14
David was thinking.
For David logic and reason had long ago driven out thoughts of religion or any other non-empirically evidential argument.
His proclivity for suggesting the absurd was testimony to this position. By constantly throwing up ridiculous and outlandishly logical arguments he tested the limits of his thinking.
However, unusually, he had argued himself into creating a place that could easily be a heaven. A place where a God could exist and from which – without limits of time or tide – a God could be all things to all men wherever and whenever it wished.
That this should be a cliché was not as disturbing to David as was the thought that it was HIS argument that had done this, his and Helen’s. That he of all people should have come up with this particular rationale was what disturbed David the most.
David sought solace in more comfortable thoughts. He turned his attention to matters of time, of black holes and event horizons. He reached for his list.
Working on the premise that a big bang was simply the device by which scientists explain that all matter came from something or somewhere that cannot be explained, David turned his thoughts back to his bubble making session.
His argument had been that each bubble represented the creation of a universe.
Helen had built on that argument when looking at the multitude of bubbles that had been produced. It was Helen that had concluded that these bubbles were parallel universes and that discussion had led to the conclusion that bubbles – or universes – probably exist that came before our universe and after our universe.
It was the before and after that were troubling David.
If there is a place – another dimension – within which ours and other universes co-exist, and if that place is one from which a godlike being can visit as, and when, they wish. Then time must operate differently there than is experienced within our universe.
Either that, or a Godlike being is very long lived but capable of doing things so quickly that we can occasionally perceive them. Or there have been a succession of Godlike beings paying us visits as our time has passed.
Even David felt this was a poor argument when compared with what he knew of religious teachings.
No, the only plausible solution was to suggest that time was irrelevant outside of a universe. This would mean that the ‘bubble’ hypothesis was modifiable because if there is no time outside of our universe then there can be no before or after outside of the universe.
David reached for a chocolate bar.
As he opened the wrapper he decided to get himself a drink so, before putting his chocolate bar down, he re wrapped it.
On the way to his fridge he was still considering this time conundrum when the memory of what he had just done to his bar of chocolate came back to him.