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In-Between, 2008
𝕿HE THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE IS THIS: after 1 x 10-43 seconds of existence, what comprised the universe was dense, hot, and small. Incredibly, incredibly small—it was the size of less than a million, billion billionth of an atom. Here, gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, were combined into a single force. The four fundamentals as one. Matter and energy, at this juncture, were inseparable.
Then, in an incomprehensibly small fraction of a second, the universe expanded. As it expanded, it cooled; 1 x 10-35 seconds after the universe was created, it was filled with a near-equal amount of matter and anti-matter. These particles and anti-particles, uneven in numbers, annihilated each other. What remained would form the matter of the rest of the universe; galaxies, stars, suns and us.
The universe cooled enough within its first full second to form something familiar of the remaining matter—protons and neutrons, that which compose the nuclei of atoms. Three hundred and twenty-four thousand years later, these protons and neutrons would finally be able to form neutral—and stable—hydrogen atoms.
It took another fifty-six thousand years for the universe to become transparent and allow the passage of light.
It would take one hundred and eighty million years after the birth of the universe for the first star to form.
This is where Lark Lennox draws the line. There are many things she can imagine the universe without, but there is no version of reality where she can comprehend a universe without stars.
It didn't matter how many times Wally tried to explain the big bang to her. It didn't matter how patient he was, how often he repeated himself—his best friend simply wouldn't accept a world that, at one point, existed only in darkness, a reality where there was no light.
Lark imagined a life in that universe. How lonely. How cold. Imagine—a hundred and eighty million years spent in wait, completely, cosmically alone, with not even a star to keep you company. Not even light.
When Lark Lennox creates the universe, the stars come first.
The big bang theory posits that the universe was born from a sudden, primordial singularity. The universe that Lark creates is born instead from a single thought.
Where is home?
After this thought comes memory, of what was, of what will never be again. It is a seed in the womb, a seed in the earth. Lark takes it in her hands and, a creator, nurtures it, lets it grow into something thicker, sturdier, something that can run deep and true through this new world of hers. Like a root, like a vein, like a heart.
The act of creation takes Lark but a second, yet in that second there is an infinity. In this infinity, more like a purgatory, more like a bridge, Lark and Wally are everything everywhere all at once.
