The Missing Mass

by Lew Sethics

The cops busted into the Salvadore Deli, guns drawn, and announced that scientists had determined that according to their calculations, about 90% of the mass of the Universe was missing, and they were looking for the Thief.
The Thief tried to run but was quickly apprehended, and confessed, and turned the missing mass over to the authorities.
And so, the missing mass was returned to its rightful place in the cosmos, and the universe behaved itself for a change.
With order restored, physicists were in a quandary.
“Order has befallen us!” they wailed, tenures blowing in the wind.
“This isn’t even high school algebra!” complained all, sensitive to the sudden accessability of the secrets of the universe to the masses of the merely… educated.
Scientific American featured an entire issue on the liberation of cosmology from the mathmatically elite to the grade school, with a special article that took you through the math.
Once everyone with a third grade education understood the workings of the cosmos, along with their reading. writing and arithmetic, things mellowed out a lot.
Religions were universally sanctioned by the writing on the elementary school wall: God is Action is Life is Thought is Philosophy is Science is Math is Music is Art is Magic is Religion is God.
Anyone who could do the math knew the secret of life and death, and there were many who made it their life’s work to make sure that everyone could do the math.
But, unfortunatly, to those who felt that they had a monopoly on spiritual salvation or some other claim to the souls of others, the New Order was a threat of Biblical proportions, to be dealt with accordingly.
And, suprisingly enough, although the threatened Fathers or Priests or Imams or Rabbis were as different as colors in the wind, they all pushed the Button at about the same time, and laid waste to the world they loved, and cleansed Mankind with fire, the way it was written.
But, those who died knew the Math, so it didn’t matter, and they had the last laugh, because those that lived, mostly Priests and their pets, had to suffer.
So, don’t you wish those damn cops wouldn’t have caught the Thief in the first place?
Let thet be a lesson to you.