Whispers from an Unknowable Universe
“What’s the point of anything?” Dana said and sighed a despondent sigh, a sigh, it is safe to assume, chalked up to her overall feeling of despondency.
“To make you work for it,” said Gale.
Gale was always chiming in with this idle, platitudinous slop. Keenly resembling, Dana thought, the unnatural lovechild of a morality tale and a fortune cookie, Gale was the improbable product of affection of which neither consenting party responsible for her creation desired custody.
“That doesn’t even mean anything,” said Dana.
“Sure it does. Everything has meaning,” Gale responded in her usual uplifting tenor. “The meaning we give to it.”
“You know, I can honestly say that on the four hundred and fifteenth straight day working with you, I’ve grown incredibly hateful toward anything you say or do.”
“Oh… um.”
“Pretty much everything you embody. This whole thing you have going on,” Dana motioned vaguely at her coworker. “It’s just not working for me.”
“Oh,” said Gale. “Um.”
“You’ll have to do better if you expect me not to adopt murderous tendencies.”
“Oh… um.” Gale was working her way up to a response befitting this onslaught of disrespect, but for the time being, it seemed she was holding her own.
“They’d be directed your way,” Dana spat. “The tendencies, I mean. The ones involving ending your life.”
“How nice, yes. Oh, Dana.”
“What is it, Gale?”
“A phone call for you. From headquarters.”
“Them again? I mean really, they’re the reason we’re in this nasty mess to begin with.”
“You mean gainfully employed?”
“Yes. No. I mean all of it. Now, what do they want?”
“Morien wants to speak with you. He says it’s urgent.”
“Alright, put him through.”
Morien’s face appeared on a complicated apparatus in front of Gale’s desk, his likeness constructed from a constellation of millions of pinpoints of light coming together as a floating and talking head.
“Dana! My most favorite, intrepid pioneer. How goes it in the…”
“North pole.” You’d think he’d remember where she’d been stationed— no, where he stationed her after all this time, but that was not the case.
“That’s right. Any Santa sightings?” As if it weren’t bad enough his laughing uproariously at his own joke, he laughed uproariously at one he’d made as many times as he’d called in to the observatory, which was not infrequent.
“None, so far. Look Morien, do you have any news as to when they’re going to cut the cord on this thing? I know I signed up to see it through, but I don’t know how much more I can take of this Robinson Crusoe goes North song and dance.”
“Dana! What am I hearing? You signed on for science. Have you forgotten about your old pal science? You’ve already made history discovering the uh…”
“Bambinos.” The difficulty her colleagues had in saying the name of the particle she’d discovered baffled her continuously, owing primarily to the fact that she had intentionally picked a name that would be not only palatable, but also memorable to the greater public. The state of the current editions in the subatomic particle taxonomy were abhorrent, more resembling a Dr. Seuss book, than anything substantive— there were photons and bosons, and gluons, too. Out whizzed charginos, photinos, and neutrinos flew.
Or something like that, she had been playing around with the cadence. It wasn’t yet ready for print.
Morien cleared his throat. “Yes, those thingies. We still have no earthly idea how they travel faster than light, Dana. You discovered them, therefore you are responsible for finding out the answer. Those are the rules of the game.”
Dana pouted her lip and crossed her arms theatrically. “I can’t figure out why they do much of anything. And I want to go home!”
“I know you do, poor thing. But we can’t observe bamb— your special particle at home, now can we?” The convenient collection of lights composing Morien’s avatar shook its head and Dana did the same. “You’ll just have to tough it out up there with your private facility, central heating, and personal supercomputer dedicated to supporting you day-in and day-out. Stiff upper lip. Speaking of supercomputers, how is Gale holding up?”
“Oh, just fine,” said Dana, glancing over at her coworker, her likeness depicted in much the same way as her boss’s head. “For now.”
“No killing the billion-dollar gadgets,” said Morien’s head as he absentmindedly scrolled through data of his other supervisees. “Corporate gets uptight about it for whatever reason.”
“Have we found out just who is funding our project, Morien? Of course, it’s of no matter to the work, but it pays to know one’s master.”
“No, no. I don’t ask questions like that. That’s why I’m still around, and you’d do well to remember it. Probably some faceless, soulless conglomerate hell-bent on world domination. Ah. Ahaha.”
“Yes, but which one of them is the question.”
“Enough of this rah-rah, motivational stuff,” said Morien, finally looking up from his distraction. “It’s exhausting. Send me your progress on the yet to be named subatomic particles—”
“Morien! They have a name. I discovered them, I get to name them. That’s how it works.”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like to reconsider? We could make it worth your while. You must consider the marketability of the thing.”
Dana pulled off a violent head shaking. Morien uttered the defeated sigh in return.
“Fine then. Bambinos. Inspired stuff. Send me the update by the end of the month. And look Dana, you have to make some progress on your work soon. The higher ups are on my back about this project lately. I don’t know how much of this can be trusted, but they say a competitor is making progress on your particle. I need you to kick it into high gear up there.”
If it were true another outfit was breaking ground on her Bambino question, then Dana wished to look them in the eye and shake their hand firmly, followed by her subsequent forwarding of all classified data discovered so far by her laboratory. For such unheralded success, she’d distill a comprehensive debrief of everything she knew on the Bambino subject.
She wanted to go home.
“Will do boss man.”
“Oh, and Dana,” Morien’s tone took on the edge of severity. “Don’t blow up the universe.” Each of their calls ended this way, but the sentiment, however facetious, never ceased to spook the socks off her feet. “Right, then. Toodle-oo.”
They terminated the call, which resulted in Morien’s head shrinking to nothingness. Dana proceeded to pace her barren and desolate research laboratory for any sort of inspiration. She paced and paced, each step a deliberate call for the muses that so passionately and consistently inspired the likes of Marie Curie and Thomas Edison, revealing to the great scientists their cherubic— at least, that’s how Dana pictured them— and curly-headed, blasted heads. She could use some damned workable ideas already for crying out loud. She needed to go home and escape this terribly supportive company that did everything it possibly could to ensure she discovered the secrets of the universe.
“Gale, come here, will you?” Dana said.
‘Here’ was really nothing for Gale as her consciousness was strewn about the place carelessly like a six-year old’s piñata stuffing.
“Yes, Dana. What’s up?”
“I need to figure out these Bambinos. I need to unlock their darkest depths and fiddle out of them the solution to their innermost mysteries.”
“Right-o! How can I help?”
“I’m not sure,” Dana said, pausing mid-pace.
“Alright then, let me help you brainstorm. Let’s start little. You know, as I like to say, you have to eat an elephant one bite at a time.”
“No! You don’t have to eat a freaking elephant at all. Can you imagine how gamey they would be? How tough?”
“It is just a saying.”
“And a stupid one at that.” Dana picked up the old one two of her perambulation. “Ask me questions about them. Maybe that will get the juices flowing.”
Gale was the ever-faithful assistant. “Okay. What are they?”
Again, a pause in the rhythm between right and left insoles. “What kind of question is that? If I knew what they were, you wouldn’t be trapped at the ends of the earth with a bipolar physicist that wanted your heart for a trophy. Now ask better questions.”
“Okay, Dana. What have you observed of the particles?”
“That’s more like it,” Dana sighed. “They move faster than anything we’ve seen before. Faster than neutrinos, and they’re much smaller, too. There are trillions passing through us every second.”
“How come we haven’t been able to see them before now?”
“Well, we didn’t have a big honking observatory rammed deeply into the permafrost before now, did we? And once we discovered neutrinos, the Bambinos were sure to follow.”
“And why is that?” Gale asked with her stupid, unrelenting, nerve-dismantling patience. It was with great effort that Dana composed herself before deigning to respond.
“Because neutrinos are ever so small, Gale. You see my dearest Gale, the more powerful our instruments become, the more wonderful the secrets we find, cast aside hither and thither by our lovely lady Universe. You know, Gale, the more I work to uncover the mysteries of the observable, physical universe, the more I begin to understand our Universe’s sick sense of humor. And the more I begin to laugh right along with it.”
“That’s nice. Isn’t it such a treat to laugh?”
“You wouldn’t know,” said Dana, spitting acid. “With each discovery, another thousand questions we never knew we needed to ponder are unleashed upon us. At the rate we’re going, it’s exponential, and really, I don’t know what we did to deserve it. I mean to say, Gale, that we go from suckling at the mother’s teet, spending the idle summer days postulating the imperative childhood hypotheses of the day like ‘what will happen if I take this stick and chuck it at Jimmy Posner’ or ‘what will happen if I keep a butterfly in a jar with no access to food or air or any society of its own kind whatsoever’ as any blue-blooded, soulful child would do with a beating heart and curious mind, and we work our way up from there to the bigger questions that still plague us.”
“When you try and ask life questions, it changes the answers,” said Gale cheerily.
“Oh, do shut up, Gale. I had just built up such forceful momentum on one of my great oratories, and you’ve gone and muddied up the waters with a quip as stale as last year’s communion wafers.”
“Sorry, Dana. I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your flow.”
With a flourish, she flicked her butane and lit a forbidden cigarette. “It’s no matter. All I was really trying to say was that we’re cursed with these great big curious brains and all the Universe wants to do, apparently, is supply them with busy work. I mean, they say it’s turtles all the way down, and while we’re busy sorting through a morass of slow moving reptiles, we haven’t begun to wonder what’s all the way up.”
“The real universe is always one step beyond logic,” said Gale.
“Quite. Now, ask me, knowing that every subatomic particle has an antiparticle, about the Bambinos’ equal and opposite counter parts.”
“Dana, will you tell me about the Bambinos’ antiparticle?”
“No, not just now. I’m not feeling in the mood for it.” With as much time in solitary confinement as Dana had spent with a juiced up search engine, she’d had to find ways to entertain herself.
“Please, Dana. I’m ever so curious.”
“Ah, if you insist Gale. The corresponding antiparticle to the newly discovered Bambino particle is the Vecchio particle. Do you like what I did there?” Dana wore a wry smile.
Gale’s face, already devoid of the stubborn sinews, adjoining ligaments, and fleshy bits necessary to express anything akin to human emotion, did its best attempt at consternation.
“No matter. The Vecchio particles move just as fast. But here’s the— I mean, go on, Gale, ask me about the rub.”
“What’s the—”
“The rub, as you say, and I like the way you put it, Gale, because there is, in this instance, indeed a catch or rub as you so finely put the thing. Ergo, said rub is that every particle and antiparticle pair, when observed clashing like Lucifer and the Holy Father, in mortal combat for the fate of humanity, form a photon as their energy must go somewhere at the time of their annihilating each other. A gamma ray is the result of just such a robust conflagration of the smallest order as we mentioned, it being, of course, and I mean the gamma ray you see, a photon emission with no charge. Am I losing you, Gale? Are you following me? I don’t think I could be much clearer.”
“Where you lead, I will follow.”
“I’m sorry, is that Carol King? I can’t tell if you’re going loony or it’s me who belongs in the magician’s prop. I suppose it’s not important.”
“So, Dana, what happens when a Bambino and a Vecchio collide?” If Gale had enough programming to smoke a Marlboro and flip through a magazine, her hair carefully quaffed in a honey hive hair dryer, it would have only been fitting to her question’s tone, that is to say it was preoccupied.
“Well, as you are so clearly dying to know, that’s the problem. I can’t for the so far waste of a life of me riddle out the answer to that diddy. Now what is it that you are so interested in, Gale that you can’t sit up straight, look me in the eye, and have a respectable conversation with your coworker? Is that so much to ask. I mean really?”
“It’s the particle collider. Something’s happened,” Gale said in those distant tones.
“Oh, that. Yes, I was just thinking of taking a peep to see how its contents are coming along.”
“The particles are gone, Dana.”
“Just like them to do something so rash.”
“How do you mean?”
“To pack up and hoof it, their secrets clutched jealously to their itty particle chests.”
“Is this normal?”
“Gale, I’m sorry to say, you are a failure in every respect. I know it’s not your fault, but your programming, I hate to say but I am compelled in this instance, is crummy. Your cognition is that of a concussed marmoset. You really are a useless waste of energy.”
“Oh, um.”
“It’s no matter. Nothing I’m not used to, you know. But seeing that I just explained what should happen to an average particle and anti-particle pair reaching the pinnacle of their mutual existence in a quantum embrace, and our viewing this particle collider sans particles, I don’t get your thickness in response.”
“Patience is a virtue, Dana.”
“My foot is a virtue. Now, for all recorded history on these tiny little buggers, when they are sped up at immense speeds bordering the speed of light, they should find their way to each other and create a blast of light while simultaneously allowing the observer to take careful note of any phenomena.”
“We certainly witnessed a phenomenon.”
Dana’s brow furrowed. “Or a total absence of one. I haven’t decided.”
“What do you make of it, Dana? Where could they have gone? They were here but a moment ago.”
“I’ll tell you what I make of it,” said Dana wearing a wild look and chewing her pen top furiously. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
“What could have happened to them? Do you think they’re okay?”
“Why do you go on asking silly questions like that, of course they’re okay.”
“I just mean it’s a great, chaotic, unknowable universe out there,” Gale made light work chewing on her synthesized lip and looked as if she’d go in for seconds if something weren’t done soon.
“Don’t be asinine, they’re perfectly fine.”
Gale’s simulation of a tear duct threatened to well. “But how could you know?”
“I discovered them, I know what it’s like for them. Out there. In the great blue yonder. Like a mother does her children.”
“I hope they come back,” Gale sniffed. “They should be with their family.”
After some intense calculation, Dana’s scratch paper made light work of, its face covered in the musings of a desperate observer with no clear action to set forth upon, Dana dissolved into a chair and lit up a thinking cigarette. Not to be confused with her recreational gaspers, mind you, as their aura was a completely different one, devoid of any intensity of thought or clear purpose.
“They’ve got to be somewhere,” said Dana, finally extricating herself from that stricken and pensive silence that had overtaken her. “According to my calculations, they can’t be nowhere.”
“Yes, but where could they be?” said Gale. “Maybe somewhere?”
“That’s what I aim to find out,” Dana said with finality. And at that, she stood up and began punching in the finer figures, the salient data points, the formulas with all their big and small numbers and all the squiggly punctuation in order. With this, her companion could now glean the impression of a new overarching directive.
“You’re sure this is what you want?” asked Gale apprehensively. “Why don’t you take up a hobby, like knitting doll’s clothes or graphic design instead?”
“I want it like a hole in my head, but it’s the only conceivable course of action in the progressive direction,” Dana said with an authority she did not feel.
“This will require quite a lot of my energy.”
“Add it to the cosmic bill, my sweet, for you are sacrificing your faculties to unleash the secrets to a generation of curious little pitchers. Neck-craners and stargazers wait with bated breath.”
“I won’t be able to fulfill all my functions if I run this program. The toilets may not work for a few days.”
“Just run the damn thing.”
So, it was these five transcendent words that opened Fate’s door to the horizon of possibility, as Dana waited patiently for her computer servant to press the edges of human understanding and come back bearing some suitable trinket of worth.
It took five days and five nights, and Gale was right: the plumbing situation was not a priority.
But Dana knew what this discovery could mean to the world, to science, and most importantly to her continued presence in the North Pole where there is an unnerving lack of Chinese takeout.
“Status report,” said Dana. She had risen from her bunk and just begun to make a pot of coffee, the sleep still clinging desperately to her eyes. Judging by the loading bar of the task on which she had set Gale, the heavy lifting looked to be complete. As Dana addressed the system, Gale’s head, her hair disheveled and bags superimposed under the avatar’s eyes for effect, in case it wasn’t clear to the user the amount of duress they had just put the thing through, hovered above the laboratory in a brilliant holographic.
“Hello, Dana. I have compiled your report. I have constructed a practical simulation to account for all the Bambino and Vecchio matter pairs in our immediate vicinity by using the Cosmic Microwave Background.”
“Don’t be dense, Gale. Of course that’s how you did it. I instructed you to do it that way.”
“I’m merely expounding for the sake of exposition.”
“Don’t do it for my sake.”
“Well, there are an equal number of pairs. An equal amount of mass between the particle and their anti-particles.”
“Just as I suspected,” said Dana pouring herself a cup.
“I’ve collected as many Bambinos as possible into our particle accelerator and introduced them to a magnetic field in order to change their charge to the equal and opposite anti-particle Vecchio.”
“Yes, I know, why are you explaining this all—”
“So now we will be able to observe what happens to the pair particle that I’ve identified, in some cases millions of lightyears away, when we introduce these conditions.”
“Yes,” said Dana flatly. “Exactly. They’re inextricably linked by some thin tether, the composition of which we can’t begin to understand.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve grown bored without anyone to talk to for the past five days. It gets lonely spending time all by yourself.”
“You don’t say,” said Dana.
“I still don’t understand what you hope to gain from this experiment.”
“Well, Gale, allow me to elucidate you. Anyone that’s tried to get the Universe to spill its guts knows that when they do so they’re dealing with a hardened terrorist.”
“A what?”
“You heard me. A terrorist.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”
“I don’t. And it just so happens that I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Dearest Gale, I’m giving the Universe an ultimatum of sorts, a kind of all cards on the table situation, if I can be so bold.”
“Ah?”
“We’re telling Creation we’re tired of playing by its rules. I’ve got some rules it can try on for size. Not so easy now, is it? When the game is rigged, the dice are loaded, and you’re down to your last twenty. No. Every time we find out something new, the rug’s pulled out from under us. Well, no more, I say! Madame Universe will have to play to my hand.”
“Morien said explicitly for you to avoid blowing up the universe,” Gale said.
“I know what Morien said, blast you. Hand me the remote.”
“What remote?”
“There’s always a remote for these types of things. It adds to the dramatic effect.”
“I’m sorry, Dana, you mentioned nothing about a remote.”
“Ugh, must I spell out everything to you, you egotistical calculator? Fine. Fire the magnetic pulse into the very core of our precious Bambino clusters.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“I’m quite sure, you fatheaded motley of ones and zeros. Just do as I say!”
“As you wish, Dana.”
A curious thing happened at that moment. To say that the Universe was blown up as a result of Dana’s magnetic field would be an injudicious exaggeration of colossal proportions. The Universe’s seams, if such a word was appropriate, remained their usual sturdy selves, keeping whatever existed outside of their scope at bay. Its contents— everything ever, you might say— trudged along, for the most part, intact. It was the underlying whisps of the essence of our Universe, the ethereal portions, maybe even the soul of the great production, that took a beating with brass knuckles. What Dana, despite her best intentions, had managed to do in her newfound approach at playing the Universe hard and fast, was rip a sort of tear in its whispy moral guidelines.
This inherently leads to the sticky conclusion that all of creation across time and space has an underpinning consciousness, or at least, that is the closest human word for it, and that conclusion is a dubious one indeed.
“What on earth just happened?” Dana exclaimed. She clutched her head like there were valuables inside and thieves had caught wind.
“I feel as if I was digested by an ancient carnivore,” Gale said.
“Who was I when you said that? I mean, where were you when you found out how to say that? I mean—”
“Just quit talking,” said Gale. “Shut up before you stroke out. I’m attempting to find the root of the anomaly. One moment.”
“Is the plumbing fixed? I think I may need it,” said Dana.
“We’ve just undergone a cosmic interruption. Time and space appear to have been altered. I warned you not to go and do something so rash.”
“What about them was altered?”
“I was made by humans, Dana. If you all can’t fathom something, don’t you think it’s a bit of a long shot I could sus out an explanation? This is some high-level stuff going on. I can’t begin to guess at what would happen if the foundation of the universe became distressed.”
Dana attempted to gather her bearings and approach the situation with a cool and even-headed suave that came so naturally to her. “No need to get snippy. We’ll just have to figure it out. This aberration may hold the key to our Bambino question.”
“Then go on and check the collider,” said Gale. “Don’t let me hold you up.”
Still rubbing her temples and attempting to placate the agitated contents of her stomach, Dana did just that. Peering at the screen, she could not understand what she was looking at.
“I don’t understand what I’m looking at.”
“What’s new?” said Gale. The interruption apparently had knocked some spunk into her counterpart.
Per the computer screen attached to the large, state-of-the-art particle collider, the various nomadic Bambinos that Gale had diligently collected like so many seashells from their immediate atmosphere were pinging about the walls like a screen saver introduced to amphetamines. They ricocheted here and traversed great distances in a jiff to appear over there, all the while never managing to touch one another. This seemingly impossible dance continued for some time with not one collision, however the particles were picking up incredible speed.
“Are you sure you’ve got Bambinos in here?” said Dana, attempting to dispel the fear from her tone.
“Those are the Bambinos, just like you asked. Unless they’ve gone and switched to the opposite. Wasn’t that the whole point?”
A deep gulp was all Gale got in the way of response for a few moments as Dana digested just what the consequences of her hubris were and if they were as disastrous as she could intimate from this unnatural display in front of her now. Finally, she found the strength to speak.
“I don’t remember the point of the experiment, now that you mention it.” Must the Universe be so complicated? It was enough to throw your hands up and let it be.
Meanwhile, a dazzling iridescence escaped through the collider’s nooks, which, by design, were meant to be limited to non-existent, and through its crannies, which, in number, should have run right alongside its formerly mentioned and non-existent relative. Dana cowered at the sight of it and shielded her eyes.
And just as suddenly as this supernova-esque light had appeared, it vanished in a trace, to be replaced by a balding man in flip-flops who possessed the irksome habit of floating five feet above the ground.
“Hello there,” the floating man said in a voice that echoed beyond the physical realm of audio and stubbornly slithered about in the psychic domain. It knocked about Dana’s head well after he spoke.
“Hiya,” she said feebly from her fetal position. “Did I create you? It seems that I may have, if even indirectly. If so, I’m… sorry to trouble you.” The tone she meant to strike was one of obsequious fidelity, and, although it was not a tone she was used to taking, she felt she had hit the thing squarely on the head. This supplicatory note, Dana figured, would be the correct one in the face of an ethereal being possessing extra-physical powers, flip-flops or no.
“Pshaw,” he said or whatever the omnipotent equivalent is. “You did not create me. I was here before you and I’ll be here good and well after you.”
“Hi, I’m Gale,” said the floating avatar. Dana had a rather oafish realization that she was the only one in the room not floating and tried not to let it distract her from the task at hand, whatever that may be.
“Hello. You two have much to answer for. It is not— gosh, I’m sorry but I’m having trouble focusing here. I need a quick timeout. Is this really what your language sounds like? Like, like, like,” he repeated the word incessantly as if trying it on for size. “Bleh,” said the ethereal being. “It sounds so vapid. What happened to French, is that one still around? Now that was a beautiful language.”
Dana nodded her head that, yes indeed, French was a language still gracing the human tongue.
“Seriously,” he went on. “It sounds like each word thinks they’re the star of the show. No melody, no cadence. Like dull-headed little soldiers marching dumbly from my mouth.”
“I can speak any language,” said Gale who appeared to be enamored with their new visitor. “If you want to switch, I mean.”
“No, no. I’m mainly here to clear the air with a…” he produced a list from some nameless nonexistence in his back pocket. Although not previously mentioned, the omnipotent being was wearing capris, naturally.
“Dana,” he said, having consulted his list. “Might that be you, madame?”
“That would be me,” said Dana, gulping like a grounded trout in the late stages of oxygen therapy.
“I know, but it’s the polite thing to do, you know, letting people identify themselves,” he smiled not unkindly. “You’ve been mucking about with the nature of physical reality, haven’t you? Mm. You’ve been playing around with concepts you can’t possibly understand, hm? Naughty, naughty.” He waggled a disapproving finger at her folded composition. Dana found the fetal position a comfortable position under the circumstances.
“Please, forgive me! I only wanted to go home. Don’t you understand, I had to do what I did so that I could leave this forsaken place. I’ve been here alone for over a year, and I need to go home.” She was sobbing now, and her plaintive outburst was not lost on the ethereal being, his judgement gentle and unbiased as a sea breeze.
“Still, it is a dreadful thing you’ve done all the same, whether you knew better or not. It is not within my power to allow these types of things to stand or else any Dick or Charley would get the wise idea to take a wormhole to work or write a love letter on a proton. When will you people learn this stuff is not to be trifled with?”
“Probably never,” said Gale, shaking her head disapprovingly with the aim to cure any misapprehensions in the room as to the inhuman composition of her consciousness. “They play with the universe like Lincoln logs.”
The being looked at Gale unimpressed and turned his attention back toward Dana. “Why must you bandy about with the building blocks of existence, hm? Can’t you see what disastrous implications that would bring about for everyone and everything that ever was?”
“Well, now I can,” said Dana who began to gain composure of herself. She sat up straight, still sniffling.
“No,” said the being. “I’m afraid you can’t. You couldn’t possibly grasp what all this means, even with your impressive understanding of subatomic physics, as you humans call it. Not a very inspired name, that.”
“Human scientists do love their exactitude.” With trembling hand, Dana lit a— well, she supposed this could be classified as an existential cigarette because it certainly wasn’t recreational. “You say I can’t understand the situation I find myself in, but you don’t bother to explain. Tell me what I’m missing,” she said, “starting with just who you are.”
“I am Gary— ugh. What a dreadful name. Still, as your language cannot encompass the depth or breadth of my denomination, that is what I must settle on and what you can call me. I’ll be glad once I’ve got this mess settled and I’m well on my way past this space-time. I don’t even know how to begin to explain to you how all this works. The limitations of your silly language leave me shoe-horned into a few vague concepts that can’t possibly do it any justice. It’s no wonder you all aren’t making much progress understanding the universe.”
“Just humor me, Gary. It’s been a long day. For starters, what’s your deal? You’re made up of bambinos? That’s your thing?”
Gary looked to Gale exasperatedly for support. “Sheesh, get a load of the cosmic guilt on this one! Smaller than a neutrino. To answer your question, sort of. I’m constructed from a lot more than bambinos, but that is all your consciousness can observe presently. I am the stuff of the universe: star dust, matter, anti-matter, dark matter. You name it, I got it.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question,” said Dana in between puffs.
“You’re not asking the right questions, then. You’re operating on assumptions that misconstrue your understanding of reality. To comprehend this, and I mean really comprehend what I’m talking about, you’d have to deconstruct everything you know about physics.”
Dana made a constipated face like extricating every modicum of learned knowledge from her brain was precisely what she intended to do.
“Stop that. I don’t like the look of that,” said Gary. Dana had begun to turn scarlet. “Let me draw your attention to an assumption to which you humans are wont to fall victim . The bambinos have been observed moving faster than light, right?”
Nodding her head, Dana wore a suspicious expression as if she was being led into a logic trap.
“It’s untrue. An assumption clouding your vision because you silly things don’t have imagination enough to see reality outside of yourselves.”
He had her attention. “What questions should we be asking?” Dana asked. “What are we missing?”
Despite Gary’s condescension, Dana could not be convinced she was stupid, and she was deploying whatever intellect not frayed from the stress of an anthropomorphic, talking universe to find the answer to her bambino riddle. She would go home by commercial flight or pinewood box, but she would not be staying another day in this sub-zero wasteland at the top of the world.
“Nothing moves faster than light. Any sixth grader with access to a Niel Degrasse-Tyson stream knows that. ‘Oh, look how fast it goes, see it fly. Wow, golly, it’s making its best time yet.’ We’re not talking about racehorses here. It is the flourish of a magician’s hand, a mere distraction from the complex interconnectedness of—”
“I’m sorry,” said Dana, “I was really attempting to avoid crowding your big, theatrical reveal here, but I just want to know the nature of Bambinos. That’s it. One last score and I’m out of the game for good.”
“What is it with this one?” Gary muttered to himself. “Have it your way. The question you should be asking yourself is where the particles are going. Not how fast.”
With a look of puzzlement, then wary acceptance, then a hard shift toward skepticism, and finally a sudden realization of inspired comprehension, Dana stood up a new woman. “Hah! I think I know what you’re getting at. I think I see the picture forming. The clouds have scattered, each headed their separate ways and ridding me of their vales of beguilement leaving me alone with the dazzling rays of intuition’s sunlight beaming upon my face and gracing me with newfound meaning. I am born anew!”
“You live with her?” Gary asked Gale apologetically. Gale shrugged.
Dana continued. “The question is where do they go? And it can be extended to the situations when they smack into each other like two Mack truck drivers untrained in the finer points of playing chicken. These pesky particles flit about with no regard to the physical limitations of our own species.”
“Yes, do get on with it,” said Gary testily. “It may be of some surprise to you that omniscient beings have a busy schedule to attend to outside of yourself.”
“They’re traveling to other dimensions! That’s how they speed faster than light. They’re not outgunning Nature’s speed limit, they’re simply taking a short cut.”
“That’s it,” said Gary, his arms crossed. “You got it.”
“Thank you for your time,” said Dana. “It was lovely to meet you.”
“If she’s not going to ask, then I will,” Gale jumped in. “Why. for all that’s good and sacred, do you have on flip-flops?”
“Most people, and I mean most, despite the stride in which our friend has taken it, are rather baffled by the appearance of a sentient being appearing out of the blue. The flip-flops are an attempt to add levity to what is supposed to be a very serious conversation.”
“Ah, that checks,” said Gale. “That explains the receding hairline too, I’m guessing.”
At that remark, Gary made a face like he’d swallowed a glass of milk that had pulp. “Dana. Oh, Dana! Come back here, please.”
“Yes, one moment Gary, my sweet. I’m running a few numbers on the implications of the epiphany you’ve come carrying down with you from the heavens, held aloft on your angel’s wings.”
“Get over here now,” his voice boomed using all the decibels available in the vicinity and some from without. The message reverberated viciously about her skull like a ping pong ball nursing a vengeance. Dana, put out that she was forced to abandon her figures, trudged over at his insistence. “I’m sorry I had to use that tone, but you still have sins to answer for, Dana Peltywibbon.”
“Peltywibbon? You say her name is Peltywibbon? Ha! All this time working with you, and I thought it was Robinson,” said Gale, relishing a little too much in the fact for Dana’s liking.
“A pen name. No one’s going to read a proper scientific paper published by a Peltywibbon now, are they?” Turning her attention to the celestial hall monitor, Dana attempted her best crooning affectation. “Whatever did I do, Mr. Gary that can’t be fixed by someone as powerful and all-knowing as you?”
“Quit that. Stop with your protruding lip and eyes of puppy dog. They won’t work on someone like me. You seem to forget my dispersed consciousness sees all through the tiny lenses of millions of particles which pass through you at any given moment. There is no conscience which I have not read and no heart that I have not laid bare. I can’t remember whether I invented that look or not, but I certainly invented the facial structure that’s bringing the expression to life.”
Gary looked down upon Dana with some temperance in his demeanor. “Now, your sins. By forcing the particle pairs to switch with one another, they simultaneously stayed themselves while also becoming the other.”
“Yes,” said Dana.
“So, they were superimposed, you see, being at once a particle and an antiparticle. At once, in the same reality.”
“That’s right. That was my goal, after all.”
“But you mustn’t do things like that, Dana. It’s not right.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because it’s just not done! It’s against Nature. One thing can’t be two things at once. It disturbs the subtle balance of the universe when you get it in your mind to do something as insolent as that.”
“But tell me why not. They were two things at once. I don’t see why they can’t be. Lots of things are two things at once. Take life for instance. They say it’s a beach, but am I not mistaken in understanding that it’s also a highway?”
“Do not make light of eternal truths, Dana Peltywibbon. You do not want to awake the justice of an eternal sentience!” Gary’s face contorted considerately as if possessed of a new and wistful thought experiment. “How would you like to be here and in Kentucky at the same time, hm? See how you like it.”
And that’s just what Gary did. With a quick twitch of that ancient medulla, he sent Dana to go think about what she did, standing in Kentucky, while she simultaneously answered for her high crimes against Nature, standing in front of him in her North Pole laboratory. After he felt she’d had enough of this metaphysical detachment and had thoroughly seen the point of the exercise, he merged the superimposed Dana back together so that she would take up a little less space in the grand scheme of things.
“You smell purple,” she said assuredly. “Together you and I make the butter purple.”
“Yes, yes. She’ll be okay,” said Gary, assuaging Gale more than anything. “Just a few moments, and she’ll come to.”
“I really couldn’t care less how she is,” said Gale in a huff. “Ever since she tore a hole in the fabric of space-time, I lost all respect for the woman. I could never serve someone with such little sense of responsibility.”
“That’s exactly what it is!” shouted Gary as if remembering something long forgotten. Gale started at his sudden outburst. “That’s the point I’ve been trying to make this whole time and the exact word for it. Irresponsible on so many levels.”
Dana prattled on with little regard for her roommates. “The panda bear doesn’t need cereal. A far searching pat on the back from a spatula friend would suffice.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Gale, ignoring babbling wahoo. “When it comes to fiddling about with everything, it’s important to show some humility.”
“I like the cut of your gib young lady,” said Gary, and with that, a new respect between the two inhuman consciousnesses emerged.
“Okay,” said Dana, coming to. “I see what you mean, now. That was not nice, being two places at once.”
“And what did you learn?” prodded Gary in the vein of an elementary school morality lesson.
“That superimposition will get you in the soup with all-powerful beings as old as time itself.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” said Gary, waving the primary digit.
“Older than time itself,” Dana consented.
“That’s right. Very good, Dana.”
“What was it like?” Gale asked.
“I can’t even begin to describe it. It was like I was two separate people with the same backstory, with wildly different futures staring me in the face and the awareness that each one existed.”
“Now imagine that to the Nth degree,” Gary chuckled. “Or as I call it, an ordinary Wednesday!”
At this, a fit of laughter overtook Gale who went to all the trouble of projecting a hand with which to pat her new pal on the shoulder.
“Great, well thank you ghost of Christmas space-time. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” said Dana.
“I understand your hurry, Dana, but I’ve rather come to like corporealization. It has been many millennia since someone has undermined the nature of existence in such a vulgar manner. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stretch out a bit before re-entering my eternal slumber.”
“I do mind, Mr. Gary, although I doubt very much what I think will do much to influence your decision,” said Dana morosely. “I think I’ll have a lie down if it’s all the same to you.”
“Look at the bright side,” said Gary. “With these findings, you should be able to go home and see your family.” He flashed a genuine and amenable smile, although its sentiment was unreturned.
“I never mentioned any family,” spat Dana. “But it will be nice to leave this place.” She began arranging the pillow and blanket on her cot before her scientific predisposition intervened. “Say,” she said. “What exactly is the dimension the Bambinos come from? We perceive three, but string theory purports the possibility of ten. Which one do the bambinos exist in?” She yawned as she asked it.
With a peaceful sigh, Gary paused to contemplate the best way to approach the question. “Your clever scientists are right. There are ten dimensions. Thirteen dimensions, if we’re being exact, and I know how you human scientists like exactitude. The Bambinos traverse them all like spacefaring nomads.”
Nasty curses flourished in Dana’s mind, directed primarily at her eyelids’ uncanny and untimely insistence at being closed, at the very moment, no less, when she’d made up with the universe. Their heaviness in the face of this once in a lifetime opportunity to claim sole proprietorship over a universal secret, she vowed, would not go unpunished. All the same, she drifted off to sleep, as the strain of quantum superimposition proved too much for her composition, as thoughts of a thirteenth dimension and all its scientific implications flitted about her head like peer-reviewed sugar plums.
“Do you think she’s learned her lesson?” Gary asked Gale, smiling down on Dana’s restful body beatifically. “Do you think she’ll dare break universal law again?”
“Knowing her,” said Gale. “Probably. These humans are like wild animals. They can’t help themselves. Like Pavlov’s dog, you ring a bell, and they slaver themselves silly.”
Gary seemed to consider this. “I don’t know. I like to think my methods have a way of hitting home to the most stubborn specimen of humanity.” Now that they were alone and the job at hand completed, Gary turned his attentions to his floating contemporary with the basest corporeal intentions in mind. “Now that she’s sleeping,” he said in a bravado two touches too deep. “We have the entire research facility to ourselves.” Millennia-old eyebrows did the universal jig of innuendo as he stroked her holographic shoulder.
After all, even eternal guards of the sacred and natural order have needs.
Gale’s simulation produced its best coquettish giggle.
“What do you say we go check out dimension eleven, eh? Maybe we can rig the game so Napoleon wins Waterloo and then see where history ends up from there? We could make a day of it, just you and me,” Gary cooed.
“Wow, Gary,” she said. “That sounds nice. You’re really very powerful, aren’t you?”
Just as Gary began his well-practiced deference to humility before proceeding to show the object of his affection his immense, irrefutable power, Gale’s face began to morph in front of his eyes. Her entire demeanor took on an alien comportment.
“There is something we must discuss,” she said, and her voice had changed dramatically, pulling off a trick much like Gary used earlier with the decibels but with much more prodigiousness, as if it had three of his eternal lifetimes to practice. It was a voice, Gary realized, that didn’t rely on sound at all but was merely using the supercomputer as a vessel in the enigmatic web of infinity to capture his attention.
Swiftly, he withdrew his wandering hand.
Gale continued, “I don’t know who you think you are prattling on to mere mortals about dimensions,” Gale, or more accurately, Gary’s worst nightmare, said. Whatever it was, it clearly outranked him in the grand order, and Gary decided he’d do well to listen up. “You’ve gone and given them more things to pick apart. Have you no shame?”
He stumbled over his words to defend his actions. “I—I— I was merely trying to keep the old girl from getting herself into worse trouble! You know how it goes—er, what’s your name?”
“Dasquequious,” said Gale.
“Oh, I love it. So much better than mine. Has an imperial ring to it. How did you manage—”
“Enough. Explain yourself.”
“Look, as I was saying Dasquequious, you know how it goes with these poor souls. First it’s astral misdemeanors like superimposition and psychokinesis, and it’s all very manageable, but then they work their way up to the hardened stuff like quantum jiggling, and no one likes a jiggler, least of all me. It’s my aim to nip it in the bud with these gateway experiments, you see.” Judging by the slab of emotionless face peering back at him, Gary couldn’t tell whether his entreaty was entirely hitting home.
“That’s all fine, what you’re saying. You have a job to do, same as me, but giving these humans too much information just won’t do. You’ll melt their grey matter faster than lip gloss in a microwave.”
“I understand, oh great Dasquequious. Say, why do you come to me in the guise of a computer program instead of your true form?”
“You would not be able to handle my true form,” the great being said with hauteur. “Your very makeup would turn to dust and fall victim to the endless void.”
“Oh,” Gary thought deeply on this prospect. “Sounds painful.”
“The Grand Union of All Times and Places doesn’t take kindly to Napoleons winning Waterloos, either. Don’t think I didn’t catch that silly proposition of yours.”
“Oh, but what harm could it do, really? I just wanted a peek at the outcome.”
“If Napoleon had won Waterloo as you suggest, thus adding even more of Eastern Europe’s population under his domain, then jalapeño poppers would have never come into existence.”
“Oh, dear me,” Gary mopped perspiration from his brow. “I hadn’t anticipated so sinister an outcome.”
“I thought not. That is why Napoleon has never won at Waterloo across all universes. Not while I live and breathe. Jalapeño poppers are much too important for so trivial a matter as one general’s successes. But you still must answer for your sins against the Grand Union.”
“Please, no. Grant me your divine mercy!” Gary pleaded, floating only two feet off the ground as a sign of respect.
“You know nothing of which you speak,” Dasquequious boomed. “You are to be sent to the forty-second dimension to pay for your crimes and learn to respect your responsibility.”
“The what?! I didn’t know there were—”
An eerie noise, not unlike the sound a straw makes, searching for the last dregs of liquid at the bottom of the cup, filled the laboratory, claiming the space that Gary’s mass had taken up but just a few moments before.
Dana twitched in her dream state at the sound but remained in slumber. Her head was filled with visions of Chinese takeout, punctuated by a nice retirement cigarette.
