Anew, uniform glow began to permeate space around me. I wondered if some earlier generation of stars was shining in this primeval age – a generation undreamt of by Nebogipfel and the Constructors with whom he communed. But I soon saw that the glow did not come from an array of point sources, like stars; rather, it was a light which appeared to shine, all about me, as if from the structure of space itself – although here and there the glow was mottled, as, I surmised, dense clumps of embryonic star-matter shone more brightly. This light was the deepest crimson at first – it reminded me of a sunset breaking through clouds – but it brightened, and escalated through the familiar spectrum colours, through orange, yellow, blue, towards violet.
I saw that the fleet of Time Ships had gathered more closely together; they were rafts of green wire, silhouetted against the dazzling emptiness, and clustering for comfort. Tentacles – ropes of Plattnerite – snaked out across the glowing void between the Ships, and were connected, their terminations assimilated into the Ships’ complex structures. Soon, the whole armada about me was connected by a sort of web of cilia filament.
Even at this early stage, Nebogipfel told me, the universe has structure. The nascent galaxies are present as pools of cold gas, gathered in gravitational wells … But the structure is imploding, contracting, as we travel back towards the Boundary.
It is like an explosion in reverse, then, I suggested to Nebogipfel. Cosmic shrapnel, collapsing to site of detonation. At last, all the matter in the universe will merge in a single point – at some arbitrary centre of things – and it will be as if a great Sun has been born, in the midst of infinite and empty space.
No. It’s rather more subtle than that …
He reminded me of the bending-about of the axes of Space and Time – the distortion which lay behind the principle of time travel. That twisting of axes is going on now, all around us, he said. As we travel back through time, it is not that matter and energy are converging through a fixed volume, like a gathering of flies at the centre of an empty room … Rather, space itself is folding up – compressing – crumpling, like a deflated balloon, or like a piece of paper, crushed in the hand.
I followed his description – but it filled me with awe, and dread, for I could not see how life or Mind could survive such a crumpling!
The universal light grew in intensity, and it climbed the spectral scale to a glaring violet with startling speed. Clumps and eddies in that sea of hydrogen swirled about, like flames within a furnace; the Time Ships, connected by their ropes, were barely visible as gaunt silhouettes against that uneven glow. At last the sky was so bright I had only an impression of whiteness; it was like staring into the sun.
There was a soundless concussion – I felt as if I had heard a clash of cymbals – the light rushed in towards me, like some encroaching liquid – and I fell into a sort of white blindness. I was immersed in the most brilliant light, a light which seemed to suffuse my being. I could no longer make out those mottled clumps, and nor could I see the Time Ships – not even my own!
I called to Nebogipfel. I cannot see. The light –
His voice was small and calm, in that clamour of illumination. We have reached the Epoch of Last Scattering … Space is now everywhere as hot as the surface of the sun, and filled with electrically charged matter. The universe is no longer transparent, as it will be in our day …
I could see why the Ships had been joined up by those ropes of Constructor-stuff, for surely no signal could propagate through this glare. The dazzle grew more intense, until I was sure that it must have passed far beyond the range of visibility of normal human eyes – not that a man could have lasted for a moment in that glowing cosmic furnace!
It was as if I hung, alone, in all that immensity. If the Constructors were there, I had no sense of them. My feeling for the passage of time loosened and fell away; I could not tell if I was witnessing events on the scale of centuries or seconds, or if I was watching the evolution of stars or atoms. Before entering this last soup of light I had retained a residual sense of place – I had kept a feeling of up and down – of near and far … The world around me had been structured like a great room, within which I was suspended. But now, in this Epoch of Last Scattering, all of that fell away from me. I was a mote of awareness, bobbing about on the surface of that great River which was winding back to its source all about me, and I could only allow that ultimate stream to carry me where it would.
The soup of radiation became hotter – it was unbearably intense – and I saw that the matter of the universe, the matter which would one day compose the stars, planets and my own abandoned body, was but a thin trace of solidity, a contaminant in that seething maelstrom of light and stars. At last – I seemed to be able to see it – even the cores of atoms fizzed apart, under the pressure of that unbearable light. Space was filled with a soup of still more elemental particles, which combined and recombined in a sort of complex, microscopic mêlée, all about me.
We are close to the Boundary, Nebogipfel whispered. The beginning of time itself … and yet you must imagine that we are not alone: that our History – this young, glowing universe – is but one of an infinite number which has emerged from that Boundary; and that as we retreat all the members of that Multiplicity are converging towards this moment, this Boundary, like swooping birds …
But still the contraction of it all continued – still the temperature climbed, still the density of matter and energy grew; and now even those final fragments of radiation and matter were absorbed back into the shearing carcase of Space and Time, their energies stored in the stress of that great Twisting.
Until, in the end …
The last, sparkling particles fell away from me softly, and the glare of radiation heightened to a sort of invisibility.
Now, only a grey-white light filled my awareness: but that is a metaphor, for I knew that what I was experiencing now was not the light of Physics, but that glow hypothesized by Plato, the light which underlies all awareness – the light against which matter, events and minds are mere shadows.
We have reached the Nucleation, whispered Nebogipfel. Space and Time are so twisted over that they are indistinguishable. There is no Physics here … There is no Structure. One cannot point and say: that is there, such a distance away; and I am here. There is no Measurement – no Observation … It is all as One.
And, just as our History has shrivelled to a single, searing point, so the Multiplicity of Histories has converged. The Boundary itself is melting away – can you understand it? – lost in the infinite possibilities of the collapsed Multiplicity …
And then there was a single, very brilliant, pulse of light: of Plattnerite green.