10
When Helen and David next had lunch there was no Brian at the table.
“He’s looking at bedsits,” explained David.
Helen’s thoughts ran to the empty second bedroom in her own apartment. Empty that is except for single bed covered over with stuffed toy animals collected over many years.
She thought of her own ample bed and quickly dismissed her room from her thoughts with a shake of her head.
David searched around his tray for a spoon. Finding none he searched Helen’s tray where he a found exactly what he was looking for.
Helen, meanwhile, was looking at David’s tray which was remarkably unremarkable, except that is, for the canister labelled ‘Bubble-Fun’ and ‘ages three and over’ and ‘protect eyes’ and ‘do not drink’ and ‘only to be used under adult supervision’.
Helen wondered, as she nibbled at her salad dish, whether children of the ages illustrated on the bubble canister would ever be as thrilled in reality as those depicted in rapturous delight as bubbles floated around their heads and upraised hands. She also wondered whether there should be similar warnings with regard to people like David having access to anything so liable to hazard as ‘bubble-fun’.
David, for his part, shovelled soup with the rhythmic regularity of an oil pump before soaking up the remnants with his bread roll.
He was showing considerable restraint, or he was waiting for Brian to join them.
Without missing a beat, David returned to his spoon and swapped soup bowl for the first of his pudding dishes.
Helen sighed. Today, lunch was quiet. She wasn’t sure whether it was because David was behaving normally – which very definitely wasn’t normal for David, or because Brian’s arrival had been such a euphoric moment last time they were at the table.
She took the top off her water bottle and poured half a plastic tumbler before replacing the top.
As she raised her glass to drink, a bubble burst on her nose. Others came at her in a rush. Most of them burst with a fine spatter of soapy liquid drops many of which went into her glass. Others blew past her or peppered her jacket.
Her face looked nothing like that of the children on the canister.
“BANG!” said David and he blew another barrage of bubbles at Helen.
“BANG!” he said again as he repeated the process.
Helen, half covering her bottle top with her left hand removed the top and took her drink direct from the bottle.
Returning the top to the bottle she asked, “Why are you blowing bubbles at me David, and why do you keep saying bang?”
“Don’t you get it? He asked.
“Get what?”
“The other day, when we decided that our universe was like a bubble, visible as a bubble from outside but infinitely big and without limit from the inside.”
“Ri-ight,” said Helen “Go on.”
“Well,” said David, “scientists believe that our universe started with a big BANG!” with which he blew another torrent of bubbles at Helen. “I’m creating universes. Don’t you see?”
“Our definition of the big bang is our way saying that our universe came into being from something or somewhere outside of our understanding. One minute we were in a pool of filmy soapy liquid the next we are being pushed into this smaller reality where we exist in our bubble of a universe travelling through a much bigger place.
“From out in the much bigger place it maybe possible to look at many bubbles some of which may be universes like – and very unlike – our own. Only I think the bubble analogy is over simplifying things a bit.”
Helen pushed her irritation to one side. She hated drinking direct from the bottle. People handled them at the neck and there was no way of knowing that they were suitably clean for her to drink from. “So what you’re saying is that by blowing bubbles you are, in some way, recreating the birth of the universe and that there may have been many such births. That must mean that parallel universes exist, right?”
“Right,” said David. “Also”, he said, “Universes may have been created before ours and may still be being created now.”
Helen smiled a little at the simplicity of the idea. Typically, David had expounded a theory of which there was no hope of dispute or of proof. However, it was elegant in its simplicity and it did serve to answer, albeit superficially, the question – if the universe was created with a big bang, what went bang? But David had already moved on.
He was randomly prodding the few remaining bubbles, most of which burst instantly as he touched them.
“Just imagine that from outside of each of these universes I can approach, peer inside, and retreat with no constraints of distance or time to interfere with my explorations.
“My appearance would be largely unrecognisable and even if noticed would be completely un-identifiable.
“I would be able to come and go exactly as I pleased. I could compare progress, seed ideas. I might even cause changes to take place within the universes I visited without the occupants of the universe ever being able to grasp even the notion that I might exist.
“I could create and destroy.
“Stories could be told of great events and mysteries. Mysteries caused by my actions.
“It would be as if I was everywhere at once and at the same time nowhere at all.
“How could the occupants of any of the universes ever comprehend the notion of an existence outside their universe when, from inside the universe it appears infinite – without end and bound by the laws of physics as apply within these ‘bubbles’?”
Helen shivered as she checked her watch, the hairs on her neck tingling unexpectedly.