The Atheist | Muse Harbor Publishing

“The Atheist is an examination of big spiritual and philosophical issues with insights that are thought-provoking and, at times, quite brilliant.”

— Natasha Bauman,
Author of The Disorder of Longing

Author and lecturer, Dr. Arthur Moore, has made a credible name for himself in books and interviews by denouncing faith, advocating science and reason and clashing with the voices of America’s increasing religious majority. Despite his public success, he has made far more enemies than friends and struggles to maintain relationships with his homosexual son and the people in his life. After a freak tragedy leaves him briefly, clinically dead, a chance encounter brings him to privately question his worldly and cosmic perspectives. Arthur struggles with a newfound understanding of himself, and (finds himself) along a path that offers consequences for those he loves, and one he must inevitably reconcile with his established public image.

About the Author
It was at the tender age of 7 that an interconnection of cells and organs called Mike Robinson (then Mikey) penned, or pencilled, his first story. Called “Aliens In My Backyard!”, it went on to become a runaway bestseller, topping international charts (or maybe that just happened in his imagination, too).

Although he has since worked as an independent videogame producer and cinematographer, writing has always been the focal point of his creative life, although to him the phrase “creative life” sounds a tad redundant. His first professional sale, a short story entitled “The Hand of Spudd”, appeared in Storyteller Magazine when he was 19. Since then, his work has appeared in a dozen magazines, anthologies and podcasts. In 2006, he was one of five guys comprising GLAWS, the Greater L.A. Writers Society, which has since become the second largest writers’ group in Southern California. He’s the editor of “Literary Landscapes”, the society’s publication. See more at: www.glaws.org

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THE ATHEIST
(A Sneak Peek) • • •

.....He has lost something—that is his first thought. A weight has been shed, but he does not know its origin, nor does he feel compelled to move, imagining in his newfound lightness he might be unable to control the length and speed of his movement, much as sliding on ice. His vision is hazy, but within the haze he discovers a sphere of clarity expanding and burning away whatever had blinded him. Does he have eyes? Somehow he recognizes these are not the eyes to which he is accustomed. They are grander. They are telescopic, microscopic, periscopic. They plumb dimensions yet unseen. They are privy to a singular, lighted architecture supporting all things, animating all forms. .....He knows this place. He knows the haunted and sterile white walls, the bustling movement of deft figures masked and gowned, and the constant shifting interplay of life and death. This place, he realizes while moving cautiously down the hallway, this place is still where gods are daily embraced and daily abandoned. He can see their reactions, the waiting people and the visitors, the doctors and the nurses, all their emotive outpouring rippling like water across the liquid tissue of whatever realm he now walks. .....He sees his own visage before him, almost a reflection, except he is burned and gray, almost shriveled. That is me. But it is not. He observes the frantic shadow-party as the doctors work to give him color once more. But he knows color now, color far more vibrant than any produced by the crudeness of rods and cones. Don’t fret too much, he thinks to the people around his body, and he sees the ripple of his thought, a creasing wave in space. .....Don’t work yourselves to death. .....The colors are growing brighter, their luminosity an audible thing, a choir of hue and shade. Within his mind—if he can call it a mind—float fragments of the person he is, or was. They pop to the surface now and again to remind him that this is impossible, that if all this truly is, then he must be merely an extension of that lump of ashen flesh lying beneath him. He is still salvageable. Fret, dammit, he thinks. Bring me back. .....Bring me back. • • •

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