The Law of Nines

On one hand he knew that it wasn’t possible that he could have imagined Jax, but on the other hand it often seemed easier to believe that he had dreamed her up, much the way he did the scenes he loved painting. He knew, though, that such thoughts were most likely born of his dejection that she had never tried to contact him again. He was just beating himself up over having driven her away, just feeling sorry for himself.

For a time his desire to believe Jax’s story had been bolstered when he had spotted a popular science magazine in the store. On the cover had been a star field strewn with galaxies. The headline read “Our universe and multiplicity theory; maybe we’re not alone.”

That night Alex sat in his quiet house and carefully read the series of articles revolving around the possibility of other universes beyond what was called the “Light Horizon,” the term used in Big Bang cosmology to describe the edge of the observable universe, the farthest distance astronomers could see. Since the light beyond the Light Horizon had not yet arrived to be seen, it was not known how large the universe actually was or what, if anything, might be beyond it.

Astrophysicists speculated how the universe, made up of space, time, and matter, might be able to bend back on itself through wormholes so that the most distant parts of the universe would be but a step away. They went further to talk about how the universe itself might not be singular, not everything there was, and that there might be others out beyond. Through theories that touched on black holes, white holes, dark matter, dark energy, the nonlinear oddities of the space-time continuum, string theory and superstring theory which suggested as many as ten dimensions, it was hoped that physicists would eventually be able to come to understand if and how other universes existed beyond our own.

Some astrophysicists postulated that the universe was like a bubble, and the events that created the bubble of the universe created others, a whole mass of them, each bubble a separate universe sparking into existence, growing, and expanding in a larger mass of universe bubbles. Other scientists believed that the universe was in fact like a sheet of time, space, and matter—four dimensions—floating in a greater void of a fifth dimension along with other universes, other four-dimensional sheets of time, matter, and space.

These physicists believed that there were dimensions beyond the four familiar dimensions, and that these additional dimensions were membranes that when they touched threw matter into the four dimensions we know. In other words, created universes that floated in this fifth dimension.

They even proposed that these other dimensions might be gateways between the universes.

Alex couldn’t help wonder if Jax had come from one of those places. Perhaps she wasn’t so much from another world as she was from another universe and had traveled through a gateway of other dimensions. While it gave him chills to ponder the possibilities, he felt in his heart that it was nothing more than daydreaming, a mere hook upon which to hang his hope that she was real and that she had been telling him the truth.

He needed her to be telling him the truth, or his entire impression of her, what he thought of her—her intelligence, her passion for life, her presence—would crumble. He didn’t want to believe she was from another world. How could he believe such a story?

But if she was lying to him that would be worse.

Alex felt trapped in that dilemma, not wanting to believe her story, yet not wanting her to end up being nothing more than a scheming con artist, a liar.

But Jax was gone. He didn’t really have any reason to hope that she would return. Alex knew that he’d missed his chance to ever find out more, to ever solve the riddle.

By the time he’d finished reading, it was dark in the house beyond the single lamp beside his chair. He felt not only alone but lonely in that enveloping darkness. The information in the articles hadn’t convinced him of anything, as he had hoped. In fact, in an odd way it only left him feeling more convinced of the impossibility of it all. It seemed to him that the physicists were seducing themselves into ever more grand, fantastical theories. The science, if it really was science and not the projection of wishes, was beyond him.

As the rhythm of life demanded his attention he increasingly lost interest in the magazine articles. He had real life to deal with.

A week after finally cremating his grandfather, Alex had gone back to painting. At first it had seemed like it was only something to do to try to fill the emptiness. The world felt so quiet, so dead, so sad. It had never seemed that way before. He had talked to Ben almost every day. In many ways it was Ben who had made the world all the more alive for him.