chain of events with unknown consequences. Worlds may be born and there may be people on them. These people may discover metallurgy, Provencal cooking and interstellar voyages. They may even turn out to be more intelligent than us. Yet they would never have existed if you had not held this book in your hands and your finger had not produced heat at that exact spot on the paper. Similarly, our universe also has a place in the corner of the page of a book or on the sole of a shoe or the froth on a glass of beer of some giant civilization.
Our generation will probably never know for sure. But what we do know is that, a long time ago, our universe, or in any case the particle that contained our universe, was cold, empty, black and still. And then someone or something caused a crisis. Someone turned a page, stepped on a stone or scraped the froth off a glass of beer. Whatever the event, it was traumatic. Our particle woke up. In our case, we know there was a gigantic explosion, which we call the Big Bang.
Every second, in the infinitely big, the infinitely small and the infinitely distant, a universe is perhaps being born, just as ours was born over fifteen billion years ago. We do not know the others. But as far as ours is concerned, we know that it began with the explosion of the 'smallest', 'simplest' atom, hydrogen. Imagine vast silent space suddenly woken by a titanic deflagration. Why did someone up there turn the page? Why did they scrape the froth off the beer? It doesn't really matter. The fact remains that hydrogen burnt, exploded and grilled. An immense light flashed through immaculate space. It was a time of crisis. Things that were still began to move. Things that were cold grew hot. Things that were silent hummed.
In the initial furnace, hydrogen was transformed into helium, an atom scarcely more complex. But we can already deduce from this transformation the first great rule of our universe, more and more complex.
This rule seems obvious. But there is nothing to prove that it applies in other universes. Elsewhere, the rule may be hotter and hotter, harder and harder or funnier and funnier.
Things get hotter here, too, and harder and funnier but that is not the initial law, just by the way. Our basic law, the one around which all others are organized, is more and more complex.
Edmond Wells
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge
The 327th male was wandering about in the city's southern corridors. He had not calmed down. He kept chewing over the famous saying:
I was the exploring leg
I was the eye on the spot
Now I'm home,
I’ m the nerve stimulus.
Why wouldn't it work? Where was he going wrong? His body was seething with the unprocessed information. For him, the Tribe had been wounded and had not even noticed. He was the pain stimulus, so it was up to him to make the city react.
Oh, how hard it was to bear a message of suffering and keep it inside oneself, unable to find a single antenna willing to receive it. He would so like to have unburdened himself and shared the terrible knowledge with others.
A thermal messenger ant passed close by. Sensing his depression, she thought he was not properly awake and offered him her solar calories. It put a little strength back into him, which he immediately used to try and convince her.
To arms! An expedition has been ambushed and destroyed by the dwarves. To arms!
But it no longer even sounded like the truth. The thermal messenger went on her way as if nothing were amiss. 327th did not give up. He ran along the corridors giving out his alarm message.
Warriors sometimes stopped to listen, and even went as far as to talk to him, but his tale of a devastating weapon was so incredible that no group capable of taking charge of a military mission formed.
He walked on, downcast.
Suddenly, as he was making his way along a deserted tunnel on the fourth floor of the basement, he heard a sound behind him. Someone was following him.
The 327th male
Our generation will probably never know for sure. But what we do know is that, a long time ago, our universe, or in any case the particle that contained our universe, was cold, empty, black and still. And then someone or something caused a crisis. Someone turned a page, stepped on a stone or scraped the froth off a glass of beer. Whatever the event, it was traumatic. Our particle woke up. In our case, we know there was a gigantic explosion, which we call the Big Bang.
Every second, in the infinitely big, the infinitely small and the infinitely distant, a universe is perhaps being born, just as ours was born over fifteen billion years ago. We do not know the others. But as far as ours is concerned, we know that it began with the explosion of the 'smallest', 'simplest' atom, hydrogen. Imagine vast silent space suddenly woken by a titanic deflagration. Why did someone up there turn the page? Why did they scrape the froth off the beer? It doesn't really matter. The fact remains that hydrogen burnt, exploded and grilled. An immense light flashed through immaculate space. It was a time of crisis. Things that were still began to move. Things that were cold grew hot. Things that were silent hummed.
In the initial furnace, hydrogen was transformed into helium, an atom scarcely more complex. But we can already deduce from this transformation the first great rule of our universe, more and more complex.
This rule seems obvious. But there is nothing to prove that it applies in other universes. Elsewhere, the rule may be hotter and hotter, harder and harder or funnier and funnier.
Things get hotter here, too, and harder and funnier but that is not the initial law, just by the way. Our basic law, the one around which all others are organized, is more and more complex.
Edmond Wells
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge
The 327th male was wandering about in the city's southern corridors. He had not calmed down. He kept chewing over the famous saying:
I was the exploring leg
I was the eye on the spot
Now I'm home,
I’ m the nerve stimulus.
Why wouldn't it work? Where was he going wrong? His body was seething with the unprocessed information. For him, the Tribe had been wounded and had not even noticed. He was the pain stimulus, so it was up to him to make the city react.
Oh, how hard it was to bear a message of suffering and keep it inside oneself, unable to find a single antenna willing to receive it. He would so like to have unburdened himself and shared the terrible knowledge with others.
A thermal messenger ant passed close by. Sensing his depression, she thought he was not properly awake and offered him her solar calories. It put a little strength back into him, which he immediately used to try and convince her.
To arms! An expedition has been ambushed and destroyed by the dwarves. To arms!
But it no longer even sounded like the truth. The thermal messenger went on her way as if nothing were amiss. 327th did not give up. He ran along the corridors giving out his alarm message.
Warriors sometimes stopped to listen, and even went as far as to talk to him, but his tale of a devastating weapon was so incredible that no group capable of taking charge of a military mission formed.
He walked on, downcast.
Suddenly, as he was making his way along a deserted tunnel on the fourth floor of the basement, he heard a sound behind him. Someone was following him.
The 327th male
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