Astroburger was worried. He wasn’t worried about worrying, for it was his job to worry about the fate of the universe, which meant that he was free of meta-worry. But Astroburger felt responsible not merely to Queen Beia, but also (even more so) to his own conscience – especially with regards to cosmic disasters, of which the universe possessed a plethora.

He turned to the Giant Asteroid Monitor and noted that there were at least fifty asteroids more than a kilometre in diameter lurking in the vicinity of Simulacra. After calculating their respective orbits, it was apparent that at least five were on a collision course with his own very vulnerable world. There was only one thing to do – change the course of Simulacra, though he was unsure how he could do this without causing a disaster even larger than the catastrophe it was designed to avoid. Worrying stuff indeed…

Giant asteroids were just the tip of the cosmic disaster iceberg, however. Giant comets, novae, supernovae, intergalactic collisions, collisions with clouds of anti-matter, being sucked into a black hole, and last though not least, being engulfed by the entropic collapse of the known universe. All provided a delicious sense of impending catastrophe that would keep a prophet of doom as happy as a sandboy, the latter’s glee having naught to do with sand and rather more to do with the quaffing of gin as they delivered pseudo sawdust to the homes of the affluent.

Still though, there were other universes – parallel, alternative, and dark universes, an infinity of them – and some argued that if that were the case, why worry about the one you happened to be in? Worry not! There are more universes! Some run on screwball philosophical principles. Foolish talk bubbled up from court – babble about virtue ethics when they meant vacuous gothics; verbal gas about virtual reality when they should have been talking about virtuous reality – and so forth. Nonsense, all of it.

In the apocalyptic mind of Astroburger, only a miniscule hope lingered that Simulacra would see the year out. The doomsayer took a deep breath to steady himself, and reached into a pocket in the deepest recesses of his robe. He had had the Royal Apothecary make him a pill consisting of some of Queen Beia’s very secretive secretions and some high-powered (and highly powdered) sedatives to calm him down – exactly what was needed for times such as these. As he swallowed the pill with a grimace, he wondered how the queen stayed so calm when disaster seemed certain. Perhaps the myriad adoring faces within the Palace of Reflections soothed her. Or perhaps it was the person she was reputed to secretly communicate with in her chambers in the small hours of the night – a certain Lord Maledor, whoever that was…

But back to the asteroid problem. Astroburger quickly designed a simulacrum (or simulacra) of a black hole, which consisted of a small glowing sphere and a large dark force-field. When he activated the simulacrum the force-field immediately swallowed the sphere, then collapsed into a swirling mass of energy that rapidly devoured itself. It was not an ideal solution, and even trying it would put the universe (Simulacra included) in danger of disappearing up its own orifice…

Queen Beia – as always – entered without knocking.

“What do we have here?” she asked, her violet-black eyes twinkling in malicious mockery. “The usual scenarios of doom and gloom?”

“Just some research, my queen,” said Astroburger in a suitably scholarly voice.

“I’ve often wondered why scientific endeavour isn’t simply called ‘search’. Research sounds like you’re looking for it a second time.”

“Sometimes a third, fourth, or even greater number of times,” laughed Astroburger nervously.

“Tell me, Astroburger,” drawled the queen. “What is the crisis this week? Chaos or entropy? And what is the difference, by the way? It keeps me awake at night.”

“Chaos is a high state of entropy and entropy is a low state of…”

“Chaos?”

“Yes,” agreed Astroburger, a trifle desperately. “Ah… no. Entropy is also a high state of chaos, but chaos with very little energy. Chaos is a sort of speeded up entropy. Though of course entropy can’t be sped up because it’s slowing down. Er…”

“Tell me,” said the queen. “How is it possible to define a thing by its opposite?”

“Seems hunky dory to me,” said Astroburger (though he did have some misgivings). “Isn’t evil an absence of good, and good an absence of evil?”

“Might I point out you haven’t defined the qualities of good or evil, or indeed those of chaos or entropy. You are merely bandying with the surface meaning of words. I want etymological penetration,” concluded Queen Beia in a jubilant tone.

“Things are defined by what they do,” observed Astroburger in his most thoughtful voice, though to be fair, all his voices were thoughtful.

“Sounds crassly existential to me.”

“Observe,” instructed Astroburger, pointing at his simulator.

“So what is in that box – chaos or entropy?”

“Neither. It’s a black hole simulator.”

“Not a simulacra?” asked the queen. “Has it ever occurred to you that we might all be simulations?”

“That is impossible,” replied Astroburger. “We exist. If we cannot assume our existence as a given, then all is –”

“Chaos?” asked the queen with a superior smirk. “Or entropy?”

“Whether I exist or not doesn’t really concern me,” said Astroburger. “The fact is, I appear to exist. And black holes appear to be a threat to all our existences, so I have to appear to deal with them.”

“I sometimes think that the only reason black holes might exist is to give you something to do – to give you an identity. What would an Astroburger do if there were no fear of cosmic disaster?”

“The question is pointlessly academic, my queen,” said Astroburger as gently as he could. “We are constantly threatened by cosmic catastrophe. Only last week a giant asteroid missed our world by just a few hundred thousand kilometres. Disaster is always imminent.”

“And if it had struck us? Wouldn’t that solve all our problems? Or would you rather carry on catastrophising?”

Astroburger wasn’t sure how to respond to such cosmic cynicism. “I believe, ma’am, that what I do is valuable, and I thought that you valued my reports on the cosmic… uh… climate. If disaster is on its way, I am sure we would – all of us – like to be prepared.”

“Quite,” said the queen with a mirthless smile.

Astroburger sighed as his baiting monarch made her exit, and turned back to his work.