The Crab Nebula Dream
One of the most spectacular events ever seen by humankind was recorded by Chinese astronomers on 4 July AD 1054. A supernova explosion, caused by a dying star, left behind its remnants and formed the famous Crab Nebula. The Crab is an expanding cloud resembling a Fourth of July starburst …
But it was not until the twentieth century that astronomers discovered a neutron star spinning rapidly at its centre.
The spinning star has an enormous magnetic field and sprays matter like a hose or a lighthouse as it turns.
NeilMcAleer, The Mind-Boggling Universe
Down the long corridor of Charade’s sleep someone kept coming, the footfalls never getting closer. She could almost see who it was, but not quite, because the corridor twisted and turned — which was odd since clearly it was MIT’s Infinity Corridor that runs straight as a die from Massachusetts Avenue to the Crab Nebula. When she turned the corner into Building 6 (Physics), she was aware of subtle changes. For one thing, the sign: The Uncertainty Corridor is closed until further notice.
We regret any inconvenience. For another, the corridor itself was no longer a corridor, not really, more a tunnel carved out of rock. She reached out, pushing at folds of twilight, to read the tunnel walls and felt striations regular as ribs. It’s The Cut, she thought with surprise. I’m in Sydney, I’m down in The Rocks near Circular Quay. There was also the scrubby reassuring texture of Koenig’s chest hair and of Tamborine underbrush, both of them neatly planted on Arbor Day by order of the City of Cambridge and the children of Boston.
She ran toward the footsteps which kept coming and coming, fainter, louder, never further off than now. Was this pointless? Echoes bounced like neutrinos. When she called, hallooing, the rubble of her voice was everywhere, all directions at once. Wait for me, wait for me, wait. Unevenness in the rock floor caused her to trip and skid so that for whole downward stretches she was in fact falling, turning as she fell, head-over-heels cartwheel style, a pulsar, a fragment from the Crab Nebula blast. She had no idea The Cut was so endless, that they were still extending it, and in the same old way too, that was plain. She could hear the convict chains and the chink of chisel and mallet. Tap tap, tap tap, tap tap. She ran and ran.
She passed the Harbour Bridge and the north shore beaches and the Hawkesbury River, she crossed the border into Queensland, keeping up a steady jogging pace, Coolangatta and Surfers Paradise on her right. Always the tunnel curved ahead, always the footsteps, always she had to stay alert for trains, running between the tracks, flattening herself against the wall when the subway cars rushed by. Brisbane loomed ahead; there was never any mistaking the smell of that city, the way it came at you in a familiar wave of frangipani and jasmine and a yellow splash of allamanda flowers. She passed the Botanical Gardens and the kiosk and made straight for the centre of town, for that section where the underground concourse fans away from the Harvard Square trains and curves into a loop. That was where the supernova stopped, that pulsing spinning blinding splinter of star, the Crab Nebula junk. That was where the buses came in.
She waited, along with Harvard students, Radcliffe students, the bag ladies, the underground drifters and huddlers. It seemed a long time. Somewhere behind a pillar the footsteps marked time (though when she looked, there was a cunning scuffle, a red-shift). At last, shuddering, the bus arrived, the bus for Goodna, and she put two quarters in the slot and climbed
on board. Where the star stopped and pointed, she got off.
Goodna was no different, the same grey smell, the grey halls down which the footsteps were coming faintly towards her. She followed though they never got any closer. She saw Maeve who opened her housecoat by way of greeting, she saw Jimmy the Bookie, she stopped at the door of Sleeping Beauty’s room where Crab Nebula spilled its light.
The footsteps kept coming and coming.
Sleeping Beauty was in her rocking chair by the window, her shaven head splendid and frightening as Circe. Charade stood in the doorway and watched, and the chair, all by itself, began to rock. Very slightly, very softly, creaking just a little, certainly not enough to blot out the sound of the footsteps, faint though they were.
In profile, the head was not unlike Nefertiti’s. Or like that of a prisoner-of-war. It turned, and in the slow arc of its turning, Charade felt the coming of a heavy answer. She felt it like the leaden drag of menstrual blood, she felt panic, she wanted to run but couldn’t move. Very slowly the head turned, very slowly, somewhat stiffly, a little awkwardly, testing a mechanism of movement long out of use. But the eyes which had been vacant for so many years were now focused and pulsar-bright.
“You came,” Sleeping Beauty said. Her lips did not move, but the words were nevertheless so clear that Charade could feel their sharp edges. The words spun and glittered like pieces of star. Fragments, hundreds of fragments came to meet them, a reverse explosion. They piled themselves up around Charade — Charade of the leaden legs, the cast-iron body — Charade who was frantic to flee but could not move, who was deafened by a voice and
by footsteps.
Sleeping Beauty tilted her head slightly to one side.
“Is he coming?” she asked. It seemed that the air, by arrangements of waves, made the sounds. Or perhaps she willed them on Charade. Her lips never moved. “Is it he?”
Words spoke themselves through Charade’s lips. “He is coming, but not getting closer.”
Sleeping Beauty’s eyes lost lustre as water runs out of a sink, as a star crosses the lip of a black hole. Suddenly. Absolutely.
She looked at Charade without looking, and Charade, feeling the high kick of panic again, strained against her own leaden weight in a ponderous effort to back out of the room. Too late, the event horizon crossed. The hands of Sleeping Beauty, which had never been seen, removed themselves from the grey folds of skirt.
Entreaty? A warding off? Defence?
Without volition and in fact against her will, Charade took a step, and as she did so the outstretched arms, although they were blind and rigid, swung like compass needles in her direction. She took another step, then another, a millstone walk. Now the bald head and its downy stubble were at eye level, inches away. Say goodbye, Charade. Charade’s fingers hovered, tentative, then stroked the way Bea used to stroke. And at the instant of contact, knowledge came. Crab Nebula exploded. Sleeping Beauty opened her hands and they were full of raisins. Charade took one and woke with a cry.