Circular

There is no greater distance than between one end of the universe and the other. Some say the universe is infinite, in which case that distance must be infinite too, and if you lived on opposite sides of the universe, you’d never get to see each other. And if the universe is expanding, then you could just find yourselves getting further and further and further apart.

But what if it’s not like that? What if the universe is circular?

“I mean, think about the Earth,” I say to my sister, leaning forward, warming to the topic, “people always believed that that was flat, that it had ends. But if you lived on the other side of the world from someone you could just keep walking and walking further away from them until, eventually, you’d walk around the other side and get right next to them.”

“Apart from that little thing we like to call the oceans,” she has that look on her face that tells me she’s out of sorts today, and impatient.

“Well, apart from that. But in theory. Right? So, what if the universe is the same? You go far off into the void, eventually you might find yourself right back where you started.”

“And by eventually…”

“Thousands of years. Probably. But if you could start approaching the speed of light-”

“Oh my God, you need a girlfriend!”

And that’s what you get for casting your pearls before swine. I should have known better really. But there’s not that many people who are patient with my eccentricities. Okay, not any. Sonya’s about as close as it gets. So.

“I’m going down to the dairy for milk,” she says, “Do you want anything?”

“A radio telescope?”

“Please, be ridiculous. You know how much I like that.”

#

I know Sonya loves me. They say this about siblings: they’re the people in your life who will know you the longest. And Sonya, she does know me, and does kinda get me, and she more-or-less accepts me. Most don’t. So, this thing she has in her head about how I need to get out and meet a girl. Well, we all know that would be a train wreck, don’t we?

And it’s not as if I want a girlfriend.

I’m not lonely. I’m not even really horny: I have my right hand for that.

But the universe, that fascinates me. I wish I could send a signal out into the void. I wish I could send this message, voiceless, just the fact of my existence in a universe so big as to make me somehow both inevitable and improbable. And I wish I could hear something back. It wouldn’t be much, just a whisper, just a few threads of song strung out across the cold massiveness. But it would reach my ear, and there would be something I inexplicably recognise about it.

This message, it would be all numbers, not the words for numbers, but actual numbers, just dots, combinations of dots, arranged in ways to indicate basic maths. Just to prove that I know the concept, that I am an intelligent being that has created this signal.

And she would answer, all dots and colours.

And I might answer in my turn in equations, in prime numbers. But I might arrange some of those numbers so they appear in the shape of a flower. I might add some of the symbols for numbers 0-9, next to sets of dots, so we could have that shorthand for further communications.

And she might send a signal in response. In amongst the numbers there might be shapes. There might be a star-map that shows distances. That shoes a place, beyond the known galaxies, an x to mark the spot.

And I, in return, screwing up all my courage, I might send a picture of myself. And along with it a scan – an x-ray of a human body – preferably my own. And with it a map of the universe we know, an x to mark a spot at the far end. There would be light years and light years of distance between us. And I would stare at that map, imagining the distance, trying to make it fit inside my finite skull. I would look at the edges of the two maps. I would chew at my lips, wondering.

And then she would respond with a picture. Of her – perhaps. Though it would look more like a beautiful magellanic cloud, a glowing super-nebula. The beauty of her would be more than breath-taking. It’d be something I’d never guessed at before, a new way of seeing that I hadn’t known my eyes were capable of. And I would stare at that map, a flat, shrunken universe.  I would lift my hand tentatively, pick up the paper, hold it for a moment, before I curled it in a cylinder, joining those two xs where the paper edges meet.

I would turn around, and there she’d be, standing behind me.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work