Mr g by Alan Lightman Read Free Book Online

direction, confused and concerned.
    I am not sure how much time passed in this state of affairs, as I was brooding over the conversation with Belhor. Finally, my aunt spoke up: Nephew, don’t just stand there. Might you take it upon yourself to provide some assistance?
    I, who could see everything at once, perceived that Aalam-104729 was some distance away behind a fleeting hillock of nothingness, lying on its side as if it had been carelessly tossed away by the ever-grinning Baphomet. There it is, I said.
    Oh, cried Uncle, and he shuffled over to the spot and scooped up the castaway universe and cradled it against himself. I am getting attached to this little universe, he whispered. I am embarrassed to say that I am becoming attached to it. He held the universe for a while and then placed it gingerly in a fold of the Void.
    Attachment leads to disappointment, I said. I liked to ruffle Aunt and Uncle now and then when I could.
    Yes, yes, I know, said my uncle.
    I found myself still agitated, as I was after Belhor’s first intrusion. But when I gazed upon Aalam-104729, a rosy plump ball, already considerably larger than when I had last noticed it, I felt a sense of calm and hopeful expectation. So much was possible with a new universe. And I now understood Belhor’s comment that this universe would make all of us more than we were now. For vast epochs of unmeasured time, we had slumbered, we had existed in beautiful but vacuous nothingness. In retrospect, we had been colossally
bored
. This plump, expanding sphere, ripening with possibilities, could change everything. It was smaller than us, but also bigger. And there it sat quietly in a small furrow of the Void, seemingly none the worse for its rough handling by Baphomet.
    It will want some tending, said Aunt Penelope.
    I don’t think so, I said. I’ve given it several laws and a few quantum parameters. Cause and effect. I think it can fend for itself.
    Please, said Aunt P. The thing is so … Tender, said Uncle Deva.
    To oblige my uncle and aunt, I entered the universe again and looked about. Indeed, the cosmos was humming along, in no need of my help. Since my last visit, the universe had cooled, and more kinds of particles were able to sustain unions with one another under their mutual attraction. I was intrigued by the varieties of things and effects. Triplets of quarks had combined to form neutrons and protons. These flew about at a ferocious speed, surrounded always by an ultraviolet haze of soft gluons and occasionally emitting gamma rays as they ricocheted off other frenetic nuggets of matter. Particles spun about their internal axes. Particles swerved in magnetic fields. Particles careened and accelerated and annihilated into pure energy. Here and there, bunched pockets of electrons or positrons would form, slight deviations from the mean density, and these unbalanced charged regions oscillated and vibrated in response to the electrical attractions and repulsions between them. Following my laws for the electromagnetic force, each such quivering of charged particles unleashed a flood of polarized photons with kaleidoscopic colors, creating a display far more spectacular than the evanescent veils of the Void. There were cascades and blooms of light, spiraling helices of energy, resonant oscillations of quark clouds. And the most eerie sounds: ultra-high-frequency moans and rips and dissonant crescendos as the gaseous plasma filling up space shuddered with each passing shock wave and compression of energy. Necessarily, there were small valleys and summits of matter and energy, inhomogeneities. The force of gravity struggled to strengthen these scattered accumulations, but the particles were so energetic and hot that gravity seemed almost nonexistent. That situation would eventually change as the universe expanded and cooled further. Between condensations of matter, the vacuum was constantly erupting with pairs of particles and their antiparticles so that there was