The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day by Christopher Edge

Author:Christopher Edge [Christopher Edge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788000307
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

9

Sitting on the toilet seat, I stare blankly at the bathroom door. My knees are pulled up to my chest with my arms wrapped tightly around them, but this doesn’t make me feel any safer. The door might be closed, but I know what’s waiting for me on the other side.

I’m counting every breath that I take as my heartbeat gradually slows to something nearing normality. If I focus on this, maybe it will stop me from falling apart.

Everything’s gone. I watched that tide of absolute darkness devouring everything in its path. The kitchen, the living room, the hallway and the stairs – I reckon all that’s left now is this bathroom I’m sitting in, and I don’t know how much longer this will last.

When she first started teaching me, Mrs Bradbury asked what I liked best about science. I told her I liked science because it helped me to understand the universe, but nothing I’ve learned in science can help me make sense of anything that’s happening now. I remember the flecks of nothingness, foaming on the edge of that impossible abyss. Infinite. Unknowable.

Then I remember what Mrs Bradbury said next.

“Science can’t help you to understand everything, Maisie.” Taking off her glasses, Mrs Bradbury started to polish the lenses with the sleeve of her cardigan. “There’s so much we still don’t know.”

Holding up her glasses to the light to check for smears, Mrs Bradbury then placed them back on her face, peering through the lenses at the textbook open on the table between us. She pointed down at the contents page, running her finger along the list of topics covered in the book.

“I can teach you how the chemical elements formed and about the structure of an atom. We’ll cover electromagnetism, radioactivity and the quantum of light. You’ll learn why the Earth orbits the Sun, how the Sun orbits the Milky Way and why the Milky Way will eventually collide with the distant galaxy of Andromeda, billions of years from now. But everything that science has seen or ever observed, from the smallest subatomic particle to the most distant star, makes up less than five per cent of the universe. The rest is completely unknown.”

I remember scratching my head as I tried to work this out. I stared through the patio doors at a darkening sky, faint pinpricks of white studding the blue as the stars slowly came out.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “You told me there were billions of stars in the Milky Way and the Milky Way is only one of the trillions of galaxies that exist. How can all that add up to just five per cent of the universe?”

“Less than five per cent,” Mrs Bradbury corrected me. “You see, the visible universe – all the stars, planets, comets, everything on Earth, even us – is all made out of ordinary matter. But nearly a quarter of the universe seems to be made of a mysterious substance that scientists can’t even detect. We call this dark matter, but what it is, we just don’t know.

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