He just smiles.
‘Were you the one who was supposed to jump, is that it?’ She turns away, and continues, in the same bland TV interviewer voice, ‘Haunted by your reputation, you failed at your job in London and came home, resolving to live a worthy but risk-free life. And so you became a history teacher.’ She leans up against the door, her eyes gleaming at him through the shadows. ‘Where you always know the ending, and nothing’s ever going to jump out at you. Like walking through a set from an incredible epic that finished shooting years and years ago.’
It flashes through his mind that she might hate him; this doesn’t seem an impediment to what they are about here. ‘Different jobs suit different people,’ he says amiably. ‘You thought about being a teacher once.’
‘I thought about being a lot of things,’ she agrees. ‘But I never had any vocation. You have to actively want to be a teacher. You don’t have to actively want to be a consultant, because they pay you so much. They provide the motivation for you. It’s much easier.’
‘And yet here you are.’
She laughs. ‘Yeah, well… I needed a change. Change is stimulating, don’t you agree?’ She has folded her hands behind her back, and angles her chin away from him. He takes a step towards her, as towards a dark precipice; his movements seem automatic, as if he is a character he is reading about in a story. ‘Didn’t someone say once,’ she continues, ‘that being bored is the one unforgivable sin?’
‘I think it was being boring.’
‘Same difference,’ she says, resting her head back against the door. ‘The world is so huge, so many things to do and see… And for us, in the West, with more money and power and freedom than any other people in history…’ She shakes her head. ‘To be bored is really a crime. It’s an insult to everyone who doesn’t have money and power and freedom.’ She looks at him again. ‘Don’t you think we have a duty to do whatever it takes not to be bored?’
The last of these words are uttered into, and the rest of her philosophy lost inside, Howard’s mouth. Her body twines around him; he pushes her against the blackboard, her pelvis mashing into his, the words WARMING DESERTIFICATION FLOODING EXTINCTION smeared into illegibility by her back. She bites his lips, her hands glide up his chest to grip his shoulders; she exhales involuntarily, a deep grunt, surprisingly masculine, as the heel of his hand grinds momentarily between her legs, then propels him backwards until he hits the teacher’s desk. He climbs up on it, she climbs onto him. Outside, the storm has finally blossomed: it roars, howls, thrashes against the window like something out of the Palaeozoic, or an epic movie; and as the demonic machinery of hands, mouths, hips takes over, Howard, perhaps not quite at the level of consciousness, but some substratum just below it, finds himself back again, as he has been on so many days and nights, at the edge of a windswept rockface, in a half-ring of shadowed faces, a hand holding out to him a slip of paper on which is written his own name, like a scales weighing up his soul –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/goodmorningtomorrow.htm
We’re very pleased to have PROFESSOR HIDEO TAMASHI of Stanford University with us to answer your questions on parallel universes and the stranger-than-fiction world of M-theory…
KRYSTAL: You talk a lot about other dimensions that are too small for us to see. That doesn’t make much sense.
PROF TAMASHI: You’re right, Krystal, it doesn’t. Higher dimensions are counter-intuitive because our brains are biologically hard-wired to perceive the world around us as three dimensions of space plus one of time. However, four dimensions of space-time are not enough to explain the creation and make-up of the universe. We may not be able to see them, but higher dimensions, or hyperspace, allow us to explain phenomena that would otherwise remain a mystery. M-theory describes the movement of membranes through these dimensions, some very small, like particles, some very large, like universes. In this way it presents the possibility of a bridge between the subatomic world and the macro world.
BUSTA MOVE: Where do these membranes come from?
PROF TAMASHI: That’s a good question, Busta. M-theory maintains that a multiverse consists of membrane-universes floating like bubbles in Nothing. Each bubble forms for free as a quantum fluctuation in Nothing. Universes may be created all the time in this way.
STANFORD BOUND: Tamashi-san, it is a great honour to speak to you. My question is this: is it possible for a human being to travel through hyperspace to one of these proximate universes?
PROF TAMASHI: Well, Stanford, Einstein’s equations do permit the possibility of jumping into hyperspace through a wormhole to reach another universe. However, our present technology does not supply enough energy to open up such a wormhole.
STANFORD BOUND: What about pre-existing gateways, e.g. black holes?
PROF TAMASHI: According to the solutions we have for black holes at present, this is certainly a theory. The short answer is that we just don’t know whether or not this would be possible. Perhaps it would lead into another universe. Alternatively, it might lead to a far-off region of this universe, or back into the past. Most likely you would not survive the journey, or if you did you would encounter serious problems getting back.
SKIPPY AND LORI: What happens when you take asthma inhaler and travel pills?
What happens is nothing for a little bit and then everything starts moving in slow motion e.g. when you step forward it takes for ever for your foot to touch the ground again and it feels like you might keep on continuing upwards and not come down at all like being on the moon! One great leap for man! you shout. Lori is behind you, she is laughing and laughing, everything has become very funny, the names of the chocolate bars stacked beside the checkout in Texaco, a man with a big nose walking his dog that also has a big nose, even the knackers in the village that stare at you in your costumes, it’s like you’ve stepped out of a spacecraft from thousands of years in the future and you are walking around looking at arrow-heads and woolly mammoths. The feeling is like having a fuzzy forcefield round you that keeps you warm and also makes you laugh and you wonder is it the pills or the inhaler or is it her because she’s there? Or is this really happening?
The park gates are closed so you jump over the wall and go down to the lake and sit on the swings there, you hoosh some more of Ruprecht’s Ventalin, it feels so weird like doing a reverse sneeze! Then you push Lori on the swing then she pushes you because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair she says then it starts to rain again and you both jam into one swing under one umbrella a black one that you found thrown into the bushes right outside the Sports Hall am I squashing you? she says it’s okay you say. Lori’s phone starts ringing, she takes it out and presses Ignore. It stops then immediately it starts again. Who is it? No one she says, she switches it off and then she digs around in her pockets and says we should try these too. All around the rain going ksssshhhhhhhhccchhhhhhhhhhhhboooom.
What are they?
They’re called Ritalin?
What do they do?
I don’t know.
Though she’s got a whole pocket full of them. So you take one then two then three then you don’t know but your head is going frrrrssshhhh every time you turn it like skis turning on snow like every time you blink it becomes this long voyage eighty days around the world and every time you open your eyes it’s like in a different place only with Lori beside you every time you keep floating off into space and she keeps bringing you back let’s have a rolling race she says but the grass is wet but anyway you roll down the hill you win no I win she says okay we both win you stand up but your head does not stop spinning you pull bits of grass off each other her hand stops in your hair your hand stops in her hair