10-Stop Interactive Blog Tour & Giveaway - Deus Tex Machina: The Second Calamity of QED Morningwood by Rob Witherspoon

DEUS TEX MACHINA

The Second Calamity of QED Morningwood

by Rob Witherspoon

Science Fiction / Humor / Satire

Pages: 163

Publication Date: June 13, 2022

SYNOPSIS

QED "Kid" Morningwood is back with big plans to create a death tourism industry. Working with his old Metaphysics professor from Texas Alchemical and Metaphysical University, he delves the purgatorial realms gathering data for his venture. Standing in their way is university president T. Smedley Stalwart and his band of religious zealots - the Ancient and Loyal Order of the Holy Armadillo. FBI agents Flockham and Morales return to infiltrate and monitor ALOHA.

With the help of brilliant metaphysical engineer Yong Mi Hernandez, safety inspector Conrad Dopplebock, and guided by the wisdom of Cotton Widdershins, the Deus Tex Machina is a success. Sort of.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Witherspoon was born and raised in rural Texas. He earned a BA in Physical Education, UT Arlington 1985 and a BS in Aerospace Engineering, UT Arlington 1990. He lives in north central Texas with his wife and youngest daughter and has spent much of his life in rural communities and on the ranch.

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EXCERPT

from

Deus Tex Machina by Rob Witherspoon 

While Kid filled in the amended amount, Dr. Wye said, “I’ve never seen such a thing as that pig toppling over. What did you do to it?”

The hog trapper spit a gob of tobacco juice at a hog who stuck its snout through the cage and said, “You tell him, Kid. You know the story better’n I do.”

Kid ripped out the check and gave it to Baldy, then drew breath, his mind churning through facts, hearsay, legends, and apocrypha. “That’s what you miss living in the city: the wonders of nature, the variety of flora and fauna, the mysteries of Darwinian evolution.”

Cotton hopped onto the tailgate and got comfortable. Of course, Kid knew the story better than anyone. He most likely made it up himself. This short preamble BS about nature and Darwin was one of Kid’s tricks to buy time while he fabricated a story.

“These are asymmetric migratory feral pigs,” Kid began. “Their left legs are longer than their right legs. It all stems from an event back in 1852, when immigrant Cyrus Ivanovichesky brought a shipload of Russian hogs into the port at Puta Guapa, down on the Gulf.”

“Cyrus unloaded the hogs and fed them a few days to let them recover from the long ocean voyage and then drove them north, up the Dos Flores river to Heelstring. He kept to the river, forcing the hogs to negotiate the slope of the riverbank. Since the valley runs north to south, the pigs had their right legs on the high side and their left legs on the low side. Now, when Cyrus got the pigs to Heelstring, he forded the La Rosa and then the La Margarita and settled just west of what is now Shana Doo’s entertainment district.”

Kid squatted on his haunches and peered into the cage. “Cyrus, exhausted from the trip from Russia, crossing the Atlantic and up through the heart of Texas, succumbed to a fever and died, leaving his hogs orphaned. It didn’t take long for those pigs to bust outa the pen and wander back downriver to Puta Guapa. On the southern portion of the journey, since they were now on the opposite side of the river, their left legs were again on the low side and their right legs were on the high side.” Kid pointed at dozens of pig’s feet shuffling in the trailer. “With equal length legs, the pigs kept trending downward to the river, except for a few born with a peculiar abnormality that turned out to their advantage. Hogs with slightly longer left legs traveled straighter and faster and were less likely to end up in the river and drown. When the survivors reached Puta Guapa, they forded the river to where Cyrus had them penned a year before. They mated, farrowed litters and headed back upriver to Heelstring. The cycle repeated over a hundred generations of pigs and now we have a species of pigs unique to Texas whose left legs are two inches longer than their right legs.” He squatted level to the trailer floor and pointed into the cage.

Dr. Wye hunkered down next to Kid and looked horizontally into the trailer, noticing how, at rest, half the pigs faced forward, and half faced rearward and the two groups leaned inward against each other to prevent falling over.

“To catch them,” said Kid, “you dig a bowl-shaped pit about forty feet across and chase them toward it. Once they cross the lip, they circle counterclockwise, like water down an Australian drain, until they pile up at the bottom. You don’t have to wrestle one to the ground. All you have to do is tilt the ground far enough for them to lose their balance and fall over.”

Cotton jumped down and hobbled over to Dr. Wye. He poked the sleeping porker with his stick.

“I envy this pig,” said Cotton. “He enjoyed a restful nap and missed Kid’s story. If he’d been awake to hear it, it likely would’ve rendered him unfit for psychological experimentation.”

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