The Color Master by Aimee Bender

Author:Aimee Bender
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780385534901
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2013-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Origin Lessons

We met the new teacher for origin class. He was tall, with a mustache. He was our last resort. The family-genealogy class had failed. The trip to the zoo to look at monkeys had failed. The investigation of sperm and egg in a dish had failed. All were interesting, but they were not enough. Where did the sperm come from? Where did the monkey come from? Where did Romania come from?

He sat in a chair at the front of the rug.

We began all at once, everywhere, he said.

We sat quietly, waiting.

Has he started? someone whispered.

Yes, he said. I have started. We began all at once, everywhere.

We thought about that.

But before that?

He shrugged. Goes beyond what we know, he said. All we can know is the universe.

I thought we started in a dot, someone said.

He shook his head. He brought out his lunch in a brown bag from his briefcase.

No dot, he said. A dot is at a point, and if at a point, things are also not at that point.

We watched as he chewed a baby carrot.

A very well-packed dot, someone else offered. From which all things hurled free. Not unlike a suitcase.

Nope, he said. Everywhere, all at once.

Then what? someone asked.

After that? he said. Well, at first, it was fast. Everything accelerating fast. Everything wanting to get out.

Get out of what?

Poor wording, he said. Just rapid acceleration. Then it slowed down. Now expansion is accelerating steadily.

What expansion?

Oh, the universe is expanding, he said, wiping his mouth. We found that out in 1929. From Hubble.

We nodded. This made sense. It had been in a suitcase and then— No suitcase! he said, stomping his foot. All at once, everywhere!

Someone started to cry. Someone else pushed Martha into the rug.

How about this, he said. He put away his lunch bag and opened his briefcase again and brought out sock puppets to show us personified matter and radiation. So, he said, what happened was that, after around four hundred thousand years, everything slowed and cooled, and matter grew lumpy due to gravity, and radiation stayed smooth. Before that, the two lived evenly together.

He wound the two socks together and then moved them away from each other, and the lumpy sock got all lumpified, ready to form galaxies, and he stuffed a battery-operated lightbulb inside the smooth sock so that the light beneath the fabric radiated.

Nice, we said.

The origin of galaxies, he said, with a flourish.

Are those your socks?

No, he said. I bought the socks at a store.

Won’t the lightbulb burn the sock?

No, he said, coughing. It is a specially insulated sock.

Are we accelerating right now?

Yes, he said.

Edgar grabbed on to his seat. I feel it! he shouted. He fell off his chair.

The teacher removed the socks from his hands. We can’t feel it, he said. But everything is moving away from everything else, and it does mean that, in a few billion years, even our beautiful neighbors may be drifting out of reach.

He looked sad, saying that. We felt a sadness. In a billion years, our beautiful neighbors pulling away.

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