Nemesis, show yourself! If not to the astronomer who waits in the Australian desert, then give me just one double sunset, or rise, insolent, in the west. Confuse me -- throw morning rays through my bedroom windows that face the Pacific. 13 million years is a long time to wait while you spin closer along the path of your own light towards our self-important sun. But I'll hang tight as I de- and re- compose, keep my consciousness from scattering like marbles across a kitchen floor, because I want to sense the shock break in waves across the planet surface when you arrive hurling meteors like your namesake threw rocks and epithets at the governors who mistook their power for truth.Nemesis is the name given to a hypothetical "second sun" in our solar system, in a theory suggesting "a large body in a highly eccentric orbit approaching our solar system every 26 million years. This celestial intruder is postulated to disturb the cometary Oort Cloud, causing a large number of comets to enter our solar system. Resulting collisions with the earth cause periodic mass extinctions of which one of the most recent took out the dinosaurs." (M. Domaschko, "On The Mechanics of Star Formation: Binary Stars and Nemesis," http://www.aplg.com/nemesis.htm)
Nemesis, the Greek goddess of vengeance, personifies divine justice. "She represented the righteous anger of the gods against the proud and haughty and against breakers of the law; she distributed good or bad fortune to all mortals. No one could escape her power." (Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia)
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