trish picked out each application and scanned it. Then she did so again and handed me a form, “This one,” she said.

“Why?”

“She writes neatly, I can almost read it.” She was holding it upside down.

“Okay,” I placed the application with the other three short listed.

“This one,” Trish almost seemed in a trance as she handed it to me. “Billie likes her.”

“I hope you’re not joking,” I said taking the final letter.

“I’d never joke about my sister, Mummy. I loved her too much.” With that, she left the room quite quickly and I hoped I hadn’t upset her.

I wasn’t sure what I thought about what had just transpired, had she just communicated with Billie? I found it all confusing, talking with the dead—not just talking to them like we all do at times when we think of our departed loved ones—but conversing with them, as Trish claims to do. Then this business with the goddess, just blows my mind. I’m a rational human being and scientist to boot. There is no evidence, real evidence for the existence of gods or goddesses, they’re an invention of ancient minds trying to explain things their primitive technology couldn’t to people who were even less clever.

Natural forces are not the result of some ancient god flexing his muscles but the demonstration of the laws of physics. We understand the basis for so much more things like tidal waves and volcanoes, the creation of stars and planets, perhaps even the birth of the universe itself and possibly echoes of previous ones. We can’t yet explain dark matter or dark energy, but we’re getting there.

In medicine, surgeons do amazing things to the human body, which even twenty years ago would have been thought impossible. Many more people are surviving cancer and various other previously lethal diseases, thanks to science not divine intervention.

I know we seem programmed to believe in metaphysical things and see them with a sense of awe. I only have to see a starlit sky or the dawn of a new day, a sunset, the seeming miracle of new life in the birth of animals or humans, or the production of seeds in a flowering plant. It’s so easy to cop out and consider the intelligent design theory or the g-word to explain it. God doesn’t make mistakes—no? He works through nature doesn’t He? The faithful nod, and evolution demonstrates that nature works with trial and error through natural selection and most of its experimental prototypes become extinct very quickly. Even long established species can disappear if environmental conditions change adversely. Trilobites were here for millennia, there aren’t any now. Every species is fated to become extinct eventually, leaving the door open for others to fill the niche they exploited. Man could delay the inevitable because he’s cleverer than most other creatures and is possibly the first creature to predict the future and thus be able to adapt his environment artificially.

Having said that, looking at many of my fellow humans and the way they live, I suspect there is little chance of us surviving extinction probably caused by our own activities. From the earth’s point of view that might not be a bad thing as we seem to contaminate all we touch. I just hope in our passing we don’t cause further mass extinctions of innocent creatures, though nature does it all the time.

Turning back to my short list, I put together a pack which Delia could do for me tomorrow and send out to the lucky candidates. Stella and I agreed a date for the interviews two weeks from the Saturday and they would be here, at the house. I told Si and Tom what we were going to do and I think Si grumbled something about the Six Nations starting. The look I gave him meant he withdrew the comment instead muttering something about watching it down the rugby club. A bit of a change from the previous night when he was so supportive of me. I suppose it wasn’t clashing with his precious rugger, but if I become ill through overwork or stress, he’ll have to help instead of watching sport—though that will be my own fault, like it always is. He’s just like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead—when she was good she was very very good and when she was bad, she was horrid.

At dinner I became acquainted of another glorious failure, we Brits do it better than anyone. This involved the Mars rover Beagle 2. It was due to land on Mars in 2003 and they thought it had crashed. They now think it landed but some of the solar panels failed to deploy and there wasn’t enough power to erect the radio antenna and report back to earth. So near and yet so far, and so sad that the man behind the project died not knowing how close he’d come. Had it worked, everyone would have been praising him and his team, it failed so we add it to the long list of things we nearly got right.

Like the landing on the asteroid last year, I think these were achievements we should be celebrating with pride. Compared to the larger space agencies, we did these things on a shoe string and the techniques they utilised are now the basis for the latest generation of planetary exploration.

Trish was very taken with the story and went off to explore it in cyberspace while the rest of us drank a toast to Beagle-2 and its departed inventor. “I’d love to be involved with the IT for something like that,” sighed Sammi.

“Just make our bank secure first,” quipped Simon.

“That’s like painting the Forth Bridge,” complained Sammi meaning it was an endless task, and a team of painters and maintenance engineers used to complete it then start again at the other end.

“I think you’ll find they painted it with some new stuff which means they won’t have to do it again.” I informed those remaining at the table.

“Oh,” beamed Sammi, “there might be a chance for me yet then.”

“I’m sure stranger things have happened,” I replied smiling back and thinking about my thoughts earlier and the human tendency to believe in the supernatural rather than investigate the cause of an event scientifically.

“You don’t think the Beagle was shot down by Martians, do you?” Simon brought the conversation back down to his schoolboy level. I’m sure there must be two of him, last night I got the angelic one, today his devilish twin brother. Ho hum.