Danny Reyes is the property of Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss.
God, Man and Cats
Ivo said Danny was like a cat, it didn't matter where he was – office, home, hotel, car, cabin – he'd curl into a ball and nap. Danny said he did his best thinking that way, when he had less stimulation. He could create an entire story from a single blade of grass bending in the breeze but when he was bombarded with sensory input, it was too much. His mind just shut down. Cats were the smart ones. Less is more, etc.
Ivo wasn't sure why this comeback irritated him. Perhaps he was tired of young people questioning everything he said; they argued from the depths of ignorance, not learned profundity. Perhaps he did not then share Danny's affection for felines. Perhaps he was just lonely and wanted Danny's attention. At any rate he sniffed and said actually, creation was apocalyptic – glacial ice storms and volcanic eruptions everywhere and meteors smashing into the surface of the earth, billions of molecules colliding at rapid rates in inhospitable conditions. That was how it was meant to be. Origins were best found in muddy waters, not silent rooms. Man's attempts to clarify the process in simple equations were futile; creation life itself was complex and did not render to simplicity. (He said it in a rather haughty voice that would have upset Tim, who always felt pitifully ignorant vis-a-vis a professor. Danny however understood him and wrote it off as a passing bad humor.)
Aloud, Danny said if things could not be understood or clarified, there was really no point in doing all that research, was there? Might as well stick with the Biblical account and call it a day. Then Ivo could start enjoying life - like a cat.
Ivo thundered, nonsense! Studying life as it evolved was inherently fascinating and that alone made the time spent on earth worthwhile. Learning was intrinsically rewarding and just because they didn't have answers yet, just because they had been more wrong than wrong in the past was no reason to assume that man would not continue to evolve to a higher intelligence and produce even more interesting suppositions. Why look at how far they had gotten since Ptolemy! He lived for the day when his own intellect was sub-par (Danny doubted that but diplomatically held his tongue.)
Danny said if there was no God, if man's existence was chance occurrence with no purpose, living was pointless; life forms simply appeared and disappeared, an endless cycle of birth and death for no reason whatsoever. Ivo sighed in exasperation with such a "layman's point-of-view" so Danny asked if he would feel the same way if another chance violent occurrence should alter his own existence, say if Danny was struck dead by lightning? Would that experience be intrinsically interesting?
Ivo didn't answer, didn't even want to consider such a terrible possibility. He pouted and said he didn't understand why Danny felt the need to provoke him. Why couldn't they just live peacefully like other couples?
Danny smiled indulgently, having won the argument. "Because love is a very complex thing," he murmured seductively.