KATACLYSM: A Space-Time Comedy (11 page)

Usually, about an hour after Rabbi Levi got home, his wife, the Rebetzin Levi, would return from her nightly bingo game.  As was her routine, she would set her oversized knockoff Louis Vuitton handbag on the kitchen counter, wipe the perspiration from her forehead with her monogrammed silk handkerchief and collapse on the couch next to her husband.  Grabbing his plate of herring and taking some for herself, she would always ask him the same question.

“Pierre, why do you watch this garbage?” the Rebetzin would say through a semi-frown before stuffing some bread and fish into her mouth.

And each night the Rabbi would turn to his wife and explain why.  He explained it the same way every night, each time using the same words, the same words he used with David and with Maurice and with Hannah.

“C’est la volonté de Dieu,” he would say.  ‘Because that’s what God wanted.’

Of course you might be tempted to say that David the butcher’s store burned down because of a stupid drunk band of teenagers celebrating their national holiday with a bit of pyromania, that Maurice Cohen was having trouble getting it up as a side effect of his beta blocker, that Angelica wasn’t eating because Hannah Klein had, in a fit of lunacy, put the dog on an all foie gras diet that was making her unbelievably ill.  And while you might be perfectly correct in doing so, you would be missing the big picture.  Pierre Levi got the big picture.  You see, sometimes when you are trying to understand ‘why’, you need to see things as a whole and not get muddled in the minutiae as Jude and Flower had been for some time now.  The two humans needed to be shown the big picture, and that’s just what the most gifted mind on DSM V was about to do.

As they entered, the darkness was permeated by a mist that wafted in all directions with a smell that could only be described as a mix of flatulence and grandmotherly perfume.  It was then that they heard the coughing, a sustained fit of coughing that lasted for what felt like minutes.  The mist thickened.

“Ok, ok,” came a woman’s voice.  “That’s enough Tia.  Why don’t you come back another day?”

Some mood lighting was turned on and Jude, Flower and Paroophoron found themselves standing in a large spheroid chamber not entirely unlike a planetarium.  In front of them, an extremely fat little green alien was stooped over working on a contraption from which the mist billowed.  He looked up.  The female voice had come from somewhere near the ceiling which must have been at least twenty meters high.  Something faint, apparently the source of the voice, began to descend slowly.  A few seconds into its approach, it became clear that the something was so bizarre in shape that the two humans instinctively took a few steps backward towards the door.  The thing was, in essence, a massive brain with a single eye dangling from each hemisphere.  One of the two eyes had a rainbow iris which swirled in three dimensions.  But the voice came from the other eye which was utterly black as though covered in fresh tar.

“Don’t worry,” the eye seemed to say to the workman.  “I knew that you weren’t going to have any luck today anyway.”

With some effort, the man pushed himself to his feet.

“You did?” he beeped.  “Well why did you drag me all the way over here then?”

“I thought you could use the exercise, Tia” said the brain sizing up the fat alien.

Somehow, it seemed as though the black eye was winking at him.  Tia did not seem particularly impressed, but he collected his tools and lumbered off, disappearing into the mist. The brain then turned its attention to its other guests, floating to within an arm’s length of the trio.

“Hello Paroophoron,” it said warmly.

“Hi Amy,” replied the alien. “What’s with all the fog?”

“The fog, my dear boy, is of no consequence.  It’s only really there for effect anyway.  The machine shall be fixed by the end of the week.   I could have had it working sooner if I had put my mind to it…” the eye seemed to pause reflectively, “…but I prefer to linger because there is so little that amuses me these days…” The brain floated over to Jude and Flower, passing up and down in front of each of them in turn, “which is why I am so delighted to see these friends of yours.  I’m quite sure that you are the first of your species to walk through my door.”

“Jude, Flower,” said Paroophoron with a wave of his arm.  “This is Amaurosis Fugax.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Jude.

Flower remained silent.

“Don’t worry dear,” the brain said to her.  “This is not the waste of time you think it is.  I am going to help you.  I’ve been known to be longwinded at times, so you’ll have to have patience.  But I promise, all will be explained…and yes, you are quite right, your friend does look handsome in this lighting.”

Flower glanced at Jude and blushed, unable to comprehend how this bizarre creature could know exactly what she had been thinking a moment earlier.

“First, though, let me show you my new equipment,” Amaurosis Fugax said floating up and down giddily.  “Paroophoron is the only one who has been here before, but I assure you that it is a significant improvement.  Watch this.”

The brain somersaulted in midair and, at once, the room lit up. The group now seemed to be surrounded by clouds and a clear blue sky. Suddenly, Jude, Flower and Paroophoron had the terrifying sensation of falling at incredible speed.  They plummeted while Amaurosis Fugax drifted along side them serenely among the lazy clouds.  The three visitors all screamed and they continued screaming until their vocal cords had become so raw that only squeaky gasps would come out.  Over the course of their screaming and crying it became apparent to all three of them that they were falling towards a vast blue expanse that stretched towards the horizon on all sides.  A sea.  As they drew nearer and nearer to its surface, the azure homogeny was abruptly broken by the head of a monster.  Not just any monster, mind you, but a beast so horrifying that it defied anyone’s imagination.  A giant eating machine that must have been the size of a small office building, its deadly black eyes bore holes in the falling trio as its eighteen sets of jaws unraveled in a gummy mess that immediately explained why there didn’t seem to be a living thing for miles in any direction.

“This is it,” thought Flower as the monster thrust out of the water at them, letting out a deafening wail of gastronomic anticipation.  “This is how I’m going to die.”

She closed her eyes, bracing for impact just as the group flew straight past the creature’s jaws and bounced off one its many tongues.  Then…nothing happened.  When Flower opened her eyes tentatively, she found herself covered in saliva sitting with Jude and Paroophoron on the floor of the spherical chamber they had started in.

“What do you think?” said Amaurosis Fugax jovially. The brain had resumed its position floating in front of them.

“What the hell was that?” shouted Jude as he flung a wad of saliva off his wrist.

“That,” said the brain “is this room.  It’s been my life’s work.  I’ve always wanted people to be able to see what I see…and now finally, they can…in high definition and, when desired, fully interactive environments.  It really doesn’t need the fog, does it?”

“But what’s the point?” said Jude.

“You mean about the monster?  Oh I just do that for effect, kind of as a teaser.  And stop looking so indignant,” the brain said in Flower’s direction. “I’ve worked it out so that none of you came out partially digested like some of my earlier visitors.”

“Gee…thanks,” said Flower sarcastically.

“What was that thing?” beeped Paroophoron.

“That thing,” said the brain “was the most terrifying creature that has ever existed in this universe.  Unfortunately, it only lived a few short years before it ate everything on its native planet and died of starvation.  I just took all of you back in time about three hundred billion years.”

Amaurosis Fugax paused for effect during which time a crimson coloured number 300,000,000,000 appeared in midair and then quickly dissolved into the mist.  The brain nodded in satisfaction on seeing the special effect delivered perfectly on cue.

“These days, I use the monster for a select group of my clients who suffer from a paralyzing fear of being devoured by a giant beast with spectacular jaws.  With repeat exposure therapy, they do actually become somewhat desensitized and are able to go about their lives normally.  In spite of everything, unfortunately, when the time comes and some of them actually are devoured by a hideous jawed beast, they still don’t tend to take it well.”

The brain’s lobes shook back and forth unhappily.

“I’m still playing with it.”

It was clear that the brain’s eccentricity rivaled that of some of the wildest orbits in the the universe, but her guests had more pressing concerns.

“Look, can we please…” began Flower.

“But that’s impossible,” Jude interrupted.

“What’s impossible?” said the brain.

“You can’t go back in time.  Unless that was some kind of recording, we can’t have gone three hundred billion years into the past.”

“And why can’t you go back in time?” said Amaurosis Fugax with a hint of amusement.

“Well, for starters, you’d have to be traveling much faster than the speed of light.  But even if you could, the act itself introduces paradoxes that make time travel impossible.  Take, for example, the Grandfather Paradox.  If you went back in time and killed your grandfather, then you would never have been born, but then you couldn’t have killed your grandfather, and so on.  Time travel invalidates the idea of causality.  You’re playing tricks on us.”

“Quite the contrary actually,” replied the brain.  “First of all, as I know Paroophoron explained to you earlier, there is no such thing as what you call “the speed of light”.  Your very being here at this moment is the best evidence of that.  Second, there is no such thing as the Grandfather Paradox.  Forgetting for the moment that quantum states force the past and present to complement each other thus preventing any such nonsense, there is a much more elegant refutation of your argument.  You see, no society clever enough to master the art of time travel is stupid enough to allow people bent on killing their own ancestors to go back in time.  That would be awfully foolish of us, wouldn’t it?”

The brain bobbed up and down apparently for dramatic effect.

“Unfortunately, on occasion…quite rarely…and I really have to stress this, it doesn’t happen very often at all…a mistake is made and someone does do something to the past that causes another person’s grandfather to perish.”

The brain turned fixing its black eye squarely on Flower.  Silence filled the room.

“Me?” said Flower almost inaudibly.

“Yes…you,” replied Amaurosis Fugax.

In the ensuing minutes, the brain’s three guests stood quietly as they were physically taken back to the moments when Paroophoron had helped Eric Silver find some tea.  After they watched Eric leave the locker room, Amaurosis did a back flip and the group again found themselves standing in the empty chamber on DSM V.

“So he’s given the medical resident some tea.  So what?  I don’t get it,” said Jude.

“Well, why would you?” replied the brain matter-of-factly.  “You see, Paroophoron did not merely create that teabag out of nothing.  No.  To accomplish what you have just seen, he changed the very fabric of the universe using a device that is entirely foreign to your planet, though I believe you have seen it before.”

Paroophoron reached into his pocket and withdrew the red flashing box he had given to Jude earlier.

“That box is no mere homing beacon,” continued the brain, “but rather it is a tool that allows a person to open a conduit between two nearby points in space-time.  Oh yes, inventing that tiny piece of equipment proved quite a lucrative proposition for a couple of college students a few years back if I recall correctly.”

Amaurosis Fugax’s swirling eye turned towards the flashing box and, as if on command, the object levitated out of Paroophoron’s hand and took its place hovering next to the giant brain.

“This box could be used…say…to locate a person who is close by…or it could be used to create a wormhole to the nearest tea chest.  Let me show you.”

Bolts of electricity shot across the surface of the brain and the room became dark.  Above them, an image materialized.  Hundreds of neon green sheets stacked themselves into a vertical lattice, separated by what seemed to be some kind of yellow liquid.

“The geometry of the universe is truly spectacular…Jude,” said the brain motioning to him with its Technicolor eye, “you have a background in science so you will be familiar with theories of spherical and saddle shaped universes.  In fact, the character of our surroundings is far more complex.  It is hard for me to explain to you, but this is my best attempt.  You see, we live in a world whose form is quite a lot like the comestible dish you call ‘lasagna’.”

Neither of the humans thought the image Amaurosis Fugax had conjured looked remotely like lasagna, but they remained silent.

“Every second…every nanosecond…every femtosecond, a new reality comes into being and a new sheet – of pasta if you will – is placed into the network representing that exact moment in time.  But make no mistake, the sheets of time you see before you are not perfectly flat.”

The image above them zoomed into a particular green sheet showing ripples and undulations along its surface.

“Paroophoron’s little box takes advantage of the proximity of different parts of space-time to make connections between nearby points on the same sheet…between points where the curves come together.”  Obliging once more, the image focused in on two adjacent ripples that were nearly touching.

The brain turned its black eye on Paroophoron.

“So when he programmed it to find the nearest tea chest, he expected that it would locate the nearest one within the vicinity on the same particular layer of pasta in the lasagna, if you follow me.”

Paroophoron nodded, confirming to the humans that what the brain was saying was no mere gibberish but gibberish with profound meaning.  Amaurosis Fugax continued speaking.

“One missing teabag from the greater Boston area at that one moment in time wasn’t going to cause a great deal of trouble…or so he thought.”

Again, Paroophoron nodded.

“But, unfortunately for him…and you,” the brain said, now directing its attention to the humans, “Paroophoron’s box did not make a connection between two points on the same sheet.  It created a wormhole between two different sheets.”

The brain flew up towards the green and yellow lasagna image.

“Now normally, what he did is not possible, that is why he didn’t think twice before opening the wormhole.  Normally, the different sheets are separated by thick layers of proverbial ‘tomato sauce, cheese and meat’.  These layers act as the division between present and past…between past and distant past…Yes, we can see recreations and representations of the past using sophisticated technology as we have done here today in this very room, but one cannot actually travel across these layers without far more powerful boxes than the one Epoophoron bought Paroophoron’s for his last birthday…and, might I add, without the proper permits, such travel is highly illegal.”