Three years went by.

Every day he thought of Maggie. And of all he had lost when he had returned to Earth through the portal from Eoth.

How can one month have changed me so much?

His a life in Christchurch lacked the vibrancy and vigor of Eoth, and he had no one to share his memories with.

This is how Maggie must have felt. Her whole life.

He had gone to her funeral. The only person under fifty. The only one who seemed truly sad. They mourners trotted out the same sort of nonsense.

‘She lived a long life.’

‘A good innings.’

‘A happy release.’

Peter had walked out of the chapel towards the end. It all seemed wrong to him.

Later Peter had gone to her grave and listened to the ‘Crazy’ song. Each year he went back on the anniversary of her death and felt the sadness of a life cut off too soon.

One year at the grave-side he met her grand-niece. Jo had walked up to him while he sat, back to the grave, staring at the moon in a blue blue sky, and asked to hear the music he played.

‘How did you know she liked that song?’ Jo said.

‘We used to listen to it together,’ Peter said. ‘But this one suits my mood best.’ And he played a Comsat Angels’ track for her on his phone.

‘That’s beautiful,’ Jo said. ‘What’s it called.’

‘After The Rain.’

‘And is that how you feel? That things will get better?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I worry about you,’ Jo said. ‘To be so sad about an old woman.’

He stopped going to the grave site after that. But it didn’t stop the pain.

Peter went to the Canterbury University Open Day towards the end of that year. He wanted to study science and especially physics. He knew the portal to Eoth had some basis in the deep roots of the Universe, and yet no one had any knowledge about what he had experienced.

I refuse to believe in magic. There has to be some science behind it all.

But if Peter was honest with himself, he hoped to find a way to return to Eoth.

There are too many things left undone. The mantas being killed and tortured for zharaqsa. The Air Lord and the blackbirders conspiring to take over.

But even to think of things like that seemed wrong. He locked his cycle up next to the physics department, then found his way into the lecture hall.

The presenter wowed the audience with the work being done at CERN in Europe. How the discovery of the Higgs Boson had vindicated the model of the Standard Model of quantum theory. But the pointed out how much they did not understand about how gravity worked at a quantum level. The mystery of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and how they were poised on the threshold of a new physics to bring this all into resolution.

Peter nodded at all this.

Yeah. Except you’d laugh at me if I told you what I know.

He liked the old guy though. The presentation was slick and interesting and it had worked.

Definitely doing physics.

Afterwards Peter walked up to the Professor. Facing off against sword wielding manisaurs and hunting beasts meant he had no fear any more.

‘I’m sold. You got me at mysterious new physics,’ said Peter.

‘Glad that worked then. Though you know most who study physics end up being engineers.’ The professor packed his laptop away in a carry bag.

‘That’s a good thing,’ Peter said. ‘Engineers should know how the universe works.’

‘Indeed. But I think it is safe to say that we can only approximate any idea of reality.’

‘Yeah I guess. Heisenberg and all that.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Very uncertain,’ Peter said. And they laughed.

‘So you want to be an engineer?’

‘No. Well sort of. I want to find out how the Universe works. And to do that you have to experiment. And to do that you need to build things.’

‘Yes.’ The professor smiled. ‘CERN is an amazing bit of engineering.’

‘You’ve been?’

‘I built some of it. I’m one of those engineering physicists you mentioned. I’ve got to go to a meeting. But why don’t you come to my lab on Tuesday?’

‘Where is it?’

‘Just look for my name on the board. Dr Albert Leigh, but everyone calls me Gazza.’ He handed Peter a card.

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Dr Leigh said. ‘It’s one of those mysteries that just is.’

‘But truth to tell. I don’t like Just-So stories,’ Gazza said.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Dr Gazza Leigh spun on a stool in his office. Peter had phoned ahead and been assured that he would be expected at 3pm.

A large man, slightly stooped, he had a shock of long white hair tied back behind his head. Up one arm spiraled a twisting Maori tattoo. A full sleeve.

‘It is good to be suspicious of people who believe things just because.’

It took a moment for Peter to recall where they had left their conversation on Open Day. Now the professor just picked up from where they left off.

‘I like have to fit new ideas and facts into what I know already,’ said Peter. ‘And sometimes that changes things.’

‘Yes. It’s important to cultivate an attitude of enjoyment when you are proved to be wrong. Joy even. The bigger the change in your mind the more ecstatic you should become.’

‘What was the biggest for you?’

‘Dark Energy. Blew my mind. Then god me excited. We all expected that the Universe’s expansion would be slowing. But that it is expanding ever faster. That rocked my world.’

‘Do you have any idea about why it might be?’

‘Ah. That’s when we get back into Just-So stories. And it’s not that I don’t like them really. A good Just-So story begs you to go find out the answer. And Dark Energy is the biggest most important Just-So story there is.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Peter. ’Maybe it’s the Multiverse interacting with our Universe. That’s why we can’t see it.’

‘You’re talking about Dark Matter. That’s the form of matter that we can not see, but which holds galaxies together due to the gravitational effect of their presence. But a Multiverse…’

‘I know I’m probably spouting nonsense.’

‘No. Keep going,' urged Gazza. 'An enquiring mind is needed in all scientists. Just as long as you look forward to me proving you wrong.’

‘I look forward to it,’ Peter took a deep breath. ‘So say Multiverses exist, and sit next to ours. Gravity leaks through between them. That’s why gravity is so strong over large scales. It adds up as the big things in the metaverses are all in the same places, but small things not so much.’

‘Okay. Except there are some Dark Matter patches that do not align with some galaxies. We can see this with gravitational lensing.’

‘Sure. Mostly true then. Dark Energy is what you get when the Multiverses push against one another and drawn each other apart.’

‘That does not follow. I can see in some sort of Metaverse that holds them that the Multiverses get jostled apart. But how would that affect the space within each Multiverse?’

‘It’s because there is no Metaverse really,’ said Peter. ‘No space to hold them. Instead each multiverse occupies the same Metaspace. That’s how they interact with each other.’

‘I see. So in your imagining Dark Matter suggests this structure.’

Gazza leaned back. ‘And you think the thing that pushes against the space within each Multiverse is…’

‘Anti-gravity.’

Gazza laughed. ‘Nice. I love your thinking. Now you need to create a theory that makes some predictions.’

‘And show that anti-gravity exists,’ said Peter.

‘That would help. I’d also like to know why there might be a limit to the number of Multiverses. Because in the Many-Worlds fairy tale, instead of a wave function collapse a new Multiverse is formed instead. Bonkers.’

‘Exactly. But then these Multiverses collapse. Like a spring. This limits the number of Multiverses.’

‘A Casimir Field for Multiverses? I like it.’ Gazza laughed. ‘That’s a Just-So story and a half.’

‘Yeah. But they collapse after a very short time. That’s what creates the long range effect of gravity.’

‘Higgs Field. So the collapse emits a Higgs particle,’ Gazza grinned.

‘Yeah,’ Peter sighed.

‘Nice try Peter. Very entertaining.

‘I know. I’ve bundled together every trope in the book.’

‘Some good science fiction books I think.’ Gazza playfully punched Peter on the shoulder. ‘There are some deep mysteries in the Universe. None of what you said can be proven. Science has to be based on observations, and until a theory makes some solid predictions that can be tested it is only supposition. Not matter how well reasoned.’

‘String theory.’ Peter said with a grin.

‘Exactly. String Fairies.’

His second year at university Peter got a job as a lab assistant in the Physics Department. Except what it really meant was cleaning equipment that the experimenters did not trust the contract cleaners to be near.

One evening they let him stay as they tested a new nuclear clock based on work using thorium nuclei to measure nuclear transitions to create an ultra-precise timing device.

If he was honest it all looked pretty boring. The lab techs, grad students and their supervisor Dr Albert ‘Gazza’ Leigh all huddled around a couple of computer monitors. Then they would break for a discussion, before running another test.

‘No way,’ said one grad student. She grabbed at Gazza and brought his attention to the screen. ‘That’s not right.’

‘Run it again,’ Gazza said.

Peter came close and watched over their shoulders.

‘There it is again. The timing is off somehow.’

‘Must be a glitch in the code.’

‘No. Didn’t change anything there. It’s worked fine for months. How can a new ultra-violet laser mess with things? Either the laser works or it doesn’t. There’s no way the timing could change so much because of that.’

‘Yes. So it must be a code problem,’ said Gazza.

They busied themselves for a few minutes. Peter wiped a few more benches and wondered what he should have for dinner.

‘The checksum is good,’ one of the lab-techs said. ‘No change in the code. Unless you want us to go over it line by line.’

‘No,’ said Gazza. ‘Run the program again. It might be some transitory problem.’

‘It’s still there. But another timing change. But a different magnitude.’

Peter stepped closer again.

‘Woah. Look at that,’ said Gazza. ‘Spiked again. Something’s going on.’

The graph line on the monitor wiggled in a mesmerizing way.

‘It’s steadied. But at a higher level.’

‘Must be some tuning in the laser doing it.’

Peter walked over to the nuclear timing device. Everyone shouted and he rushed back to see what had happened.

‘Off the scale,’ one grad student said.

It struck Peter then.

Something weird’s going on. And I know what.

He pulled his Grandbam’s niho taniwha pendent from around his neck and placed it on the counter behind him. Then he stepped back to the monitor. The physicists talked over each other.

‘Are we detecting something like gravity waves or…’

‘No. They’re much too minute for this big an effect.’

‘This is like someone putting a magnet against an old CRT monitor. The colors twist in the magnetic field.’

‘Must be a glitch. It’s settled down. Steady now.’

Peter picked up the pendent and traced the twist of zharaqsa that threaded through the pounamu greenstone. He knew for sure then.

With the pendent in his hand he walked to the nuclear clock and swung it back and forth. The predictable reactions from the physicists made him laugh.

Gazza looked up. He frowned when he saw the swinging pendent. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Showing you anti-gravity.’