by Jim Lombardo
Hannah knew that what humans call “matter,” on the atomic level, was nothing more than condensed electrical energy. Nothing was truly physical at its core. This included everything from Halley’s Comet to a petal on a rose. What was regarded as matter, was collections of atoms bonded together. However, these atoms were comprised solely of energy waves and space. They did not exist in a material sense. They were immaterial. Thus there was really no physical matter at all in the Universe, only energy. Matter could arise from nothing, because that’s all it really was.
Energy, as it turned out in Hannah’s brain, was born of spacetime. In the three-dimensional world, imagine a person sitting on a bicycle at rest on a flat surface. Then consider how virgin energy would be created out of nothing if space were to expand upward underneath the bicycle, so that it began to roll down the newly created hill. But, certainly if space and time were nothing, then the offspring of spacetime, known as energy, had to be nothing as well.
Overall, the concept that space, time, and energy/matter grew out of absolutely nothing was easy for Hannah to accept, because she realized that they always were absolutely nothing.
In the context of the super dimension, it was obvious to Hannah that gravity was an intimate dance between energy and the fantastical nature of spacetime. Compressed energy, or mass, pushed spacetime into the super dimension, creating warps, or trapdoors, right into the very fabric of this slippery vacuity, and things “fell” into the resulting voids. The enormous ebb represented the ultimate cliff, a rabbit hole of infinity, with the mass of the entire Universe pressing inward around it, creating gravity so strong that it turned time on its head.
The fact that space, time, and matter/energy had propagated so dramatically, to create an entire universe, was no surprise to her. After all, this was how nature behaved in the three-dimensional world, where such proliferation was typical and easily observed. A single grain of rice could be cultivated to one day feed an entire country. There were 10,000,000,000,000,000 (ten quadrillion) ants alive on the planet Earth, just like the one she had encountered in her room the prior year. Things thrived staggeringly. But..., Hannah wondered, what about the very first ant? How did that happen? She knew that because of electromagnetism and gravity, bits of matter were drawn to each other and tended to clump together. Out of chaos, orderly structures would naturally occur and evolve. But come on, me, and all of this? Because of clumping? There has to be more to it than that.
The child then experienced an epiphany as to the crux of the double asterisk **, the force that always insisted on being included in her equations. Peekaboo, I see you, she thought. And I see what you’re up to. She determined that the fruit of ** was a universe of such marvelous complexity, including life, because creation was the nature of **. No different than an artist creating art. That’s what they do. And this artist was productive, powerful, and jam-packed with purpose. So stars, planets, and even living flowers were formed, but why create life with consciousness? What’s the goal there? she asked herself.
As shrewd as Hannah was, she wasn’t a mind reader. To find the best answer to this question, she first considered the fact that her mother had also created life with consciousness — namely, herself. She reflected back to her baby days when Monica would kiss each toe sweetly while drying her feet after a bath, and concluded, Ask a parent why they wanted to have children, and therein lies the answer which ** would give.
Explaining the tidal cycle of the Universe, which Hannah had described to Anderson, required simple backwards logic. Hannah recognized that the way nature acted and reacted was independent of scale. When a toilet flushed, creating a small whirlpool of water, this was no different than the behavior and appearance of a hurricane, or even the spiraling arms of galaxies, cartwheeling collections of billions of stars, some stretching out half a million light-years across the heavens. Clearly, nature liked to make circles, and was indifferent about size. This was no surprise to Hannah, because size, as she now knew, was only a human concoction, based on inferior perceptive abilities. She then considered how everything in life around her was waves and cycles. The repeating pattern of light waves, sound waves, ocean waves, brainwaves, the rhythm of a human heart, even the rhythms in her own wavy hair were all cyclic processes, as were the grandiose motions that generated the seasons and eclipses of the sun. Continuing her line of reasoning to its zenith, she asked herself, Just because the Universe itself is infinitely large, would it behave any differently from my hair? The answer is no. So then the Universe is cyclic too. The enormous ebb is the cycling out, the flushing of everything, but it rebounds like a geyser, a ginormous Old Faithful, and forms everything back into existence, things like me. Eureka.
Hannah’s crowning intellectual achievement crystallized her conviction that the Universe, the aggregate of everything, space and time, along with all the matter, energy, and gravity within it, was created from nothing, and it netted out to nothing for eternity. Yet as the cosmic tide rolled in with each successive Big Bang, all these nothings assumed every essence of something. That was the entire story in a nutshell.
How liberating it was for her to finally understand it all. After basking in her revelation for a minute or two, she detached herself from it, and looked back up at the camera that was pointing at her.
“What’s up?” asked Marshall from the observation room.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said with an inner giggle.
Hannah knew that it would be impossible to ever explain the super dimension and ** to anyone. It would be unfathomable to them. How could she ever describe the color turquoise to a person who had always been sightless? How could she explain that an expanding sphere’s outer surface at a certain point becomes the center? Why would she even begin to try? Knowing what she now knew, she mused at the felicitous appearance of her first name, and wondered if that could help illustrate the freakish nature of the grand answer. Like Hannah, things were the same from beginning to end, as end to beginning, backwards or forwards. But it even got more absurd, because moving away from the center in opposite directions, or inwards from each end, was the same path, and always brought you to the same place.
At first she felt heartbroken that no one else would ever be able to fully share in her enlightened awareness, but then she reconsidered, thinking, What’s so sad about a situation where humans will still stare out in wonder at the Universe? That men and women will continue to devote their lives to exploring answers to all of its mysteries? That they’ll continue to be driven by curiosity? Yes, they’ll struggle to learn, that’s for sure, but they’ll also continue to celebrate each nugget they uncover with great reward and satisfaction. In the end, they’ll always be entranced and enthralled by the magic show. Maybe it’s just as well I can’t spoil it for them. For answers to the ultimate questions, they’re going to have to rely on faith, but faith is a particularly useful and invaluable commodity to lean on.
Hannah was now content. She wrapped up her triumphant cosmological and spiritual leap by sending a heartfelt sentiment out to the pocket of energy she had isolated and identified. Thank you for waving to me, double asterisk. Thank you for the wonder of the waves.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Sergio
“Sergio, can you hear me?”
Anderson was in the ICU, bending over the hospital bed that his injured assistant had been lying in for a week. He leaned in closer to try to get through again to his friend, this time speaking clearer and louder.
“Sergio. It’s Gordy. Can you hear me at all?”
Sergio’s doctor was making his rounds and entered the room.
“So, how is he, doc?”
“No change so far, but it is possible he’ll recover. His brainwaves are minimal right now, but we’re keeping him sedated to let the injury heal. We’ll know a lot more in a week or so when we try to wake him.”
Anderson watched as the doctor checked Sergio’s chart and then c
onducted some brief testing of his autonomous reflexes. He took out a penlight, gently pulled up on one of the young man’s eyelids with his thumb and shined the light directly into the eye. As he moved the penlight around in small circles, Anderson could see that Sergio’s pupil was widely dilated, just a vacant, darkened disk.
“I’m checking the cranial nerve pathways here,” the doctor explained. “A healthy response from the brain should constrict the pupil now, to moderate the amount of light entering the back of the eye.”
The other eye revealed the same oversized black pupil with no change. The doctor clicked the penlight off and appeared disappointed. “We’ll do our best. Stay hopeful,” he offered, before exiting the room.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Waiting It Out
At six o’clock on Saturday night, Hannah started to get sidetracked by a persistent reminiscence that she was having a difficult time blocking out. It was from one summer when the fishing boat her father was aboard had been racing home, trying to beat a tropical storm that was barreling up the eastern seaboard. Hannah recalled her mother being unusually quiet, and at one point, unfolding and refolding all of her father’s laundry very carefully. She called up to Chief Goldrick. “Marshall, could you do me a favor? I’ll stay put here until this is over, but could you please put my parents together now? It’s okay to do that.”
The prediction for the moment of impact had been fine-tuned to 4:52 the following morning, just at the break of dawn, about 35 minutes before sunrise. People everywhere struggled to cope as the meager hours remaining dwindled down. As much as possible, families drew together to be with each other, including many reunions between the long-estranged. They held onto each other, often exchanging the words “I’m sorry” and “I love you.” They prayed and wept together. Many spent the evening watching their old home movies, going through family albums, and recounting all the special moments of their lives they had shared. Houses of worship were packed with their faithful followers. Some simply couldn’t deal with the stress and reached for liquor and drugs to dull the agony of the wait.
Like Hannah, and so many other essential people throughout the world, Drs. Anderson, Murray, and Shepard, along with elite engineers and officials of EPIC, were sacrificing time with their families to literally keep their eye on the ball.
Many found this event to be an inspiration to celebrate life. There were watch parties being organized, including so-called crash-bashes that echoed a morbid New Year’s Eve, with revelers and people masquerading as the spheres, Dr. Murray, and Hannah. And there was still room for humor. In the United States, radio stations were playing Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” as the objects ambled through the night towards one another. In her world address that evening, Hannah advised everyone facetiously, “By the way, tomorrow I’m really going to hate saying I told you so.” She ended her speech on an uplifting note, saying, “I hope that society will always treasure in their hearts the memory of how we, the people of Earth, all worked together as one, with an unprecedented spirit of cooperation and brotherhood. I hope we learned something that will be everlasting.”
On the ground, the first entity continued to snowball outward, grotesquely chewing up everything in its ring-shaped path and hastening its growth over the past 24 hours to a jogging speed. The sound that emanated from it was so intense that scientists within five miles were becoming concussed and experiencing permanent damage to their ears, despite wearing protective headgear. Even looking directly at the void from any distance was uncomfortable, given the super-bright bonfires blazing from its surface. Meanwhile, the smaller globe, about a fifth of a mile in diameter, had surfaced above ground, and was moving forward ambitiously.
The dreaded fear at this stage was, what if the two objects meet and just continue to grow unchecked? Certainly the planet Earth and everything on it was doomed. The days of mankind would be numbered, and that number would be very small. Scientists kept working to develop a response under that scenario, but they had nothing to offer, other than directing high-energy lasers at it, or attacking it with a nuclear bomb, in a last-ditch effort to alter the chain reaction. These were Hail Mary passes to be sure, but in the absence of any other options, they recommended trying them if Hannah’s theory and plan of action proved wrong. Preparations were underway to attempt the lasers first, and the United Nations had officially given Great Britain unanimous support to deliver a thermonuclear bomb. British military forces stood at the ready. Per the U.N., the final go-ahead decision would rest with the Prime Minister of England, with the formal approval of the Queen, and in consultation with Dr. Bruce Murray and Miss Hannah Blake.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Nature
Early Sunday morning, the smaller void of nothingness was bulling forward at ground level, when it encountered a sloping downhill gradient in the earth. This was the outer perimeter of the now three-mile-wide ringed trench that surrounded the first larger void, as it devoured soil and rock ahead of its surface growth. Although the new, quarter mile wide void was being dwarfed by the towering grandeur of the original void in its path, the smaller one proceeded along unruffled, like a hungry child running home for dinner.
Light-years away, the stars, scattered across the celestial sphere above, were just beginning to fade from view, as the sun — still beneath the horizon — began to pepper its first rays of light over the verdant hills of eastern England.
The voids continued their unrelenting expansion, rapidly narrowing the physical space between the two, while the Earth performed its faithful rotation. The day was waking up. However, across the whole country, the dawn chorus of birds went strangely silent.
A short time passed, and then suddenly the larger void began to appear different. Wavelike ripples traveled at hyperspeed in concentric circles on its surface, like time-lapsed photography of waves traveling on the ocean. The entire 62-mile-wide object, while blaring as usual, was now quivering like a nervous creature, as the earth for hundreds of miles around it began to shudder. The raging firestorm on its surface intensified, lighting up the sky like a fireworks finale. Then in an instant there was complete silence, calm, and tranquility. The two objects, which had merged into a single entity void of light, were now quietly and steadily receding inward from the outer edges of the devastation.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Inner Oblivion
Once scientists had positively confirmed the contraction was underway, the news was quickly disseminated and a wave of euphoria circled the globe. There were tears of joy, embraces, high fives, and champagne bottles being uncorked. Shortly thereafter at the Los Alamos lab, Hannah emerged from the depths of her work chamber and sprinted into the waiting arms of Monica and Brian.
“Dad! Mom!”
“Hannah! My baby,” cried Monica as the family locked together emotionally. “So it’s going to be okay?”
Hannah looked up proudly. “Yes, definitely. They took the bait.”
“Took the bait?” laughed Brian. “So, who’s the fisherman now?”
Marshall settled back into his executive chair to savor the family’s reunion. Giddily, he swiveled himself from side to side.
After a long embrace, Monica pushed Hannah away gently from her chest and softly brushed the hair away from her eyes to behold her golden girl. She held her daughter’s head in her hands and gazed at her adoringly. “Do you know how much we love you?”
“Yes, I do, Mom. Remember, I know everything.”
“First you save me from a riptide,” said Brian, “and now this.”
Hannah nodded happily to her Dad, even though nothing was registering in her brain about any riptide. She no longer harbored any memory of what Brian was referring to, but she correctly assumed why that was.
“So, how do I ever repay you, smartypants?”
“Well, you could start with a pet monkey.”
Scientists tracked the receding void ov
er the next month as it progressively collapsed in on itself. Data analysis of the moment when the larger sphere changed from a growing entity to a shrinking one confounded physicists. Incredibly sensitive instruments indicated that the sphere had changed direction without ever stopping, not even for an instant. It seemed impossible to them that an object moving in one direction could fully reverse itself without coming to a complete stop at some point, but that is what the readings were showing had happened. Only Hannah understood how it was possible that it never stopped moving. Due to the outlandish essence of space, the change in direction of the larger sphere was more like a car taking a U-turn while continuing to be in motion, rather than stopping and moving in reverse. Unfortunately the complete explanation as to why the measurements were perfectly acceptable in the context of the space-time continuum was not something that could ever be conveyed by Hannah. To an ordinary human brain with its inherent limitations, it would remain illogical.
As the single combined blob of nothingness continued to dwindle in size, rivers and their tributaries in the geographical area began pouring into the 66-mile-wide crater left in its wake, resulting in a growing body of water. Some scientific explorers dared to venture deep into the depression to monitor and study the object. Exactly 82 days from when Anderson had first seen the unusual anomaly in his lab, a scientist was lowered into the watery abyss in a submersible to observe and film the final hours of the void’s existence. It shrank into a microscopically small speck, eventually becoming imperceptible as it imploded in slow motion into an inner oblivion.