Big Bang Theory

"Remember," she whispered hoarsely to Peters, "no matter what it tells us, no matter what it promises, don't open it up!"

The scientist nodded unsteadily. "I'm just as afraid of it as you are, Gerr. "

The mind-voice said: "I am a prisoner in this contrivance, as you have guessed. For a time almost longer than you can comprehend, I have endured this imprisonment. Now I am upon your world and need your assistance to escape, but I sense that you have great fear. If I disclose to you who I am, and how I come to be here, you will not be so afraid. I wish you to know these things."

Gerry felt as though she stood in the nightmare world of Freddy Krueger. She could almost imagine the tines of his sharpened blades penetrating the case from the inside.

"What I wish to convey to you will best be understood by the use of visual pictures, as well as by spoken words. I do not know the capacity of your minds for reception of such pictures, but I will attempt to make them clear.

"Do not attempt to think about what you see," the mind-voice cautioned. "Merely allow your minds to remain in a receptive condition. Hopefully, you will understand some of what I show you; my thoughts will accompany the visual impressions."

Gerry felt sudden panic as the world disappeared beneath her feet. The polyhedron, the sunlit scene, the ground and the blue sky were replaced by the black vault of space--a lightless, airless void.

114

Below her--far, far below--there floated a colossal cloud of stars. In the shape of a softly compressed orb, its stars could be counted only by the billions of billions

"This is the universe as it was," the voice informed her, "fourteen billion years ago. The stars you now identify as individual galaxies were gathered together in a super-cluster, a mere million light years across."

Gerry rocketed downward toward the mighty swarm at a mind-bending speed, into the cluster itself. She beheld that many of the stars had planets orbiting around them and that many of the planets were inhabited.The inhabitants were sentient beings of force, each one a tall, disk-crowned pillar of brilliant blue light, immortal, the voice told her, passing through space and matter at will. They were the only sentient beings in the cosmos. The super-galaxy and all its matter and energy was entirely at their command.

Now Gerry's viewpoint shifted to a world near the center of the swarm. There she observed a single creature of force engaged in a new and unprecedented experiment upon matter. The creature sought to build new variations of structure, combining and recombining atoms in infinite permutations.

Suddenly, the creature came upon a combination of atoms that gave strange results. The matter moved of its own accord and was able to receive stimuli and to remember the stimuli and to act upon it itself. It was also able to assimilate matter into itself and so to grow. The experimenter named this new matter by a name that solidified itself in Gerry's mind as "life."

As the diseased matter expanded and assimilated more and more of the ordinary matter around it, the experimenter became alarmed. Deciding this new form of matter must be immediately destroyed, he set about this task, only to erroneously set it free. Escaping from the experimenter's lab, this strange new pestilence of life began to spread over all the planet. Everywhere it spread, infecting the surrounding environment until, despite the force-creature's best efforts at eradication, the planet had to be abandoned.

The pestilence grew worse. Spores, driven by the push of light to other suns and to other planets, spread out in all directions. The pestilence was adaptable, taking on different forms as required to live on different worlds. It propagated itself, growing always, infecting more and more of the super-cluster's non-organic life.

115

For every world the force-creatures stamped out life, it spread to two others. Always, some hidden spore escaped. Soon, nearly all of the worlds of the central super-cluster were leprous with the plague; the entire universe was at risk.

A radical solution was required.

A radical solution was proposed.

On the advice of the experimenting force-creature--for his talents and imagination were truly great--it was resolved to apply a great rotational force to the cluster. This the force-beings did by their own radiance of life, sacrificing great numbers of themselves in order to save the rest. They set the super-cluster to spinning, accelerating it over time until the outward momentum offset the centrifical force, breaking the cluster apart.

Gerry witnessed that break-up from high above, watching as the colossal, spinning cloud of stars disintegrated, sending uncountable numbers of these new, smaller galaxies free of the parent form, until at last, nothing remained but a pogrom of infected life, an immense, quarantined, blighted galaxy unto itself.

And still this pogrom turned. This pogrom which bore the spiral form caused by its initial rotation. Within it now, the infestation had spread to nearly every world. And the rest of the universe watched.

"I was banished," the mind-voice said with unfathomable sadness. "As unleasher of the plague, I was to be forever imprisoned within this energy shell, to wander unguided and unknown among the many stars, never to be found."

116

Gerry watched the glowing polyhedron float aimlessly through space, from one end of the galaxy to the other, drifting always at the whim of passing light, as years stretched from millennia into eons, and then into epochs. The other galaxies sped farther and farther away, while the pestilence loose in the central galaxy covered every possible world. Only this one force-creature remained, imprisoned eternally in its polyhedron-cage.

Suddenly Gerry was back in the cold sunlit world, standing beside the polyhedron. She was dazed, wobbly on her feet, and seriously in need of a pee. Beside her on his knees, Peters was busy at some form of triangular-shaped contraption. It had copper piping and ebony-colored tubes, and an acrid-smelling smoke rising from a hole centered in the top. Scattered across the ground were several empty canisters, two marked with a skull and crossbones on a bright yellow field.

"Pete, no!" she screamed as Peters dropped a handful of brown pellets into the smoking hole. A yellow beam leaped from the ebony colored tube, striking the polyhedron's side.

Immediately, an intense flash of yellow spread across the faceted surface and as Gerry was picked up and flung through the air, the polyhedron dissolved in that saffron flare.

The thing which had been imprisoned since almost the beginning of time, erupted in an eighty-foot pillar of blazing blue light, crowned by a disk of even light even brighter. It loomed in ethereal splendor in the sudden darkness, for with its bursting forth, the noonday sun had snapped off like turned-off bulb. The creature swirled and spun in awful, alien glory as Gerry and Peters both screamed and flung their hands up over their eyes.

117

There was a wave of colossal exultation, a joy vaster than any human joy, an absolute triumph as the creature flashed upward into the heavens like a lightning bolt of blue. And as it did so, Gerry's darkening brain failed and she staggered into blissful, thank-you-so-much-God unconsciousness.

Gerry opened her eyes to the bright noonday light. It streamed through the window beside her and flooded the cabin. Somewhere nearby, the breathless, self-important voice of a female radio announcer blared from her alarm clock radio. It was the only radio Gerry had at the cabin; she had no TV. As she lay there unmoving, un-remembering for the present time, the breathless voice hurried on:

"As far as can be told, the area affected extended from Montreal to the north, as far south as Scranton, Pennsylvania, and from Buffalo in the West to some miles out into the Atlantic Ocean beyond Boston.

"It lasted less than ten seconds," the announcer said, "but in the affected area there was a complete absence of sunlight and a complete loss of electricity. Every piece of machinery in the area ceased to function. Cars, trucks--airplanes!--everything went completely dead!"

Gerry sat up with a start, experiencing a sudden, overwhelming feeling of dread.

"Four aircraft did crash," the announcer continued, "but luckily, none were commercial airliners and only two suffered a loss of life. One, a twin engine Cessna Skyplane crashed on takeoff from Massemeequa County Airport in upstate New York--"

Gerry swung her feet out of the bunk and onto the floor.

"--the other a Gulfstream jet came down several hundred feet short of the runway. Authorities with the National Transportation Safety Board say--"

"Take it easy," Peters warned.

Looking up to find him leaning out the kitchen doorway--he had an achingly sunburned face and on his hands too!--Gerry gasped in relief. She had somehow forgotten not only where she was and why she was there, but that Peters even existed. Attempting to get up, she let Peters push her back into a seated position.

"I mean it," he said, softly but firmly. "Stay put."

Gerry realized she was sunburned as well.

"What happened?" she said.

Peters observed her carefully. "What do you remember?"

Gerry described her awful dream.

"It wasn't a dream," Peters said.

From the clock radio across the room--was Peters actually standing there in her apron and holding a dishtowel and plate?--the announcer finished up:

"No one yet knows the cause of this amazing event, although some scientists say it it may be due to freak solar activity or some sort naturally occurring phenomena. Of course, the psychics and the doomsayers are having a field day. . ."

Gerry clung to the edge of the bunk, feeling as though she might fall off. She was unaccountably famished and thirsty--thirsty in particular---and her tongue felt like a sand dune.

"Why did you do it?" she demanded.

Peters did not blink an eye.

"You could have killed every person on Earth," she accused.

Still, Peters did not say a word.

"Pete!"

"You don't know. . ." he said, finally.

"Know what?"

"How long you were in there."

Gerry was caught up short.

"What do you mean?"

"What day is it, Gerry?"

Gerry looked around in consternation. "Well, uh. . .Wednesday?"

Peters shook his head. "Friday."

Now Gerry really was confused.

"Did you think I just clapped my hands and the ingredients appeared?" Peters asked.

"What?"

"The piping and the chemicals and the Ebonite rods."

Gerry remembered the homemade-looking gadget. "I thought--"

"I didn't bring the stuff with me, Gerr." Peters sat down. He put his arm gently around her waist and snugged her up to him. "When you first disappeared--"

Gerry's eyes opened wide.

"--I almost went into a panic. I picked up a hammer and started trying to break into the case." He laughed bitterly. "The creature said that I might as well attack a planet with a toothpick." Tears formed in his eyes and then he began to cry.

"Pete," she said, taking his face in her hands. "What happened? Tell me."

"It was going to keep you in there, Gerr," he sobbed, expressing it with such sorrow that Gerry's heart broke. "Until the end of time if I didn't get it out!"

Gerry suddenly understood why the world had stopped existing beneath her feet and why it had just as suddenly reappeared. Nothing--nothing imaginable--could frighten her more than that.

"It said it had you inside a protective oxygen shell, but that the oxygen would last only a short time. Once it was gone, in order for you to live, it had to convert you into an energy form similar to itself, and then you could never come back. Releasing you would release your converted energy."

Gerry tried to imagine what one hundred and two pounds--probably not quite that much now--of Gerry Abrams released as pure energy would do.

"I had barely twenty four hours to find the materials I needed, and get the device built."

"Pete, it's all right," she whispered, but Peters went on.

"The graphite and the carbon and the Reagent grade chemicals were easy to find. But I had to fly in the Ebonite all the way from Turkmekistan, Gerr--it had to be a perfect grade. Then I had to hire someone to polish it and bore out the center and if it had broke. . ."

"Pete! It's all right!" she insisted.

Hitching air into his lungs and clutching both of Gerry's hands in his own, Peters struggled for breath. Finally, after half a dozen deep breaths, he said: "The thing let you out five seconds before I triggered the device. If you had been inside. . ." Peters shuddered.

Gerry understood for the first time how much she really loved this man. She kissed him on the mouth. "So that's why I had to pee so bad," she joked, touching her forehead to his.

Shakily, Peter laughed. "That's why you're not wearing the same pants."

"I'm not wearing pants at all," Gerry said. "I'm sitting here in my panties."

"I changed those too," he said.

Gerry laughed. Then she kissed him again. Then they made love.

"So where did he go?" Gerry asked, sometime later.

Peters breathed deeply by her side. "To join his own."

Gerry looked out the cabin window into the vast blackness of space. "That's a long way," she whispered. "A long, long way. Do you think he'll ever succeed?"

Peters shrugged. "Eventually. He is immortal."

Gerry lay looking out the window, considering. "So everyone has it wrong. About the universe, about the Big Bang, about life itself."

"Yes," Peters muttered. And then, rolling Gerry atop himself and drawing up her legs, he filled her first with the fountain of life, and then with life itself.