NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
A dusty cratered planet passes across the night sky, setting to the west just after 9:50 PM. Its crescent of metallic light is a reflection of thermonuclear events about ninety-three million miles away at this time of year. The intervening mysteries, and those beyond, reveal themselves in obscure calculations only specialists can decipher. Not even they can reveal much about, dark matter or dark energy. For one thing, it has no spectrum. Though, calculations of the expanding visible universe indicate dark stuff must make up ninety-five percent of the total. Having calculated that the visible universe began with a uniquely creative and rapid expansion about 13.8 billion years ago, the mystery as to where it came from remains.
“Do you see anything, Serge?”
“No.”
“The field glasses are more powerful. Use them.”
“Mom and Diddlie took the field glasses with them.”
“Yeah, they didn’t mean to.”
“I tried to convince them to stay and that was a distraction.”
“Fred, it is getting too dark for birdwatching.”
“Yes, that was Rosey’s point and Diddlie was complaining about mosquitos.”
Tatiana is rummaging in her pockets.
“She should have asked. I’ve got some bug spray.”
“Mom is into local birds, not outer space.”
“We can look for stars.”
Serge looks over from his bird glasses.
“Yeah Fred, all those celestial bodies spread all way out towards the big bang!”
“The first orgasm!”
“What?”
Tatiana is laughing.
“Well, it led to the creation of everything else!”
Serge searches for bard owls who live in the remains of the chimney. We are standing on the stone balcony over the garage of the ‘Ashes’, that ruined mansion that once stood on the highest point in Fauxmont.
“Thanks to the emerald ash borer, there is no foliage to spoil our view.”
“Yes, and don’t forget ‘oak wilt’ that took out those two giants over on the east side.”
Serge focuses his glasses.
“There’s Venus, but no owl or swallows.”
“The swallows have all gone for their Central American vacation by now.”
“Well, what about bats?”
“They are insect-eaters, and the mosquitos are eating us.”
“Here, spray your hat, Fred. It will put them off.”
“Well, all I can find is the evening star.”
“Are you sure, Serge?”
Tatiana reads from her phone:
“According to NASA, the earth’s gravity holds about nine thousand tons of junk in orbit.”
She takes a swig of water from her SanzE ‘Cool Camper Special’ in a glass-lined, steel, ‘frog-green’ bottle.
“You mean stuff we have put there?”
“That’s right Fred, an unintended part of the space program.”
“And associated weapons and collection systems.”
Tatiana turns her phone off.
Serge offers her the glasses.
“How high is it, anyway?”
“The space junk, between about 100 and 1000 kilometers.”
She looks up through the glasses, with one hand, offering Serge the Cool Camper Special with the other.
“Perhaps, we shall soon have rings?”
“Married to all our waste and pollution!”
“I don’t see anything yet. You want to look, Fred?”
She hands me the glasses. Serge is tapping his phone.
“Saturn’s rings are made of jewel-like ice.”
“That stuff is too small to see with these bird glasses.”
“I know Fred, but I thought we might get lucky and see the Planck Observatory, or something.”
“It is no longer up there!’
“There’s no cloud. There should be something soon.”
“Once upon a time, there were only protons and neutrons.”
Tatiana takes back the Cool Camper Special
“It’s story time with, Serge.”
“No interruptions, okay Tat?”
“Okay, but when were “Pro. and Nue. the only two ‘Trons’ in the universe?”
“About one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang.”
“Not exactly post-coital!”
“Most exactly, in fact, Tat.”
“What about, positrons, electrons and polititrons?”
“Polititrons? There is no such thing.”
“They are all around us, Serge.”
“You are thinking of neutrinos!”
“Didn’t they come later?”
“Seems to me, if they exist, polititrons emanate from minds not, plasma.”
“Where do you think pro and nue came from?”
“You are confusing the names with the phenomena!”
“Oh, really!”
“Well, they will only exist for ten to minus 34 seconds or something like that!”
“Okay, so who has the stopwatch?”
“It’s probably some kind of algebra.”
“Before that, there was no material at all.”
“You mean God brought ‘pro’ and ‘neu’ into the ‘Tron’ world?”
“Well, they came into existence by some process or other.”
“Sure Serge, the process called God!”
“God is not a process.”
“Okay, what is she/he/it?”
“Who can say?”
“Tat. Remember what I said about interruptions?”
“I am just adding interest!”
“Oh, I missed that!”
“For instance, Leon Lederman thinks she/he/it is the Higgs Boson!”
“Thinks what is?”
“Bosons, Fred, the ‘God particles.”
“Boson, that’s Max’s bloodhound!”
“Fred, your mean Max Plank our builder, right?”
“Who else?”
Tatiana taps my arm.
“There is another relevant Max Planck, with a ‘CK’ who started the whole quantum conundrum.”
We walk down some broken steps by the light of our phones and stroll across the weeds and grass.
“They must have cut the grass for the 4th of July party.”
“Oh, I love the smell of cut grass!”
“This is seasoned with a few aromatic weeds!”
“More than a few Tat.”
Serge kicks a stalk into the air.
“Get a whiff of that.”
“Diddlie told me it is fish weed. You must have broken the stem.”
We sit down at the dilapidated picnic tables. One bench slopes to the ground from its remaining support at the other end. Tatiana sits on the sloping bench and then carefully reclines, so she is facing up towards the Western sky with her heels on the ground.
“It isn’t really night around here.”
“I know, all the streetlights, headlights, yard lights, and porch lights leave a glow.”
“It is all part of our enlightened age!”
Standing next to Tatiana, Serge reads from his phone.
“Okay, here’s the scoop! The European Space Agency launched The Planck Observatory on 9 May 2009 and the mission ended on 23 October 2013.”
“So, is it still up there?”
“Doesn’t say, Fred.”
“And what did it do up there for four years?”
“It mapped the temperature of cosmic microwave background radiation. That is CMB, left over from the beginning of the universe.”
“Must have been a big data set!”
“Fred, it gave us a picture of the universe at about three hundred thousand years old.”
“Oh! So, what do they get from that?”
“It was not uniform.”
“You mean the universe is not military?”
“I mean it is a kinky universe!”
“Wow! Be careful whom you say that to!”
“I am talking differences in temperature, instability!”
“Crazy universe!”
“Yeah, crazy enough for a supernova that births stars and all that.”
Tatiana is tracking with the bird glasses from her recumbent position.
“I can see something moving out there!”
“Something?”
“Yeah, it’s space junk.”
“I’ll bet it is a firefly!”
She takes the glasses away from her eyes.
“Ah, where?”
Serge squats down next to her to point it out, flashing on and off under a redbud.
“OH! I thought that thing was too fast and active!”
She puts the glasses down on the table, but they fall through a gap in the rotting boards.
She puts an arm out as if to grab them from under the table, but she embraces Serge instead.
Tatiana’s short hair is scrambled moments later when they stand up. Her nose ring glows in the light of our phones, as we leave the picnic table.
“We are taking off, Fred.”
They are now silhouettes in the subtle glow of suburban night. They merge in their hilarity into one shifting shape.
“Yeah, it’s time for juiciness.”
Tatiana is giggling.
“You know!”
They are both laughing, staggering, tangled in each other’s arms. Serge shouts:
“Sublime slime!”
Tatiana can hardly speak between her giggles
“Secreted secrets in shared fluid mixtures!”
