DARK MATTER RESUME

By Lorraine Schein

Content Warnings: None.

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PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY:

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Helped create galaxies and stars. I make up 80% of the universe. I contain WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), who are too weak and shy to interact with anyone. Well, someone has to protect them. 

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OBJECTIVE: To hold universe together and confound humans.

HISTORY:

14 billion–2 billion years ago: This was about when the universe began, say your Earth physicists. They theorize I might have been created then. I don’t remember, it was all too long ago. The physicists don’t know how I came into being – and I certainly don’t. Who can remember that far back? It’s all a haze…. Maybe I was drunk or sleeping. No one was around to notice me anyhow. Well, maybe God, if he existed then. I’m spiritual, but not a believer.

Some say I was really created to hide the First Movers, otherworld inhabitants of me who don’t want you to see them.

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1932–1939: Scientists discovered me. Jan Oort noticed and named me in 1932, said I was responsible for the orbital velocities of stars in the Milky Way. In 1933, Fritz Zwicky said I was to blame for the missing mass in the orbital speed of galaxies. More evidence for me was discovered by Horace W. Babcock in 1939, but he wasn’t sure it was my fault. He thought I was just an anomaly in the Andromeda galaxy.

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1960s–1970s: The first to propose me based upon real evidence was Vera Rubin – clever woman! She used galaxy rotation curves to discover me. It felt good to be appreciated and showed me that not all humans are stupid. 

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1980s–Present: They used to think my particles were bad and created cancer. Or worse – that I didn’t exist! That I was just an error in their calculations! This was discrimination against dark beings like me and my queer pal, Dark Energy, across the universe! D. E. is also still undiscovered – we hang out together and mystify you Earthlings. We proclaim our equal right to exist, even if you think we don’t! (We are still deciding on our preferred pronouns.)

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Lately in this more enlightened century, the nicer physicists think I might be a very cold quantum fluid, like a wave. 

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Hobbies: Surfing, lurking, writing mysteries, dream habitation and decoration, helping SF writers and conspiracy theorists, being an ancient object of worship, hiding the hidden.

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REFERENCES:

Albert Einstein. I provided clues for his General Theory of Relativity.

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Stephen Hawking. Collaborator and co-author on A Brief History of Time. 

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God. Assisted with dividing the light from the darkness. Also helped him form and evolve galaxies. 

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(I have no contact information for these beings, but try a Ouija board or Google Maps.)

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Aliens. They have discovered more about me than you humans have but are hard to reach and may not be able to write a letter of recommendation in a knowable language. You may be able to locate them on their home-world exoplanets with your new James Webb telescope. 

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Photographs unavailable, but I am on Ghostagram and Faceless-book. 

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I am also available for Zoom interviews – but only on mute, without video.

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Lorraine Schein: 

Lorraine Schein is a NY poet and writer. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, NewMyths and Mermaids Monthly and in the anthologies Aphrodite Terra, Tragedy Queens and Wild Women. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from mayapplepress.com. Her new book is The Lady Anarchist Café, a collection of poetry and fiction, published by Autonomedia - find out more via Autonomedia and Amazon.