Darkness
a novel ( Amazon )
CHAPTER ONE
Jews, von Neumann and darkness
My girlfriend, Eunice, got killed and that was only the start of a whole series of disastrous events. It had never crossed my mind that I, who am such a peaceful and harmless man, could get entangled in a situation like that. But I did, - I certainly did - and will tell you about that, too, but first; here are some lines to give you a rough idea of who I am.
I am Ruben. Ruben Rosenstein. Way back in History, my kin were Orthodox Jews. Nowadays nobody in my family cares anything about religion or ethnicity. And I am not calling myself a Jew. I simply was born into a family that other people think of as Jewish. Many Jews, also famous ones, like for instance Sigmund Freud, left the Jewish faith. Albert Einstein is another and Oppenheimer as well as his co-worker on the Manhattan Project, John von Neumann.
I am a fan of von Neumann, so I know. It has been said about John von Neumann that there has never been such an intelligent man ever walking on the face of Earth as he. He was a living, walking encyclopedia, and he participated substantially in the development of computer science, which in turn could ensure that there would never be another von Neumann. Nobody can have an encyclopedic knowledge in the time of artificial intelligence. He said, and we will indulge a bit into this later, that “there is no use being precise, if you don´t know what you are talking about.”
Probably, he said many wiser things, too. However, we will still grossly consider this small epigram, and the secularized “universal genius” John von Neumann will play a specific strange part in the story you are about to read...
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I live in Florida, in Tampa, which is the town where I was born and always have been living. In Greater Tampa, there live about four million people. It is a flat town, and it is packed with houses and cars. There are roads and parking lots almost everywhere. You will probably never see as many cars as in Tampa. In the harbor, thousands of tourists mingle on ferries and electric boats every season, and the weather is superb from July to November. There is a small zoo with lion cubs and orangutans or an Adventure Park almost every hundred yards. We have thousands of places where they are selling unhealthy hamburgers, advertising their existence along the five file roads. The entire city area is tourist-oriented, and people mostly are friendly and helpful. Twice yearly, at least, a typhoon also comes along. I like calling them typhoons.
Often when people leave their houses to put themselves into safety, their homes get ransacked by burglars. It is as if Mother Nature had an alliance with the burglars.
I still to this day, think that this is the truth about the Florida hurricanes.
My apartment on the fifth floor at a Student´s Resort center in Tampa, Florida, was minuscule - 25 m2-, but had recently been refurbished. I had even got my own small washing machine with centrifuge function.
My dwelling in South Tampa would host my thoughts about darkness this summer. Why darkness? I have to talk a little about darkness. Well, these are the facts: