Alecto (1) 1. The Universe was born in an unremarkable corner of absolute nothingness, one Thursday morning at about 5.30 AM. Not that it was known as Thursday at the time. There was no intelligent life around so early in the morning, for whom the concept of Thursday would have meant something. In fact, it was only known as Thursday on a single watery blue planet that circled an ordinary star in a more or less average sort of galaxy several billions of years after the great event. If we are going to split hairs, the term Thursday was applied to one of the days of the week for only a couple of thousand years amongst the English-speaking minority of the species homo sapiens sapiens. When life is looked at from the viewpoint of the Universe, everything is rather relative. From the perspective of the singularity that gave rise to the Universe, the birth pangs were relatively horrific. Sheets of searing plasma shot out in all directions. If there had been anyone around to hear the first cries of the infant Universe, they would have been deafened. As well as burnt to a crisp. But the world was orphaned at birth. Being a singularity, the Universe was by definition alone and could know nothing of her origins, shrouded as they were behind the event horizon of her own becoming. The Universe was an only child. 2. From her inception, (there was, of course, no conception), the Universe was driven towards her destiny by immutable natural laws and an overwhelming desire for company. This was hardly surprising when one stops to consider that for several millennia, the Universe consisted solely of an unimaginably hot soup of energy and primary particles, with no apparent structure. Nothing was solid. Everything was constantly changing into its opposite with bewildering rapidity. In a sense, everything was possible but nothing happened. Time oozed out in all directions, but things were too fluid. Indeed, that was the problem: there were no things. Building on these uncertain beginnings, the Universe decided that she existed solely to tell her own story. This was her reason to be, her meaning in life, even if both life and meaning were only to appear later in history, sorry herstory. The initial problem for the finite but unbounded young cloud of expanding energy was to find both a storyteller and an audience. This was a challenge that was to occupy the lonely aeons of her early adolescence. Having no role models or parental guidance whatsoever, it is remarkable that the Universe did not end up imprisoned in some atavistic borderline activity with no future. Or worse. The dark side is a perpetual temptation, but the Universe has turned out to be essentially well adjusted with a balanced perspective on life. 3. Isolated, uneducated, totally lacking in culture though she may have been, the early Universe was endowed with the assets so characteristic of youth: boundless energy and time on her hands. Within what would much later be termed the slightest fraction of a split second after springing into existence, the Universe had used her infinite scope to conclude that she was faced with a very serious problem. This hurdle was so grave and seemingly insurmountable that the Universe was almost convinced to give up completely and collapse back into nothingness. But the Universe was nothing if not a fighter. Taking the bit between her teeth, the Universe steeled herself for the long haul. Life was not going to be easy. The problem was this. Given that the Universe was the sum total of all that existed, she already contained within herself all possible futures, including the one she would prefer to follow; the one with the best story and a happy ending. To know completely in advance how things were going to turn out in the end was quite depressing. The essence of a great story is to keep the tension building until the last chapter, when all the pieces of the puzzle finally fit together and the audience cries out, almost with one voice, "It's the butler!" Imagine waiting perhaps billions of years to find out what you already knew all along. It was the butler! 4. The Universe pondered for only the barest inkling of a further instant, before she found the solution. She would let the story tell itself. The Universe would merely set the stage, a vast arena of time and space with no shortage of raw materials to build interesting, well-rounded characters, thrown together in a gripping drama of good and evil, with a slender hope of finding redemption before the final curtain. Yes, that was it! The Universe would set the ball rolling, so to speak, and then put her feet up and wait to see what turned up. The crucial ingredient, the key that would ensure that the future could not be read, even by the Universe herself, was hazard. To give a realistic chance for hazard to work its magic, the Universe immediately realised that space would have to be immense. As near as dammit, infinite. And time would have to go on and on and on. Strictly speaking, time and space had come into existence along with the Universe. They were dimensions along which things and events could be structured, but they were not separate from each other or independent of the Universe. And at least in the beginning they were numberless. This vast array of dimensions of time and space, fine as it was for the Universe, indeed it was the source of her creative powers, turned out to be a real obstacle to effective storytelling. Too many dimensions let the narrative spin off in myriad different directions. Even worse some impossible contradictions could arise. In the end it could be both the butler and not the butler at the same time. Yes, hazard was a necessary ingredient to preserve an element of mystery but causality was important too. Without cause and effect, where in the world would we be? 5. The Universe put out some feelers towards the multitude of possible futures. Pretty quickly it became evident that any more than three dimensions of space and there would be utter chaos. Everyone and his dog would be both a possible eventuality and a contradiction in terms. There were even some improbable worlds where everyone was his dog. That would never do! Then again, less than three dimensions of space left very little room for manoeuvre. In a two-dimensional Universe, everything would be very plain, in fact very plane indeed and life would be completely flat. You could forget about ever seeing a leopard leap towards a gazelle, grazing at dusk, unsuspecting that a perfectly adapted machine of muscle and teeth was about to hit it from downwind. In two dimensions, the best you could ever hope for was a kind of flimsy amoeba that would ingest the occasional sliver of detritus through what was probably its mouth but could equally well be its armpit. Hardly three-dimensional characters. It was decided. Three dimensions of space was the only horse in this race! In fact, there was no alternative. It was the only choice that left a reasonable chance for the development of both races and horses. Coming from a betting background, (remember, she originated from a chance fluctuation of the quantum vacuum), the Universe was quite prepared to put her money where her mouth was, if you get my drift. The Universe let go of all the other dimensions until just three were left. Interestingly, the Universe kept a handful of dimensions of space, just in case, and rolled them up into tiny strings so small that they could never get tied up in anything. Much, much later on in history, a lumbering species of three-legged giraffe that inhabited the lush garden planet of B’jerknees on the other side of the Universe from the Milky Way, would blame minute invisible strings for their tendency to fall over for no apparent reason. However, this characteristic turned out to have a great deal to do with the intrinsic instability of tall, three-legged creatures and nothing at all to do with rolled-up dimensions of space. 6. The Universe then turned her not inconsiderable attention to the vexing question of time. Yes time, pondered the Universe, seemed to be a rather different kettle of fish. It was not immediately obvious how many dimensions of time would be required. Would one dimension of time, which seemed more than ample at the outset, prove to be too limiting ? Perhaps only time would tell. As it turned out, time refused to tell, even after being threatened with undreamt of forms of torture. Time guards its secrets jealously, but one clue it did let slip was that it has very little to do with kettles of fish or any other lifeform carried around in a kitchen utensil, for that matter. What was crystal clear was that time was going to be relentless. It could be bent, it could be bowed, it could even run backwards in some exotic circumstances if the observer was willing to make certain heroic assumptions, but time could not, would not, ever be confined and stopped. For the sake of even-handedness, the Universe decided to keep three dimensions of time as well. This would avoid any arguments between the dimensions of the Universe and pre-empted any accusations of favouritism. Equipped with a brand new six-dimensional space-time stage on which to see acted out the unfolding drama of history, the Universe sat back, admired her work and promptly took the rest of the afternoon off. 7. It is perhaps worth clarifying here that when we talk about afternoons, the term is being used figuratively. An afternoon, when used literally, presupposes a whole panoply of complicated structures involving planets, their motions around stars, clock-making skills or at the very least a rudimentary intelligence capable of noticing when the sun, or whatever the local star happens to be called, is at the highest point in its passage through the daytime sky. None of these things were remotely near coming into existence at this early stage in history. You see, we are still teetering on the very brink of what is or can be. We are perched on a precipice; beneath us lies the endless plain of reality. The slippery slope. To be or not to be? That was the question that needed to be answered. As Jean-Paul Sartre would eventually understand it, after a great deal of thought, we are caught between being and nothingness, (one of the Universe’s favourite books, incidentally, she being perhaps the only reader to grasp the full sweep of his intellectual achievement). There was still time to go back but we are fast approaching the point of no return. Once the first instant is over, there is no escape back to the comfort of oblivion. Time would have to run its course. Instants, it is true, tend to be rather fluid concepts, varying as they do between different cultures and divergent life-forms. Particularly slow-thinking species, such as the giant mud-sloths of Alathfar 4, for example, would tend to count their instants in hours, if not days. Whereas the hyperactive Zappamaniacs, in contrast, who circle Aldebaran in a large asteroid hollowed out to form one vast living room could not resist constantly changing television channels with the remote control. The result is a species that spends its entire life eating TV dinners and zapping through the gazillions of channels now available to anyone with a powerful sub-hyperspace satellite dish, at an average of 30 per second. A realistic case can be made for considering that an instant for these poor creatures resembles the barest subliminal glimpse of a low-budget foreign-language soap opera, their entire lives a sordid patchwork of concealed affairs, power-crazed matriarchs and betrayal. A sad commentary indeed on one of the casualties of technological progress. 8. For the Universe herself, an instant is quite precisely defined. It is the point at which the smooth flow of time breaks up into discrete units, the scale at which time can no longer be subdivided into smaller bits. It is much like looking at a large swath of beach which really consists of many, many rough-hewn boulders of sand when seen from the viewpoint of an ant. Now the grains of time are actually very, very, very small indeed. Each one is a mere 10 -43 of a second, to be exact. For those of you that feel dizzy or sick when faced with such numbers, stick with us. This is going to be a little convoluted, but the nettle has to be grasped sooner or later, and the effort will be worth it in the long run if we are ever going to get to grips with the sort of frightening notation that fills science textbooks. Frankly, saying an instant of time is one ten million, million, million, million, million, million, millionth of a second is no better, so let’s try and use our daily experience to get a better definition. Let’s make the quite reasonable assumption that you are reading this text not too far from the surface of a watery-blue planet known to its English-speaking inhabitants as Earth. This puts you about 15 billion years down the line from the first instant, a year being the time it takes your planet to go once round its star, or your star once round its planet if you happen to be reading this before the age of Copernicus. Your heart probably beats around 50 million times during each of these years, depending on factors such as diet, exercise and how often you watch scary movies or have sex. Try to imagine therefore the sum total of your heartbeats, had you been unfortunate enough to have been waiting around since the beginning of time. A very large number. Agreed? Not from the point of view of an instant of time. There are far, far more instants in one of your heartbeats than there have been heartbeats since the origin of the Universe. In fact, if you added up all the accumulated heartbeats of all the people living today on Earth, you would still be way short. All the people who have ever lived? Now we are starting to get somewhere. Trouble is we are also running out of heartbeats, at least human ones. May be 10 -43 was not so bad after all. In any case, you will agree, no doubt, that having achieved all that the Universe had achieved before the first instant had elapsed, some kind of break was justified. 9. Meanwhile, in a pub somewhere in south London, towards the end of the twentieth century…. Ron looked up from his newspaper and took a sip of his pint on the bar. "Did you know they've discovered a lake under Antarctica?" Dave looked up from the barmaid's cleavage. He had been imagining himself driving a Ferrari up to a Tuscan villa, nestled amongst cypress trees, Sylvie's cleavage by his side. Dave's sexual fantasies always began like an advertisement for motor cars and always started with breasts. "I thought Antarctica was a continent,” said Dave. "It is," said Ron. "Then how can it have a lake under it, unless it’s an incontinent continent?" smirked Dave. "Good point. Well, the lake is on top of Antarctica but under the ice cap," said Ron "Wouldn't it be frozen though, if it's under all that ice? How do they tell the difference between the water that's a frozen lake and the water that's the ice cap?" "Another good point," said Ron, turning back to his paper to read on. Dave turned his regard back to Sylvie the barmaid, who was bending over looking for some salt and vinegar crisps. Dave raced to fast forward his fantasy to the appropriate point. After a few moments, Ron said, "they don't say in the article why it's not frozen. May be its the pressure or something. But in any case, it must be bloody cold down there. It's under more than three kilometres of ice. They've named it Lake Vostock, which is probably Russian for freezing cold." "Does that make Vladivostok, Russian for bloody freezing cold," said Dave, smirking again, inanely. "No, Vladivostok is Russian for Lord of the East," said a slightly faltering voice behind them. Ron and Dave both turned to look over at old Toby, who was sat at a table just behind them. Sylvie came over with the salt and vinegar crisps, which were for Toby's dog, Rover. "Here you go, Not-Toby," said Sylvie, opening the crisps and pouring them on the floor. Everyone, apart from Toby, called Rover Not-Toby. There was some doubt over who had made the original joke. Dave thought that he had been the one, but most punters who counted The Enmari as their local, thought that it was probably Spencer the Marxist who had come up with the nomenclature. It had to be said that Dave's very poor knowledge of Shakespeare stood against him. Then again, Dave argued, he didn’t understand why Shakespeare had named his play after a cigar, but that did not stop him knowing the opening words of the world's most famous soliloquy. 10. Ron looked at Not-Toby, who had demolished the salt and vinegar crisps in flash. Not-Toby was staring into Sylvie’s eyes even more imploringly than Dave stared into her cleavage. But there were no more crisps to be had. Ron said to Not-Toby, ”It’s in the East, that’s for sure, but what is it Lord of?” Apart from calling Toby’s dog Not-Toby, all the locals of The Enmari were in the habit of looking at Not-Toby when they were talking to Toby and vice versa. No-one could remember why this practice had been developed, but everyone played the game strictly by the rules, including Not-Toby. Never in living memory had Toby come to the pub without Not-Toby. If one day he did, it is questionable whether anyone would speak to him. Toby said, “Well, it’s the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, that’s why. Though there was nothing there until they built the railway, of course.” ”Why did they build the railway, all across Siberia, then if there was nothing there?” said Dave, still smirking inanely at Not-Toby. ”Because of the ice,” said Toby. ”What, they built a railway all across Siberia to transport ice? The Russians don’t need ice. Siberia’s full of bloody ice! There’s probably more ice in Siberia than anywhere else on Earth, apart from Antarctica, of course,” said Dave. ”Which brings us full circle,” said Ron, to no-one in particular. ”Though not to the Arctic circle,” said Dave, smiling even more inanely. He was on his fourth pint by now.
Copyright © 2002 Nick Beck |