and then you both run, you run and run, and then you are outside Ed’s, you go inside and buy doughnuts and Cokes and sit down across the table from each other. What happens is that Lori is the most beautiful girl in the world, she is the most beautiful anything anywhere, more beautiful than the most beautiful painting, more beautiful than oceans sunsets dolphins glaciers. You want to tell her this but she is already trying not to giggle. Do you believe in flying saucers? she says. You go, Yes.
Because there is one… hovering… right… above… your… head… then she drops the doughnut on your head and you throw it at her and she throws it back at you and now you are throwing all your doughnuts at each other
Oh no they are invading Earth!
Resistance is useless!
and then the Chinese guy comes over and starts shouting and you realize everyone is looking at you and there are doughnuts everywhere but then outside the storm has stopped and patches of clear sky appear, great big holes of dark blue in the clouds like someone is tearing wrapping paper off a Christmas present and Lori says let’s go for a walk so you walk up the road to the dual carriageway. Cars zip by you and electricity too invisibly to light up each of the lights and houses. Lori keeps trying to tell you this story about a friend of hers but then forgetting where she is and going back to the start. This is the best night of your life. Outside LA Nites bouncers in black jackets stare hard at IDs or bend down to kiss girls with stringy tops and thin legs. Up above the clouds are mostly gone, you notice one star twinkling right at you, when you see a star suddenly get bright like that it means it’s a satellite and it’s located you with its tracker beam. Lori goes, So what’s with that costume anyway and you start telling her about Hopeland and Princess Hope and the three Demons Fire Ice and the one no one’s ever seen and you’re this guy Djed who’s trying to find the magic weapons and save the Realm.
O-kay… she says. Do you like video games you say. No, she says. Hmm maybe shut up about that stuff for a little while. What about your costume? you ask her. Oh this is just something my mum picked up for me in New York? It’s the dress BETHani wore to the Grammies. Wow, you mean the actual one she wore? She gives you a look like Hello? Um, no? It’s just like a Marc Jacobs dress that costs eight hundred dollars. Oh right. Shit, Skippy, stop being such a spa! Do you like BETHani? she says. Yes, you say. I love her, Lori says. You look quite like her, you say. Do you think so? Lori seems pleased. Definitely, you say, although BETHani is blonde and sort of a ho and Lori is five million times hotter. Some of my friends say that, she is saying. But my mom won’t let me bleach my hair. What are your parents like? Are they on your case the whole time? Um. Out of nowhere the Game shrieks up at you! Well, sometimes. I don’t see them that often, because I’m boarding? Oh, right. That must be pretty shit, being stuck in school the whole time. Like what do you do for fun? Well, there’s this guy Ruprecht. You start telling her about Ruprecht and his inventions. She likes this, she thinks it’s funny. Okay so, crazy room-mate, she counts on her fingers, weird video games… do you ever do anything normal? Hmm. Do you? Swimming? you say. Oh yeah? Yeah and you tell her about the swim team and the races and the trophy you won. You won a trophy? she says. Yeah at this meet down in the country and after mid-term there’s another meet somewhere else. That’s amazing, she says. That’s so cool. Yeah but I’m thinking of quitting. Really, why would you want to quit? You shrug. Because I hate it. Suddenly you notice the sky is dark blue and waving and rushing and streaming like water, what’s wrong with it? Wait a second it’s you, you dope – quick turn your face in the other direction so she can’t see. But she doesn’t see, instead she says, I would love to be good at something like that. You brush your cheeks clear so you can turn to look at her. Why? Just to be really good at something, she says, I just think it would feel great. You’re thinking, Why would she want to be good at something when she is her? When she is the most perfect thing that exists? But instead you say, You’re good at frisbee.
How do you know that?
Everything freezes – the sky, the cars – You just… look like you would be?
I like frisbee, she agrees. But I’d love to be a singer, like a really brilliant singer. Maybe you should go on one of those shows? you say. I always get stage-fright, she says. She holds her arms, she looks up into the sky. It would just be nice to do something that made me feel special. You stop, you stare at her. You don’t feel special?
Now she looks back at you. She smiles. Most of the time I don’t feel special.
Your brain goes, Holy shit You have to kiss her!!!
I should probably go home, she says.
PROF TAMASHI: Our initial concept of the eleventh dimension was as a tranquil place, through which these membranes, these universes, floated gently, like clouds on a summer’s day. It was a mystery to us how something like the Big Bang might have occurred from that scenario. And then one day I was speaking to my brother on the phone. We were recalling how as boys our father would take us to the harbour in Yokohama. My brother was very interested in ships at that time and it was common for US destroyers to dock there. These ships were huge, perhaps two hundred feet tall and in length equivalent to two or three city-blocks. But on one occasion we visited the docks and we saw a destroyer that had itself been half-destroyed. The whole front of the ship had been completely crushed, like a car that has hit a telegraph pole at high speed. What could have done that on the open seas? When we asked, we were told that it had been hit by a wave – one wave, which came out of nowhere, crushed in the bow and smashed everything right back to the bridge, causing more damage than all the weapons on the ship fired at once. At sea, rogue waves like that are known as ‘white waves’. I asked myself, what if these ‘white waves’ exist in the higher dimensions too? What if the eleventh dimension was not a serene place, but a place of storms, with entire universes ripping through it like huge turbulent waves? Imagine the kind of cataclysm you’d have if one of these white-wave universes collided into another universe. I believe that the Big Bang is the aftermath of just such an encounter. Two membranes, two universes, smash into each other; the energy released is the Big Bang, which produces our universe. In this model, the problem of the singularity disappears. Universes may be colliding all the time, producing an infinite number of Big Bangs.
You are walking up the woodland avenue hand-in-hand. Above you the galaxies explode like slow fireworks. Beside you Lori is singing, a BETHani song, If I had three wishes I would give away two, Cos I only need one, cos I only want you, her voice sweet and fragile like a bird’s. You turn up one road and down another, each one quieter and darker than the one before, the houses hidden behind walls and ivy. You are silent, listening to her sing, trying to think of something to make her not go home.
Tell me something, Daniel, she says after a while. Why are guys such assholes?
You think for a little bit. I don’t know, you say.
I don’t mean you, she says. You’re not an asshole.