He pauses, examines me for a few seconds and sums things up, “So there we have it. As for your roommate, well, that’s up to you. Find a way to check her out – maybe she’s more real than you yourself are? I would say embroidery looks a lot more innocent in this regard than pointless doodles of symbols…” And he grins again, nodding at my open notepad.
I frown, offended – and don’t know what to say. So I just mutter quietly, “Check her out… What, take a peek under her skirt?”
“Well, that is unlikely to help you,” Nestor sneers and becomes serious again. “All right, I hope we’ve cleared up the housekeeping issues,” he declares. “Now, are you ready to listen? Then let’s carry on – there’s still a fair amount of time we haven’t covered yet. How far did we get last time – about a second? The first second of fourteen billion years. Yes, a second may encompass a lot – almost the entire subject matter of your career…”
He lowers his eyes, flips through several pages and continues, “Let me remind you: it all began with an explosion of an ideal cosmos. There was nothing in it but space curved to an incredible extent and equal to itself in any projection, from any angle. Flawless symmetry is a dangerous thing – like flawless chastity: it’s not clear what it conceals, what hidden passions…
“Then later, there were the quarks, the separation of forces, the Higgs field and the attainment of mass. Protons, neutrons, the release of neutrinos, rushing out on their eternal wanderings… Don’t worry if the whole picture is a little confused in your head. It will soon pass: in fact, you understood all the physics much better than I do. Patience, patience – but for now let’s continue further: from the creation of your brane to the person who you are.”
“You’re very eloquent this session, Nestor,” I remark.
“Nonsense,” he says dismissively. “Don’t try to make fun of me; I’m invulnerable to your mockery. Although, of course, we counselors have bad days as well…”
He becomes thoughtful for a moment but quickly collects himself, “Let’s not get distracted. I suggest we skip a few eons. Let’s bypass those troubled times when armadas of particles of different types repeatedly extinguished each other. First some, then others, became dominant – baryons and mesons, then electrons, muons, photons… Then atomic nuclei began to form – it took nature a little more than a quarter of an hour to create them. And soon after, everything became frozen in the transition phase. The nuclei of future atoms and their satellites, the electrons, collided and scattered in thermal madness. The universe trembled like a gigantic gloomy cloud, developing nowhere, for the next half million years – years, not seconds! – until everything cooled down to acceptable temperatures. And then a miracle happened: light was born!
“Of course, there was no miracle at all, really,” he adds a little peevishly. “Each ‘miracle’ has its own rationale, its own source of deception – every priest knows this well. Back then, at the time of the birth of light, photons simply broke free. They were released from their dungeon: electrons began to stick to the nuclei, forming the first neutral atoms – hydrogen and helium. And the universe suddenly became transparent! The fog cleared, everything became visible – although, to be honest, there wasn’t much to look at just yet.
“And here’s another thing I must mention at this point,” Nestor nods thoughtfully. “Coincidences that were utterly miraculous in their own way. I mean, for example, finely tuned mass ratios: the masses of a proton, a neutron and an electron turned out to be extraordinarily precise. As a result, neutral atoms could exist for a long time without disintegrating or decaying. Yet, fortunately, they were not eternal; they were stable but not quite: warm them up properly, squeeze them together – and a transformation occurs. Atoms were capable of recombination in fusion reactions that created the vast diversity of chemical elements. After all, who would want to consist solely of hydrogen? That would be too insubstantial. But now if you please we had oxygen, carbon, iron… Enough material to build as many little galactic nests as you want!
“A mass ratio such as this is truly striking, and you, Theo, could not help but be amazed when you perceived its significance and strangeness,” Nestor says, poking his index finger at me. “However, your amazement wasn’t so great on this occasion – I think you were already tired of being surprised by that time. It was not the specific cases that interested you, but their generalization – the conclusion, the essence. The uniting substance, if not the uniting persona – someone whose hand you imagined was pulling the strings. Whose sensitive fingers were feeling the pulse of events and making adjustments, if something was not right. Of course, later, when you predicted the conscions and B Objects, your amazement, I think, completely fizzled out. Your piety vanished; you became used to the idea that there is neither ‘a persona’ nor a ‘hand’ – am I right?”
I make a gesture in an attempt to interrupt him, pencil in hand and open notepad in front of me. “Wait, I need to write something down,” I say quickly and scribble a few words, but Nestor pays no attention.
“We’ll find out later if I’m right or not,” he continues unperturbed. “Meanwhile, beautiful, impressive, gigantic events were taking place on your brane. Star cradles formed and giant molecular clouds emerged, condensed and twisted into spirals. They collided and interfered with each other, causing local cataclysms. Gravitation, slowly but surely, segregated the condensations and irregularities – the embryos of stars. They spun and waltzed faster and faster in this majestic cosmic ball, becoming increasingly compressed and heating to immense temperatures. And suddenly, here and there, were explosions of the brightest light: the hydrogen atoms were too cramped. Thermonuclear fusion began – a star was born!
“Write that down,” Nestor nods. “Write that down; I’ll wait: those intense flashes were magnificent; there were billions of them! And now cross it out, because: it’s not the aesthetics of that time that we’re interested in. The important point is: it was specifically in the stars, in these natural furnaces, where the atoms were created from which planets are composed – and everything that exists on them, including you, Theo, and everyone like you. For that, you should be grateful to the first stars; after all, you are also one of their descendants. But their majestic dance didn’t excite you much – your attention was directed to the causes; analyzing the consequences was a waste of time, in your opinion. That’s why I only mention them briefly – although there were a lot of mysteries hiding in that period. In your time, it seemed the answers were close – the main things were apparently clear. Just a few calculations needed to be adjusted slightly, some artificial constants had to be introduced – well, you physicists are used to this. And basically, the sequence of events was described correctly: yes, the galaxy of the Milky Way was formed in the stellar supercluster of Virgo, in which one of the three hundred billion stars burned out, blazing up brightly at the end and provoking a modest cosmic drama in its vicinity. Thus, your planetary system emerged: the Sun was ignited; planets, asteroids and moons were formed from the debris of the old star – a motley crowd of celestial bodies doomed to coexistence. It was a chaotic mess then, like a cosmic communal apartment, filled with scandals and fights. The bodies collided, broke into pieces and exchanged satellites and orbits. They took a long time to get used to each other until only the most worthy survivors were left. Gradually, everything calmed down; the giant Jupiter took care of its neighbors, driving away large asteroids with its powerful gravitational field, and peace was established in the solar system. The planets fell into a stable formation and their moons took their rightful places. None of them now bothered each other or interfered with their neighbors’ orbits. And, again, due to the coincidence of many factors, one of the planets – your earth, Theo – turned out to be suitable for the existence of protein bodies, as one of the philosophers put it!”