Everything that has ever been written on any physical, metaphysical or incorporeal surface anywhere, is just a story, nothing more. Some are almost completely true and inspired by actual events, some are not and completely made up, but mostly they lie anywhere in between. Some are very much worth expanding on, and some are best being left exactly how they are, or hidden between much thicker volumes on the lowest available shelf, and just not talked about, ever. They should always be told however, by anyone who wants to tell them, however they can, and shared with anyone who wants to read or hear them.
Some stories should probably be banned, and never left lying around for the innocent or unwary to stumble across. They sometimes have a highly disturbed and rabid niche following, who delight in the brazen sheer depravity, or vividly realised abject horror described in brutal detail. Each to their own, I suppose. Iām quite confident that this isnāt one of those stories, so it should be fine for almost all ages. The contents of this paragraph are as dramatic or unsettling as it gets.
Now that we have discovered and agreed upon the boundaries, we can move onwards within them, mostly somewhere safely down the middle of the right side of the road (unless weāre somewhere where they drive on the wrong side, then we also have to drive on the wrong side, instead of the right side, which feels dangerous and will probably take some time getting used to, and the steering wheel will be on the wrong side too).
Who knows where this road leads to? And who cares? As long as it has something cool, or maybe unusual and interesting, at the end of it (unless youāve been down it before, then you know where it goes, and I am slightly confused as to why you would be going back down it again). As long as our road has many varied trees and bushes, with fence-posts and fence-wire hypnotically whizzing past that we can zone out to (well hopefully not me, Iām driving), and various odd and interesting buildings, clearly marked signage, bottles of water, and places to stop and pee, then thereās probably not much to complain about. Even if itās raining, weāre inside the car, nice and dry (although Iām not sure if the heater still works, itās been acting up). Letās start the engine, put on our seatbelts, and slowly reverse out of the driveway, carefully avoiding the flowerpots.
We are obviously not alone in our Universe, and that is a fact. Anybody who entertains that idea, is looking at dancing shadows on a cave wall somewhere, and just not thinking about things sensibly at all. Everything that occurs anywhere has happened before, and will happen again, and is currently happening elsewhere. We might sometimes feel like a colony of fleas living on a single dog in a warm room, but of course there are other dogs out there somewhere, and some of them most definitely have fleas.
There are also other rooms with a dog in them, in other houses, on other streets, in other neighbourhoods, in other cities, in other countries, on other continents, on other planets, near other stars, in other galaxies, and perhaps even much further than that (well that turned into quite a self-referential, confusing metaphor quite quickly, the dog is supposed to represent Earth, of course, but if so, then whatever a Galaxy now represents is now unfathomable, especially to me, and unfortunately, I wrote it).
Of course we donāt know the true size or extents of everything, and we never possibly can, and to think we will ever achieve this gargantuan, massively unlikely feat, is also really not being very sensible at all. Thinking that way is like being the captain on a ship, who hasnāt seen anything on the horizon for a very long time, and now fears that his ship is doomed to fall off the edge of the world (because nothing else could possibly exist any further than any of this), although he probably never stopped to think where all the water falling off the edge goes, or why it didnāt simply run out at some point.
We have woven or discovered explanations for much, and in very high detail, but many of the prolific holes in our understanding are still quite empty, or the conclusions that have been reached are still not a perfect fit, and are often quite hastily defined or incomplete. Sometimes the holes are simply filled with chewing gum, and painted over with nail polish, roughly the same colour as before.
Weāre not sure if the jigsaw puzzle we just got stuck into, with a nice cup of tea, is even the right way up, or if this section really fits together with that one. The dog chewed up the lid, so we have to use logic and draw on previous experience to build up the image slowly and carefully instead. Even the brightest scientist in the most exclusive university in the Universe must know this, and if they donāt, they are probably not the brightest after all. The University might just be a run-down college in a dodgy area, and they might be just pretending to be a scientist after sneaking in, putting on a lab coat, lighting a pipe, and trying their best to look thoughtful and convincing.
Well, I am that scientist, and Iām here to dig out some of the chewing gum, and replace it with plaster that I mixed up special just for the job. Iāll fill some of those holes, smooth it all over nicely with a spatula, and paint over it all again properly, with actual paint, once and for all. It all might possibly fall out again unexpectedly after an undisclosed period, or become cracked and get loose at some point in the future, but itās got to be better than the chewing gum and nail polish, and Lawrenceās wife (who unwittingly provided the nail polish) is beginning to get upset because that stuff is a very exclusive brand (Starry Night Nails, by Giorgio), and cost her a small fortune.
Many people donāt believe in a Creator, but the Creator likely doesnāt care (they surely have a bit more to ponder, and probably donāt bother taking things personally, after all, whatās the point?). Some might find that thought unsettling, others might paradoxically be quite relieved. There is only one thing anywhere (or everywhere) that is bigger than everything, and that is the Creator. Otherwise nothing is really known about them, apart from the fact that they have a very strange sense of humour, and no one hardly ever gets the punchline.
Trying to fully imagine such a being is completely futile, so some people just choose not to bother, dismissing the whole idea as impractical, and the very existence of the Creator along with it (which is fair enough, and not really worth getting upset about). Other people just arenāt sure, and are open to ideas, as long as they donāt need to commit to anything before next Tuesday. A great many imagine that they really, truly can, or even have, and are very reassured by the results they come up with, and sometimes paint big pictures on high ceilings, or make movies with Morgan Freeman in them. Some have smiled up to the Creator, wherever they may be, and may have even received a quick wink, or a smile back, without ever knowing.
Some have angrily shaken their fists at the Creator, and have been instantly struck by lightning, or ravaged by an escaped tiger, or have accidentally fallen into an active volcano (most who do this have not, however, and probably still shake their fists today, desperately trying to get some attention, consequences be damned). Perhaps the Creator will notice us again one day, and give us their full attention, perhaps by sending an enlightened prophet or three, and together we can all sit down and find out exactly what the fuss has been about.
The Universe is infinite, or so very close to it, that infinity might have to be hastily redefined in a huddled discussion around the coffee machine, and agreed upon differently. Then Lawrence can stop chewing, remove the gum, push it firmly into place with a thumb, and run off to fetch the nail polish, as long as his wifeās not around (her name is Sandra, and sheās otherwise very nice, and plays the piano and does cross-fit).
Infinity is quite hard for us to get our heads around because it feels very unnatural to consider, and doesnāt mix well with the concept of finity, at all. Between every manually defined increment, there exists infinite possibilities, and numbers quickly become considerably longer than their parent. Integers are a good way of shutting our eyes tight and simply pretending infinity isnāt there, but thereās really no escaping it, it really is the elephant in the downstairs toilet, and it didnāt clean up after itself. Some people donāt believe that infinity exists at all in nature, only as an abstract concept in the mind, but the Creator knows otherwise.
This is all highly confusing from our perspective, because everything that is observable is undoubtedly expanding (unless reality is performing some never-before-seen stage illusion), for as far as the eye, or very fancy indeed space-telescope, can see. How can infinity possibly expand though? Where else is there for everything to go? Expansion is essentially addition, and you canāt add 1 to forever to create forever+1, then it couldnāt possibly have been forever in the first place. So either the Universe is not infinite (while presumably existing in an infinite void, where infinite time passes, regardless of what exists), or everything is not expanding. Perhaps everything isnāt..
Maybe what we can observe is expanding, but we are simply within a giant soap bubble of sorts, which is filling some previously available space, or pushing other bubbles out of the way (like an over-zealous black Friday shopper with no manners), which themselves might even be shrinking (like someone retreating over to the toasters and air-fryers, just to get some peace). Sometimes new bubbles just appear, from where before there was nothing, or no available space.
Perhaps the Creator has a (relatively) small bottle of bubble-mix to hand, and a plastic stick with a ribbed loop at the end of it, and is blowing gently, trying to create the largest, most impressive bubbles possible. They slowly expand, over a cosmic timeframe that is unimaginably long (even the most reliable and enduring atomic clock would have all the longevity of a cheap stopwatch from a pound shop). Perhaps they suddenly burst, although what happens to the contents in this case is unclear (at least to me, and Iām the one making all of this up, so I really should have been more prepared for that eventuality).
Itās doubtful that we will ever see far enough to really find out how this all works, or to know anything about anything for sure, so it all can largely never be proven. This is very awkward for science, which demands extremely plausible, expertly realised, and logically sound solutions that fit well into the existing framework (but warmly reassuring for me, who doesnāt bother with all that red tape, ducking under it and ignoring the fact that it has āNo Unauthorised Personnelā written across it in large lettering).
The vast and immense stellar contents of these bubbles are highly varied and randomly distributed, and also so close to infinite in frequency and number, that certain words become interchangeable again, and another trip to the coffee machine might be in order. Itās very difficult, or simply impossible, for complex living beings to traverse even the most miniscule hugely vast distance inside such a bubble, even just the distance between individual stars, so most advanced species stay put in their own solar systems, after having given up trying, or being sensible and realistic and not even trying at all (however, theyāre sure that the probe they sent out some 3000 years ago to Zora-Hydri 15b will probably return sometime soon with good news, at least before their Sun burns out, or they evolve into something completely different and totally forget why they sent it in the first place).
There are so many worlds out there, that anyone who begins counting them, has a very long job ahead of them, and really shouldnāt be someone who gets easily distracted or bored, or is somehow prone to forgetting to keep tally, and then maybe dying inconveniently sometime during the process (thereby getting transcendentally bored or distracted, sometimes without noticing while alive, and wandering off somewhere else, to try something completely different for a change).
Inside every bubble are always smaller bubbles, the inevitable progeny of their vast parent, which begin to internally propagate as soon as they have something to exist within. They vary wildly in size and arrangement, in a truly random fashion. They are somewhat like imaginary numbers, realised as fractal designs, and drawn on a three-dimensional screen by an artistically competent quantum computer that sometimes loses the thread, but happily repeats the process regardless, endlessly and for all time. Sometimes it canāt quite remember what the immediately larger pattern looked like back when it drew it, having only 1 GB of available memory (and thereās a YouTube video playing in the background, that uses a quite a lot too), but it is always creating new bubbles within bubbles, without bothering to aim for much consistency between iterations. It all looks very pretty, so thatās got to be a good enough reason for anyone.
Every bubble has a twin, invisibly linked together forever in quantum weirdness. They are naturally not completely identical (which is a strict Universal impossibility, and no two things anywhere ever are), although people outside their immediate circle of family or friends might be fooled at first, and get their names mixed up when saying āhelloā. Sometimes they donāt even look much alike, but are very close regardless, and often mysteriously share one anotherās feelings, or just know certain things that the other is experiencing, or how dreamy the new romantic interest is.
Bubbles of any size are very hard to find without somehow stumbling or falling into them, and impossible to perceive beforehand, having no visible, or otherwise discernable walls or boundaries. If you do encounter one, thereās an exactly 50% probability that you will be left afterwards holding the wrong twinās hand, walking them home whilst chatting away oblivious, and then saying goodnight before heading home to bed, and then perhaps lying there for a while afterwards, slowly realising that their behaviour was slightly odd, and out of character, before finally falling asleep and dreaming about onions (although you canāt seem to remember exactly what colour or shape they should be).
The other twin can be located literally anywhere else in the Universe, inside or outside any other bubble. Extremely big bubbles are often twinned with extremely small ones. Size is simply never a matter for discrimination, by hard-coded design (perhaps the Creator thought that was quite amusing, by making things so confusing, or loved shortcuts so much that they put them everywhere, all at once, between the most unlikely of destinations). The perceived sense of scale between them is always exactly the same for those accidentally flipping between, while in reality often being completely different, and totally incomparable on any known scale.
What all this proves, of course (apart from aliens, infinity, bubbles, and why you should never take onions at face value), is that upon accidentally entering a bubble, you will, with very high probability, never even notice a thing. You might have even switched bubbles already, sometimes simply by walking through a certain door at a certain time with a certain cup in your hand, or jumping into a certain swimming pool on a certain day in the summertime, wearing those certain shorts that people think look a bit goofy on you. You can instantly be flung far across (or up or down) the Universe, probably never to return to your point of origin, but you will most likely never actually notice anything different, even though you are now possibly some 30 billion trillion times the size you were before, in either dimensional aspect.
I hope this all explains things clearly and definitively, once and for all (and that the plaster was mixed up OK and not past itās expiry date). If only all scientific hypotheses were so brilliantly realised and largely irrefutable, and that everything was outlined so clearly and definitively, and presumably resulting in instant accord all over the globe, and with so little effort needed in, or applied to, writing the thesis. Not a single equation was required to explain or prove anything, showing that maths is all just made up, and completely optional where science is concerned. So what do you think, eggheads? Time for a huddled discussion around the coffee machine? Iāll fetch my pipe and put on my lab coat.
Iām sorry, but the road just ends here (maybe we took a wrong turn shortly after we started out). Thereās a small parking place over there next to a public toilet, but otherwise thereās not much to see, and we might as well just turn the car around and head back again (for some reason though, this car doesnāt feel quite the same as it did when we set out.. is it even the same colour? And thereās a faint smell of onions..)
The end.
I love to do it, I donāt often share, but maybe itās time.