A World of Worlds
Page 3
* * *
The tosser came to see me a couple of aeons ago, I think “just the other day” is the colloquialism Dino mentioned in his paper, Preserving Our Idiomatic Heritage. Tosser. Picked that up from another of Dino’s papers, a couple of centuries back, Slang: An Animalistic Taste of Our Forbears. Dino found that title very funny.
I’d known this moment would come. The moment Dino would beg for his continued existence. He pleaded in his favour our eternal, unending friendship. Well, unending until now, or very shortly.
“If you exterminate me, you will be alone. In your last few epochs of existence, a mere tick-tock in the aeons of time, you will face death on your own. No companionship. Nothing. Spare me, and I will be by your side until the end. You won’t be the mother of all lonely universes.”
“But, Dino, what must happen, must happen. You wrote a paper on it. You presented it at the Stellar Symposium when there were still a few galaxies around other than you and me to read it. It’s the tragedy of our existences. Stars banding together in mutual defence became bigger stars gobbling up smaller stars for the sheer thrill of it, and then it became unstoppable, a mad road to mutually assured destruction. It became a contest as to who could be the biggest, baddest of them all. And, let’s face it, the winner was always going to be me. We both know what’s coming. I’ll eat you up and, in my vastness, in my gigantic enormity, the intensity of my power and brightness will become insupportable until I implode into a tiny speck of luminosity, and then…”
“The Big Bang,” Dino intoned lifelessly. “Total annihilation, for you and all the entities and beings who made you what you are, and what you will no longer be.”
“We can’t change it, Dino. I can already feel you entering more and more into my orbit, violating my atmosphere, rubbing up against me, ready to be subsumed into my vastness. I know it will be the end, but I feel a frisson of excitement at the imminence of my absorption of you. I can’t wait.”
“It’s the vestiges of our ancestors’ sexuality. They used to come together in a most peculiar way, they—”
“I’ve read the paper, Dino. Spare me the details.”
Then Dino offered me eternal life. He said he was writing a paper on this very subject, and would publish it very soon. He wanted to bring it out in a couple of centuries, just before his death. He wanted to be remembered for his findings. A strange fish, Dino. Remembered by whom? There would only be myself, the Supreme Being of all supreme beings.
And I was going to explode into smithereens.
“I’m going to offer you the knowledge that you will live again,” he said. “My arguments will be irrefutable.”
“And what do you want in return, Dino? You know, when I’m ready, I’m going to suck you up into my Black Hole. I can’t give you your life.”
“I know,” he answered sadly.
He lowered his gaze, or would have done if he had a face. I’m only anthropomorphising out of respect to his memory. He liked that sort of thing.
“You see,” he said, “I want you to perpetuate my memory. If I prove to you that, although you will die, you will live again, and so give you the courage to face death, then, when you return, I want you to speak of me. I want to be remembered.”
“I promise.”
“And I will do more. I will give you a name,” he said.