***** Vol.1 Chap.27 Tour of the cosmos *****
In a split second, she passed through the singularity.
She opened her eyes, rather, her consciousness; and experienced a serenity around her instead of the horrifying whirlpool she had passed through. She realized the whirlpool consisted of not bubbles but small, round spheres. Millions and millions of spheres. The whirlpool completely disappeared. Instead, a calmness engulfed her whole being.
As she looked closer at the spheres, many of them bore an amazing resemblance to galaxies, spinning and turning round and round, creating the whirlpool that she fell into. She wondered if the vortex of the whirlpool might be the center of the universe. She began to count the number of galaxies around her, but soon abandoned the effort. The count grew exponentially to enumerated.
She wanted to examine more closely one of the many galaxies and looked for the Milky Way. As soon as the concept took hold of her consciousness, the Milky Way appeared in front of her. She swooped in to look. The Milky Way itself also appeared as a gentle whirlpool with curved arms because of its rotation. Myriads of stars rotating around the center made her considered that the Milky Way resembled, in a sense, a miniature model of the entire universe.
She stepped back to look at the countless galaxies making up the universe and stepped forward to look at the myriads of stars making up the Milky Way galaxy. What a similarity! Puzzled, she wondered if the universe with its countless galaxies would be another super galaxy in a sea of countless other similar objects, forming yet a larger ‘entity’? And what if innumerable larger ‘entities’ formed yet even larger unit? And that… and so on? The idea humbled her. Her head spinning endlessly, as if touching infinity with her unlimited vision had far exceeded her limited knowledge.
She steadied herself and reached out to the Milky Way. Her consciousness now centered in front of the Milky Way. Among millions of stars, she longed to see the sun and the solar systems. Without effort, the solar system appeared in front of her. She waved her arms happily when the sun and the planets rotating in their respective orbits appeared before her. The sun shone brightly and vibrantly. She started to name off the planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto... Amazed that their names came to her so readily, she had the notion that she might be the one proudly naming all the planets at the time of their formation.
She paused and traced with her fingers the rotation of the different planets for a while. Their movements, like clockwork, in 3D fascinated her. As the planets rotated around the sun, from her present perspective, they all appeared to be like a carbon atom, with the sun being the nucleus and the planets being the electrons. Of course, a carbon atom should have twelve electrons, while the sun, as she remembered, only had eleven planets. But she imagined that the whole constellation of the sun might just be a gigantic carbon atom. Then she imagined that all the rest of the suns in the Milky Way liked different atoms. She wondered what the universe might appear from this perspective.
Perhaps the whole Milky Way was simply a primordial amoeba. But that spark depressed her. Just the idea that all the collective intelligence of the entire universe would somehow be equivalent to a simple-minded amoeba.
She tried to concentrate on the earth alone with countless artificial satellites flying around the earth, forming a network centered around the earth. This looked to her like a gigantic complex atom with many electrons surrounding the earth. She mused to herself for quite a while on that.
Oh, the living things on earth! She zoomed towards the earth, and watched as in a time-lapsed movie the enormous continental plates colliding with one another, creating volcanoes and earthquakes. Some land rose above the sea at one place and other land sank below the sea. Enormous weather patterns ravaged the land from time to time. Earth’s temperature fluctuated from hot to cold; so hot that the polar caps melted, raising the sea level to cover a significant portion of the land and so cold that the polar caps covered almost half the planet, leaving only a small ocean and a tiny habitable piece of dry land. As she continued to observe the weather cycles in time-lapse progression, she cried and screamed for all the living things on the planet while sitting down in a squatting position.
An urge to visit the living things on earth came into her mind. She flew around the earth and found the giraffes, the lions, the cheetahs, and the orangutans in South Africa, then the lizards in the Sahara Desert where she hunted for the ants and visited with the queen ant to chat about her colony.
Oh, the dolphins!
She dived into the Bermuda Triangle, looking for dolphins, and found a pair weaving in and out of the water. She swooped down and conversed with them. They responded to her readily. Without a doubt, they were an intelligent species. She tested them on mathematics, on science, and on logic. To her surprise, they outsmarted her at every question.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
After a pleasant chat with the dolphins, she craved the fish in her aquariums and wanted to know their welfare. She spun the globe and located Miami and her home. In her three aquariums, her fish danced around without a care. She had fed them only a few hours ago, and they were content to be in their artificial environment. After visually following them for a while, she dived in and swam with them round and round as well. She smiled at Orange, one of the larger fish in the tank. Orange complained that some parasites existed on its back. Indeed, a nasty and threatening white mass grew at Orange’s back.
As small as the size of a single bacterium, she shrank and shrank till she wriggled and twisted like the rest of the bacteria. Inside the mass, millions and millions of bacteria fed on Orange’s raw flesh. The colony thrived with an unlimited food supply. They fed, they grew, and they multiplied. Then they fed some more, grew some more, and multiplied some more. Surely this might be bacteria heaven. Perhaps a minor inconvenience to Orange, they coexisted with Orange, each propagating their own species.
The bacteria had no consciousness of Orange, their host. Their entire world consisted of a small flesh wound in Orange. When the colony became sufficiently large, the bacteria would communicate with one another, elect a small group to be their ambassadors or representatives of their species, and contribute their resources to this elect group. With sufficient resources had been collected, the elect group would transform themselves into spherical spores and float away in search of a new world.
Kristin continued to shrink even further to investigate protein strands like a virus, which was not a living thing but only bits and pieces of genetic coding material. She examined the bacteria colony, looking for loose strands of a virus. She did not know what she to search for and soon gave up. Her attention turned to the shape and size of different proteins around her. Some were helical, and others stringy-like; some complex and odd-shaped, while others took regular shapes. She wondered what would happen if she grabbed a few atoms and rearranged them. Though very much tempted, she refrained for fear of the unknown consequence.
The atoms of a particular protein in front of her loomed larger and larger. She continued to shrink to atomic size, and the dynamics of atoms around her fascinated her. These atoms were not passive doing nothing; rather, they were spinning and interacting with one another. Agitated like a set of Mexican jumping beans on a platter when shaken violently, the atoms bombarded against one another at high speed and sparks would fly out. Quarks may be? She wondered.
Based on elementary physics, an atom should be identified by the nucleus of interlocked protons and neutrons surrounded by electrons like satellites circulating the central core. In reality, no nuclei of the atoms laid claim to any electrons at all. She witnessed the free-spirited electrons floating from one nucleus to another like a bee in a flower patch, visiting one flower after another.
Atoms, earth, sun, galaxies, universe, and … She found herself in the gall of confusion and total humiliation again. Flying electrons around a nucleus made an atom. The aggregate of atoms made the living things on earth. The earth and other rotating planets around the sun made up the solar system. Many star systems formed the Milky Way galaxy. Innumerable galaxies made up the known universe. … To comprehend infinity with her finite mind proved futile. Even the realization of what she did not understand humiliated her. How can a handful of molecules being attracted and bonded together by some unseen force comprehend the vast infinity? Was a handful of atoms the sum-total of her existence? The reality of her consciousness?
As she was pondering on her livelihood and existence, she fell through the vortex of the whirlpool once more. Her collection of molecules being stretched and pulled. Oh no, a molecule drifted away, perhaps to join another collective. She called out in fear, but no sound came out. Another of her molecules drifted off in the opposite direction. In vain, she stretched out her arms to catch the wayward molecule to bring it back into the fold, though she had no arms and fingers. Her body was now a cloud of molecules bumping into one another. She had no form, merely meandering with her surroundings. Another molecule drifted away. Then another, then another. As she fell through the center of the vortex, the strain shattered her collection. The bond holding the molecules together removed, all the molecules scurried in all directions to become part of the maelstrom.
No, no! In vain, she cried to her molecules…
She woke up in a cold sweat. She flexed her hands. They seemed to respond to her command. She touched her feet. Everything belonging to her seemed intact. She made a fist and hit the bed. Ouch! The pain made her wide awake.
As she looked up with her eyes to the ceiling and around the room, everything seemed to be in their right places. She pointed her finger to each piece of the furniture: the dresser by the door with the mirror on top, the picture of her parents next to the mirror, her hairbrush next to the picture, etc. She did a quick mental check of her room and everything that should be there was where she remembered last. She sat up and tried out her legs. They seemed to work. She still looked the same as last night as she peered into the mirror.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, can you tell who is the one before you?
She laughed at the nursery rhyme.
She raised her arms and used her fingers to pinch herself.
Ouch! That hurt. OK, no more dreaming.
In the bathroom, her motions of brushing her teeth and fixing her hair became robotic as her brain kept trying to comprehend what she had seen in her dream. Something deep within her nagged her. She got dressed quickly, sloppily, and half-heartedly. Her nightmare faded away, yet her normal cheerful self had not returned.
She rushed to her office and poured herself a cup of coffee. Not wanting to talk to anyone this morning, she hid behind her cubicle, pretending to be busy, though still dazed by her dream.
Something extremely unsettling inside her was eating her up, though she could not identify what that was.