Now, however, after we had all made a number of excursions into the new universe and witnessed the extraordinary material things being made, the sacred emptiness of the Void did not bring the same pleasure it had in the past. We were—if I dare say it—even dissatisfied with the Void. For my own part, when I moved through the Void, I now keenly noticed what was not there. Not in the abstract sense, but in the actual and material sense, as now I could compare nothingness to atoms and electrons, to spiral galaxies and long trails of luminescent gas, to stars exploding and spewing their elements into space. I could not help but feel a bit disappointed in the plainness of our habitat in the Void.
Aunt Penelope did not take the same delight in gathering up little pieces of the Void for her personal preoccupations. What’s this? she whined during a recent outing as we strolled through the Void. You know what that is, said Uncle Deva. It is a scrap of emptiness that you will take back home and put to some good use. But it is nothing! said Aunt P. Yes, said Uncle, it is precisely nothing. It is a nice piece of nothingness. Perhaps you can make a dress from it. No, said my aunt. I will not. It is truly nothing. It is really nothing. I want to make a dress from the galaxies and stars. Oh, what a magnificent dress that would be! I would shine, and everyone would want a dress like mine. Nephew, my aunt said to me, can you please be a good nephew and bring back some material from that universe. I do not need a lot. Uncle looked at me with disapproval and annoyance. Do not butt into this, Deva! said Aunt P. This doesn’t concern you. The material in the universe should stay in the universe, said Uncle Deva. Everything has its own place. Don’t be so self-righteous, said Aunt P. Just a little while ago, if I remember correctly, you were saying that you would like to look at a few mountains now and then on our walks through the Void. Don’t deny it. You always exaggerate, said Uncle. I asked for only one mountain. Not mountains plural. All right, one mountain, said Aunt P. You admit it. So why can’t I have a few galaxies and stars if you can have a mountain? What do you say, Nephew? Can you see your way clear to bringing back one mountain for your uncle and a few galaxies for me?
I refused to get caught in the middle of squabbles between my aunt and uncle. Let me think about this, I said. I’m not sure if … You are always thinking, said Aunt P. You think about this, and you think about that, and then you think some more about this. Why can’t you just do it. Go fetch me some galaxies. I want to make a dress. I am tired of this nothingness here. Tired, tired, tired. All we have is a bunch of nothing here. I want something. You shouldn’t order Him about, said my uncle. Deva, I’ve had quite enough of your butting in, said Aunt P. You are beginning to tire me yourself, just like the Void. You are empty. You are full of nothing. If you had a bit more ambition, you could have … You’re going too far, said Uncle. You’ve gotten yourself into one of your states. No I have not, said Aunt P. I’m just beginning to see things as they really are. I don’t like the way you are acting right now, said Uncle. You need to calm down. Don’t tell me to calm down, said Aunt. That is condescending. Do not condescend to me. My uncle reached out in an attempt to caress Aunt. Don’t get near me, said my aunt. And don’t expect to sleep with me for a long long while. Don’t flatter yourself, said Uncle. I don’t know who would want to sleep with a nag like you.
Please, I interjected. Don’t fight with each other. He started it, said Aunt Penelope. At that, both Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva went stomping off in different directions. I never followed them in these kinds of altercations, preferring to let them wander about on their own and recollect themselves. I watched them as they went away, becoming fainter and fainter as they slipped behind accumulating layers of nothingness. Finally, they both disappeared. Presently, the Void grew calm again and began to resonate with soft music.
Aalam-104729 had been left on a gentle outcropping of nothingness, not far away, and it was expanding as always. The universe was off to a good start, with galaxies, stars, and planets, and I found myself wondering what other objects I could make. I wanted a lot more matter, a lot more energy, a lot more everything. The one universe was very nice, but as I stood looking at it now, it seemed rather small. Other potential universes were flying about the Void, throbbing and spinning but empty. Some of them might become far grander than Aalam-104729. What wonderful new things might I fill them with! All I had to do was decree a few more organizational principles, specify a few parameters, and they too would burst forth with matter. I wanted to make galaxies a hundred times larger than the ones I had seen in Aalam-104729. I wanted to make stars as big as galaxies, planets as big as stars, solid oceans. And I just wanted more.
At that moment, there were at least 10189 empty universes careering through the Void, all beckoning with their possibilities and potentials. I reached up for one as Aunt Penelope had done. I will start with this cosmos, I thought to myself. It was a fat spheroid, not silky on the outside as some of the others but mottled and tough. This one has ambition, I thought. It will challenge me. As I prepared to enter it, Aunt Penelope called out to me from wherever. What are you doing, Nephew? I was going to begin working on another universe, I said. What for? said Aunt P. She appeared in the distance and marched towards me at a brisk clip. I wanted to try something bigger, I answered. And better. Aren’t you happy with the universe you’ve made? asked my aunt. Yes, but … You haven’t finished it yet. Yes, but … Nephew, you are impatient. Didn’t we talk about that before? You are too much in a hurry. You will not do good work that way. And, if I might say so without giving offense—we are family after all, and one should be able to say these things to family—you are acting greedy. Plain greedy, and it does not become you.
I was stung by Aunt P’s remarks. Too often, she found fault with something I did, or frowned at me in that unpleasant way of hers, or simply woke up on the wrong side of something or other. She was not entitled to speak to me that way, or to Uncle D for that matter. For eons of time, she had been walking all over Uncle, treating him as worth less than nothing, and he had just accepted it, hardly fighting back. But it diminished both of them. Greedy! How was I greedy? What was the harm of wanting to fill up a few more universes? In my opinion, Aunt P was off base, way off base. And why had she said such a mean-spirited and hurtful thing to me? She was compensating for something, something lacking in herself. Well, her barbed comments were not worth a reply. I was not about to lower myself. Who did she think she was talking to?
I went for a long walk in the Void. I am not sure what I was thinking, but I wanted to be alone. Time passed. What did it matter how much time passed, anyway? Time passed. I traveled great distances. I went this way and that, scarcely noticing the hills and the valleys of nothingness, the folds upon folds of emptiness, the utter vacuum. I am not sure what I was thinking, or how much time elapsed. It might have been eons. I reminisced about epochs past, before the invention of time, when Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva and I all spoke at once. None of us could hear the other, as we were all talking on top of one another, but it was part of how we related, and there was a certain pleasantness and familiarity to it. I reminisced about potential thoughts I had had, long before I decided to create anything, when even the thought of creating something was only a potentiality, a possibility. How sleepy we all were. I marveled at how Aunt P and Uncle D had changed during the infinite time I had known them, but especially in recent epochs. They seemed to be growing closer to each other in some ways, keeping their distance in others. And I thought of my own changing sensitivities, how I had been aware of the ubiquitous music filling the Void only after the creation of time. Before then, music, happening all at once, seemed just another aspect of existence, like the nature of thought. So much had happened in a relatively short period of time, certainly short compared to the unending sprawl of existence before. I walked and walked and walked, huge distances in the Void, but huge distances in the Void are infinitesimal compared to the infinite. Eons passed.
When I came back to where I had started, there was Aunt Penelope, exactly where she had been
before, as if not even a single atomic hydrogen tick had gone by. And I realized that she had been correct. I had been greedy. In the past infinity of time, I had never known myself to be greedy, but then again I had never had anything to be greedy about. Matter was a recent invention. I had been greedy. I felt embarrassed. Immediately, I let go of the fat, empty spheroid with the mottled exterior, and it flew away in haste, joining the myriad other empty universes zipping about. I’m sorry, I said to my aunt. You are right. I was acting greedy. One universe at a time. We will see this one through. Thank you, said Aunt P. One of your admirable qualities, Nephew, is that you admit your mistakes. Not like certain other parties who will go unnamed.
The Origins of Life
After my humbling conversation with Aunt Penelope, I decided to attend again to Aalam-104729. Since my last visit, a number of fascinating changes had occurred. As a result of the nuclear reactions in the first generation of stars, the most abundant elements in the universe were hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and carbon, so I expected many molecules to have formed from these elements. And I was right. Water, consisting of two atoms of hydrogen bound to one atom of oxygen, was plentiful in at least one planet in every dozen solar systems—covering its surface in liquid oceans and floating above in gaseous vapors. Another common molecule in planetary atmospheres was methane, comprised of one atom of carbon bound to four atoms of hydrogen. And carbon dioxide. And ammonia. Sunlight filtered through these atmospheric gases in a lovely way, causing the air on certain planets to glow in crimson, turquoise, and cadmium yellow.
Other phenomena were less expected. The atmospheres of a great many planets were repeatedly cracked by jagged bolts of electricity. These spectacular discharges of electricity slammed energy into the primordial atmospheres and formed complex new molecules: sugars and carbohydrates and fats; amino acids and nucleotides.
Among all the atoms, carbon was supreme at bonding with other atoms. It had four electrons available for pairing, the maximum number for the smaller atoms. As a result, carbon atoms could link together and gather up hundreds of atoms of oxygen, hydrogen, and other elements in long, gangly chains. Or, instead, form hexagonal rings and other elaborate structures. Nitrogen, able to share three electrons with other atoms, was also excellent at bonding. Other elements had different bonding abilities, leading to many patterns. Atoms in molecules formed linear chains, planar triads, tetrahedrons, octahedrons—some folding upon themselves in the most marvelous ways. All of which was caused by the particular electrical attractions and repulsions between atoms, arising, in turn, from the precise orbits of their electrons. These orbits, finally, were rigidly prescribed by the laws of the quantum.
As with the planets and stars, I had nothing to do with the manufacture of these molecules. They formed by themselves, irresistibly following the creation of matter and the small number of principles with which the universe began. Cause and effect, cause and effect. I was a mere spectator. But I would watch over the progression of events, as Aunt P had suggested, and intervene if things began going awry.
As soon as large molecules were formed in the planetary atmospheres, they plummeted down through the air and sank into the oceans. And dissolved. Just as carbon is the atom most suitable for forming complex molecules, water is the superior liquid for dissolving other molecules. Owing to the positions of its electrons, water molecules can gently pull apart other molecules, attach themselves by electrical attraction, and escort the guest molecules as they swim about.
In time, the oceans of quite a few planets became a thick hodgepodge of carbon and nitrogen-based molecules, water, and fragments of other molecules. These bits and pieces proceeded to collide with one another at great frequency as they moved and jostled about in the warm seas. Even on a single planet, there were trillions upon trillions of such molecular collisions every tick of the hydrogen clock. With so many encounters, all kinds of new things occurred. New molecules were created. Some molecules stuck together to form bigger molecules. Some rearranged or tore off pieces of each other. Some extracted energy from other molecules by plucking off their electrons. Various architectural structures formed, such as spherical cavities or solid ellipsoids, held together for a few moments, and then came apart. It was trial and error, trial and error, trial and error. It was trillions of scientific experiments performed every atomic tick. I could hardly wait to see what would happen.
One of the molecules, a long chain of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and nitrogen atoms, had the ability to replicate itself. At each section of the chain, the electrical attractions were just right to snatch a matching section from the jumble of raw material floating around it and duplicate itself. This master molecule could do more than replicate. It also served as an intermediary in assembling other molecules. In action, the molecule seemed almost purposeful, yet it was dumb lifeless matter, like the rest.
Then a curious thing happened. Quite by accident, in the quadrillions of new structures that formed every tick, one of the self-replicating molecules found itself lodged within a closed cavity of other molecules. The wall of this cavity, only a couple of molecules thick, encircled its own little world. And how small it was, trillions of times smaller than a planet. Yet this tiny cellular world had a certain wholeness, an outside and an inside. Outside was the thick ocean, full of sugar and carbohydrates and amino acids. Inside was one of the replicating molecules and other carbon and nitrogen-based molecules that had come along by chance. The cellular wall allowed some molecules from the outside to enter. Others were refused. However, even such cells could not sustain themselves if they did not have a source of energy. Energy was critical. In the Void, Uncle Deva, Aunt Penelope, and I had an infinite supply of energy. But here, in Aalam-104729, energy was a limited commodity. There was only so much and not more, and one had to find energy as best one could to maintain and survive.
It was only a matter of time before some of the cells had, again quite by accident, amassed all of the ingredients to preserve themselves indefinitely: the ability to procure energy by disassembling sugars, which harbored a great deal of electrical energy in the repulsive force between their electrons; the ability to reinforce themselves with supplies through a selective cellular wall; and the ability to reproduce themselves by enclosing a replicating molecule. Such cells formed in the oceans of many planets. They thrived on the rich sugars and other molecules floating in the warm seas around them. They exchanged materials with the outside world. They grew. Then they replicated their insides, split apart, and doubled their numbers.
Were such things alive? It depends on what one means by life. They were organized. They responded to their environment. Unlike mountains and oceans, they could grow and reproduce themselves. But in other, more essential ways, they were just dumb material. All of their wonderful mechanisms happened without any thought. In fact, there was nothing resembling thought within the sparse and limited protoplasm of their bodies. They could not communicate. They could not originate ideas. They could not make decisions. They certainly had no self-awareness. What few electrical impulses surged within them served solely to maintain and preserve themselves, and even these occurred quite automatically, like a standing rock that falls and topples another nearby rock, which falls and topples another rock, which falls and topples another, and so on. No matter how many rocks you have in such a progression, would you say that the thing has any thinking capacity? Certainly not. The rocks are just dumbly obeying the laws of gravity. So, while I was amused by these self-replicating cells, I would not say they were alive in any meaningful sense of the word. I would call them fancy inanimate matter. That’s what I would call them—fancy inanimate matter. And I was in no hurry to make animate matter.
I went back to the Void and gave a full report to Aunt Penelope. By this time, she had made up with Uncle Deva and was even allowing him to brush her hair. I found the two of them together, she sitting contentedly in her chair and he standing behind her. Now you’ve got it right, she said. Just there, just like
that. There. That’s it. That’s it. Now you’ve got it right.
I was wondering when you would return, said Aunt P when she looked up and saw me. I should check up on the thing now and then if I were you. All is going well, I replied. Do not get smug, Nephew, she said, and threw a look at Uncle, as if challenging him to take issue with her sharp comment to me. But he said nothing and continued to brush her hair in long, rhythmic strokes.
It was a while before my next visit to Aalam-104729. To be exact, it was 2.5 x 1032 atomic ticks, but I wasn’t watching the time. I had been loosely following events in the new universe, but only loosely. Now that I gave it my full attention again, I was astonished at what I discovered. The fancy inanimate cells had continued to evolve, constantly buffeted and altered as they were by the molecules floating around them. Apparently, a large number of additional molecular possibilities had been explored, again all by mindless chance. Some of the cells had manufactured molecules that could directly use sunlight for energy, converting water and carbon dioxide to sugars. The by-products of these new chemical reactions included oxygen gas, which bubbled out of the water and into the atmosphere. Oxygen, in gaseous form, is caustic. It burns. It corrodes. It snatches electrons from other atoms and destroys them. A great many of the light-utilizing cells were annihilated by their own productions. But some had oxygen-resistant skins and had even evolved into new cells that could use oxygen to extract energy from sugars and fats.
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