The Which?

Quark A stood on the quivering brink of time and looked around at quark B, whose eyes – well, no, call it consciousness – hovered over the distant horizon of squiggly shapes and colours.
“Is it time?” it asked, the question traveling on invisible matterless waves of the primal ether over to the other quark.
“For what?” Quark B whispered.
Quark A wiggled its eyebrows – very figuratively. The equivalent in the quark world was a series of short continuous waves that would look like an earthworm if someone chalked the waveform on a blackboard before physics class. Or a kitten playing with wool, of course.
“What?” Quark B said.

Good morning reader. This is a hypothesis. It is not real. It is as unreal as the supposition that it is morning – whereas, more likely than not, it is after sunset.

At the dawn of time…there was a light. It wasn’t a light really, more of a Light. And there was an inability to pronounce capital letters. And then there was a need to pronounce capital letters – well, a need to pronounce anything, so that the light could become a light, you know. The need became a Need and manifested itself in matter. And then the fun started. The Light and the matter sent giant waves of improbable instigation towards time and the fun began before the fun began – before there was anyone to say that it had begun – or notice that it had begun.
And chance after chance after chance after chance later, quark A stood on the quivering brink of time and asked quark B a question.
Quark B misread it, as I’m sure did all of us.

The question floated all over the primal ether and burnt into the quantum foam of the brink of time – to be etched there for all eternity – or even a moment, which is the same thing.

Or was it there from before – a question – not The question – the answer to which, as we all know by now, is 42 – but the Question. A hovering uncertainty that doesn’t come from anywhere and doesn’t really go any where but lies dormant and restless in the heart of matter across the multiverse.

An intransitive. Quark A sighed and shook it’s head. It looked at the brink of time – at the edge and beginning and end of history and prehistory and chronicles and timescales – and asked the funny little shapes and loops of colours it could see whether they were time. Time. And they didn’t answer. At least in Quark language.
And Quark B just took the question as another question and paid no further attention. And the question – as with all questions asked at the beginning of cosmic history and cataclysmic follow-ups – stayed there forever, to subconsciously plague all consciousness for all eternity, at least, all eternity before the end of all things. After that, we’re told, things… change.

But which question was it? What is the question buried in the hearts of all consciousness? Is it the eternal Question that asks Time whether it is, in fact, Time? Or is it the more mundane unromantic (even if Quark B didn’t call it that) question that asks the next consciousness whether it is time for the next thing lined up in everyday history to happen?

Which is more important? The transitive or the intransitive? The Light or just the light? The Question or just the question?

Put it this way – an earthworm…or just a kitten playing with wool?

I don’t think anyone except that environmentalist with grubby gloved hands and soil-smeared goggles will differ.

Primal ether did a few more cosmic rifts and catherine wheels and smiled. Quark B edged a little closer to quark A. It was a beautiful brink of time.