the why?( we care)

the cosmos is where we live. i wrote that down and then i wondered whether there was any point in the sentence. it isn't like saying india is where we live - because there are other countries where we might have lived but don't - or saying the earth is where we live - because there are other planets where we might have lived (or more probably died) but don't.
but it's natural to want to know more about where you live. natural to guess, and then be delighted equally by a confirmation or a contradiction.
natural to want to know whether your home has nine rooms - or eight (and the last promised room turned out to be a broom cupboard).
natural to want to know whether the central heating system will work fine for the next, say, five billion years.
natural to want to know whether the next few houses on the street have tenants yet - or the ones beyond.
natural to want to know whether the active nucleus of the township - its central hub - is the place most new apartment blocks are gravitating towards.
natural to want to know whether any of your neighbours are massively rich enough to swallow your little home whole.
natural to want to see whether the street outside is foggy or clear, and then natural to arm yourself with a flashlight to see the dark.
the dark. that's where so many of our questions come from and go back into. there's a fear associated with it - and a strange sort of fascination.
so far, we've been looking to the light for the answers to all these questions. looking to the stars and the energy they send, through storm and space, time and aeons to us, faithful observers of interstellar beauty.
teasing answers out of them - answers to our questions about them - and consequently about us.
and now we must look to the dark, as well.
it's been telling us, throughout our communion with light, telling us quietly but firmly that it's there - that it cannot be ignored. mischievously creeping into our observations and slyly toying with our gravitational calculations.
we live in the dark.
a dark that is penetrated by pinpricks of lovely starlight, true, but is dark nevertheless.
and it's natural to want to know what's hidden in the shadows of our cosmos.

the when? (or symphony)

The baton moved in a wide arc over their heads.
As the deep brass peals resonated through a thousand ear drums - something quivered in the foundations of the music hall.
It was new, built with the latest acoustic knowledge of the realms of sound, and filled with the best musicians in the world - an experiment, and achievement, the first of its kind - a musical symphony to best all others of its time.
The resonance created now had never been heard - never been felt before in the history of existence.
And these deep vibrations seemed to reach everywhere - and everything, traverse through the very molecules of the world.
But they had been underestimated. The resonance wasn't just reaching molecules - it was reaching the very fabric of space-time that held these molecules together.
And things were shifting.
And as the orchestra moved - with one single beautiful powerful wave of magnificent sound - so did the molecules of the world - and beneath them... space-time.
And with the loud percussion peal that marked the beginning of the first movement - somewhere within the molecules, within the atoms, within the quarks, far far within where space circled in on itself - a tight circle of brilliant energy began resonating with the bang - spinning and splitting into little bits of the primal matter - and moving out - to create space.
The orchestra continued, the music moved in chords and notes and harmonies. As the frequencies changed, the resonance miraculously survived - and with each new lovely sound - new lovely things began to happen to the universe that had just been birthed somewhere within.
It would last as long as the music lasted - go through miracles with each miraculous bar - sing with it - and die with it.

the "How?" (to travel around the Universe and some other things)

Last Monday I met Mr. Mobius again. He looked quite like his old self. His mole had shifted back to the left side of his face. And his squint was back in his left eye instead of his right – which is where it had been the whole of last year.

He shook hands with me, a little disorientedly. “I’ve been using the other one for a whole year,” he said, after mistaking my left for my right.

“That’s not the only thing you’ve been doing that’s strange – ”

Mr. Mobius looked around quickly and then smiled innocently at me.

“Sharp, aren’t you? Was it the mole you noticed? Or the sudden bouts of ambidexterity?”

“Both. Well, specially the mole. You’ve – you’ve changed. Twice in the last year.”

“Not changed, child. Just laterally inverted. Like what happens to you in a mirror.”

All sorts of strange ideas floated around my head.

“You’ve been through a mirror?”

“No,” he said. “Through is difficult. Around – that’s an easier trick. I’ve been around.”

“Around a mirror?”

“Just around the Universe.”

I stared.

“How?”

“In my Expansion Capsule. It uses a plane of relativity where there’s no such thing as the distance around the Universe.”

“So this spaceship – your Expansion Capsule thingy that bends space to nullify distances – ”

“It doesn’t bend space, child. Gravity does that. It just spaces out your molecules so you can become comparable to the size of the Universe – which has a pretty spaced out molecular structure – and you can slide across the gravity curves.”

“…bends space to nullify distances, it – it inverts you?”

“No. It’s just space that does that. The Universe twists before it loops back in on itself. So every time you travel around it – you come back laterally inverted. (And upside down too – but that’s easily corrected in an upside down world.) Your mirror image comes back instead of you. It’s like traveling around a Mobius Strip.”

“Seems to me that you’re the one who twists everytime you travel out there. Not the Universe.”

“That’s it. I’m the man who likes to twist around the farthest reaches of the last collapsible dimension and come back to tell the tale.”

“Also twisting himself a little bit in the process.”

Mr. Mobius smiled his strange lopsided smile and said:

“You look older today, child. You’ve had a long year, too, haven’t you?”