Hyrdinden

A few days after exploring Copehagen I decided to write a short story and send it to the newspaper Politiken located in the city. I thought they would consider speaking with me about my seeking asylum and possibly consider helping me get some sort of work permit to write for them. I thought that maybe the citizens of Copenhagen wouldn't mind reading a short story once a month from an American seeking asylum since most of them spoke English. I have yet to hear back about the interview or the short story so here it is.

My name is Mitch Miller. After years of trying to warn people in the United States about the dangers of computer technology I have traveled to Copenhagen. On my second day here I traveled north on foot to Nørrebro. While looking on a map I believed it was a park but upon entrance realized it was a large cemetery. I milled about through the cemetery looking at the markers.

Miller is a common working class name and there are many in the U.S. I graduated school with several Millers and was not related to any. It has always been my belief that every European nation has a version of Miller rooting from the medieval mills that ground grain into flour and the families that owned them. I was hoping to find the Danish equivalent of Miller.

A bird, cousin of the Cuckoo tried to pick up an insect on the dirt footpath. I knelt to look at the bug and found it to be a common honeybee. It was still alive but dying. It rolled to it's back and flexed its legs. Then it rolled to its side and stretched and flexed dying on the dirt.

After only a few minutes I stumbled upon what I believed to be the equivalent of Miller. The gravestone said Møllersup and it was directly next to a grouping of markers bearing the Køhler name. This interested me because I had married a woman of the same last name spelled differently.

What if every successful man's fortune relied on a working class man's genius? Perhaps every decade or so society becomes polarized to the point that the fate of modern civilization intersects on the lives of two men. Einstein worked as a patent clerk where inventors came to file their patents. Were these inventors truly the innovators they claimed to be or were they somehow gleaning ideas from Einstein and then filing the paperwork with that very man? Was the culmination of this gleaning the rise of an evil historical figure the likes of which could only be stopped if the genius mind escapes his native land and finds a government to accommodate it?

On the fourth day I walked to Fredericksberg Park to read. It began spitting rain on the way so I stopped at an ice cream parlor. I apologized to the young man for not speaking Danish and asked for a recommendation of a flavor I may not find in America. He suggested the Licorice flavor, which I enjoyed.

On my walk back I noticed a bee lying on the cobblestone sidewalk. I stopped to look, and this one was not a honeybee, but was slightly larger with a hairy hind segment. The hairs were cleanly yellow and dark black with no pollen accumulated. I poked the insect with my finger but it did not move. I could only gather that July is the month that bees die in Denmark.