'This is beginning, this is happening!'

'The world begins, not necessarily for the first time.

Not with a bang, but a tumble.  In the beginning was noise.  A cataract of worlds or entities rolling and cascading in fearful clatter.  The cosmic atom, the world-box, has disgorged.  Here is bursting galactic expansion into free area.  Avalanche of noise and bright color.  Not chaos, but thunderous exodus; and every particle bearing its own thunder sign.  This is beginning, this is happening!  Let no least part of it ever forget the primordial tumble that is the beginning!

Then, the stable state - and memory.  The first thought ever thought anywhere, anywhen:  It's as though I've been here before.'

-R. A. Lafferty, 'Symposium', collected in Omega, edited by Roger Elwood (1973)

There Was a Boy Who Built a Toy

'There was a boy who built a toy. It was a clever boy, and a clever toy that he built... "Go steal apples," the boy told the toy, and the toy did so. He brought back an armload in no time at all. "Go out to my best friend in the road there and knock him down," the boy-child said, and the toy did so. He knocked down the best friend, and in return he got himself bloodied up and battered. The child was delighted with what had happened to his best friend and to his toy. "Work out my language assignments for tomorrow," the child said, and the toy worked out all the constructions and translations of the Camiroi and Puca and Neo-Spanish assignments. "Drink," the child said, and the toy went and drank from the brook that ran beside the home-house. "Eat," the child said, and the toy ate the child up, every limb and light and bone and morsel of him.'

-R. A. Lafferty, Past Master (1968)