Thanks for your offer of assistance. I’m sure that some of your erudite friends could shed light on our situation in Wormworld from the point of view of your sciences. But why bother? You and I are artists. We know that everything flows, and that this communication is but a ripple in our separate lives.
And anyhow, the advancement of learning, knowledge, science, metaphysics, philosophy—just between ourselves, is all of that so very important? You yourself have told me that your science, considered on a personal level (and what other level is there to consider it from?) has done nothing despite its absurd achievements. You tell me that in your world, the products of science have served mainly to hamper, to destroy, your moment-by-moment sensory existence. You say that the food’s getting worse every year, that your life-space is cramped by the existence of too many others, and that this is mainly attributable to the technologies derived from the science which makes it all possible.
Robert, I’m sure a good case could be made for the suppression of the advanced sciences and the obliteration of technology. And anyhow, humans and worms have been “discovering” and “proving” the existence of telepathy and intelligent alien races for untold years. So why should you and I bother doing it all over again for an audience that has never since the beginning of time really believed in anything except what they can verify by their own senses? (Quite right, too.)
No, you have your work and I have mine, so don’t worry about it, let’s just enjoy these privileged moments and to wormhell with the Truth, whatever that may be. Just tell me whatever you remember of the travelers’ tales of your theoreticians, and I’ll tell you mine, and we’ll have a few good laughs. Leave the others out of it, don’t consult anyone, just tell me what you’ve picked up, tell me what the wise men of your world talk about, tell me what you think is really happening in the universe and what is a soul and what is art, even though you know that you don’t really know even the little that is known; and I’ll do the same.
The interference is getting worse, and your signal is noticeably weaker. Nevertheless, I think I managed to get most of your recent urgent communication. If it is true, it presents a view of our world which neither of us anticipated.
You tell me that it is commonly accepted among you, and verified as well, that there are many worlds, each grouped around a star, each star part of a collectivity of stars you call a galaxy. A galactic group of stars exists as an isolated area in the nothingness of the universal background. You further note that the galaxies themselves are grouped into universes (how did you people ever find out such things?) which are themselves part of a greater collectivity. Further, you note that each of these universes is in a state of expansion from a deduced original center, like wormholes expanding from the central Core of our world. This universal expansion can be verified, you tell me, beyond reasonable doubt.
You also went into a lot of stuff about continuous creation theory as contrasted with big bang theory (about both of which you modestly disclaimed any real knowledge) and proposed (not so modestly) your own synthesis.
You then make the following assumptions: the universe is expanding. The expansion is not, however, infinite: the bits and pieces of the universe don’t keep on traveling away from the center forever. At some point, on the crest or cutting edge of the expanding universe, both matter and energy are destroyed—canceled—converted into nothingness, into background.
Meanwhile, matter is also being created continuously. Where is this matter being created, you ask. Is it spread out evenly over the whole volume of the universe, which volume, however, is continually expanding? You don’t think so, though you’re willing to listen to arguments.
Nor do you believe that matter is being created again at the center of the universe, in a never-ending cycle of creation and destruction. You object to that because it doesn’t fit your theory, but also because it strikes you intuitively as too formal, too static, a view which excludes the quantum principle, excludes Indeterminacy, and utilizes the notion of discontinuity only nominally. You also object on aesthetic grounds, since the scheme lacks elegance in your view.
Okay, I’ll go along with that.
You feel that something is expanding into nothing, yet you feel that an equipoise, however temporary, must exist between the two. You think that the shock-wave front itself, behind which is the exploding universe and in front of which is nothingness, is itself an interface, a recognizable zone, an area with its own peculiar stability. It is the area where creation and destruction are occurring simultaneously.
So. The universe is expanding But into what? Into nothing? There is nothing to expand into. The universe simply expands, and exists at all points in dynamic relationship with nothing.
Every part of the universe is expanding simultaneously, rushing blindly into the nothing that confronts it.
But just as this nothingness has no beginning or end, so it is with somethingness. It is as all-pervasive as nothingness. You feel that, from one point of view, any location whatsoever could be considered the shock-front interface with nothingness, and that, in fact, it is only an illusion that the universe has depth in the sense of a three dimensional figure. The universe has no depth because every particle of something is confronted on all levels with nothingness.
Nevertheless, you point out, local configuration and regional peculiarity do exist, differentiation exists, asymmetry exists, uncertainty exists, and creation/destruction may itself be no more than an aspect of something beyond our conception.
From this viewpoint, the universe is indeed expanding, and some places are moving faster than others and some places are situated closer to the galactic center. Other locations are closer to the leading edge of the universal expansion—the wave-front/point where the universe of something is literally expanding into the non- universe of nothing.
And then you dropped your bombshell. It is your belief, you said, based on the evidence I’ve given you, that our planet of Worm-world is poised in dynamic stability on the leading edge of the shockfront, with everything that constitutes something in front of it and everything that constitutes nothing behind it.
That’s creepy, Robert. It’s given me something to think about.
Given the stability of the above situation, you further theorize that a planet on the interface between somethingness and nothingness would have certain special properties. First, all directions outward would be into nothing, whereas all directions inward would be moving into something.
All right. But then you threw in the big one.
You theorize that our planet is imbedded in the interface between the expanding universe and the nothingness it is expanding into, half in and half out, half in one reality, half in another, half continually being destroyed, half continually being created.
Assuming that situation, our planet really can’t be said to have a surface (making Klaus right, damn it!) since the surface is the interface between being and nothingness.
If what you think is true, then we have no surface, but we do have one hell of a cosmological combat zone. I guess I was being too smug too soon about us having no war. Our surface, according to this, is in a state of continuous explosion, leaving no solid-earth surface at the interface. Wormworld is a continually renewing explosion. Where we should have a surface, we have instead a vast number of wavefronts/points which are destroyed by the nothingness of the non-universe ahead of them but are renewed by the somethingness of the universe behind them.