How the Universe Works: A Personal Discovery (Humor)

Late into the night we'd all sit, over coffee and snacks at the local Denny's Restaurant. Usually there were about five to eight of us regulars, and we would move the tables and chairs to accommodate our group all together. The wait staff and manager knew us all by name, for this was a nightly ritual when a play was in rehearsal.

We'd place our orders, usually for desserts, and the chatter would begin. Oh, it began simply and sensibly enough. We'd discuss the finer points of the script, what blocking changes needed to be made in the action, or laugh about something that went wrong, or a joke someone had played.

Gradually, though, the conversation would take off into weird science space, and we'd be off and running with crazy theories about the Universe and how it all works.

Hey--maybe we were right. All of us had at least some college under our belts, and a couple had advanced degrees. Where we had the advantage over conventional physicists, though was that we were not stuck in some stuffy laboratory.

We had the free run of the limits of each of our individual and collective imaginations, as well as the entire complement of the table settings with which to illustrate our points.

Salt and pepper shakers became comets and black holes; napkins became cloaking devices and the flatware all the possible combinations of as many galaxies and/or universes as there might be.

At first, at this point, the wait staff would head for the farthest reaches of the restaurant, sure that they had a bunch of kooks high on some substance or other on their hands. Gradually, though, we won their trust, and they learned that we were merely "high" on the energy of the evening's performance. One gal used to even join in the madness during her break time.

We used the simplest of devices. Who needs clumsy calculators with all their obscure scientific notation symbols? It is so easy to press the wrong button, and toss all your careful work out the window. No, we relied on solid, physical items.

Knives were parallel universes; forks were crossing, or perpendicular universes and spoons were gravitational warp fields. Now, I know, that last sound like it comes right out of Star Trek, but hey--I think those folks were onto more than they let on!

As previously mentioned, salt represented comets, and pepper, black holes. The napkins, also mentioned before, were cloaking devices. Not that we were talking about star ships, but we postulated that the various universes themselves might be cloaked.

I'm actually quite surprised that our findings were not broadcast worldwide. I'm sure we each deserve the Nobel Prize in cosmology for our contributions.

But, I've kept you in suspense long enough. It's time to reveal the mysteries of the Universe and the Great Beyond, as we explored and unraveled it so many years ago.

Please take a seat, as these results are liable to be quite shocking, as well as profound.

Here's how it all works: you are driving down the road, minding your own business, when all of a sudden, the cloak is pulled from a perpendicular universe, and wham! You are slammed into the car of another driver from that universe. Each of you thought you were in your own, nice, straight, cozy universe, until that cloak was pulled, and tangled you into each other's space.

Really, upon closer examination, that cloak is more like a force field that normally repels and keeps the contents of the various universes apart, but also hides them from view; it's a dual-purpose energy field.

So now you know--that's what really happens when you have an auto accident, or simply bump into someone on the sidewalk. You know that bush that you pass every day, until one day, it's right in your path and you fall into it? Bingo! A hole in the cloak!

We are still working on a device to detect these rips in space-time while they are still far enough away to be avoided. In the meantime, you have been warned.