Revolution

From CleanPosts

THE REVOLUTION

Jerry solved the secret of the Golden Gift by himself, before his nano bud even broke open and he could begin Sharing with Robyn. He made the announcement to the girls on a hillside east of Triplett where the army had made a clearing in the trees and stationed a set of anti-aircraft guns against the possibility of a Japanese assault on the West Coast. After V-J day the army had departed, leaving only some dirt roads and concrete foundations for the guns. Robyn, Hunky and Dory gathered there together with Jerry one cool and cloudy day in October 1945.

The first thing he did was officially return the Golden Gift to his wife Robyn-Binah, who made it in 1838 by carefully instructing nephilim technicians at her Proxima space station. Jerry's gesture was important, one that she had eagerly awaited for those many years. By handing it back, Jerry was saying he had penetrated its mysteries.

"There are two realities, ladies,” he began. “The first one is our everyday world up here on this scale, where things change smoothly. The second one the sub-microscopic world where things act with little discrete jumps. Down there things behave in ways that go totally against common sense, and we usually never see it. But sometimes the strangeness of that quantum behavior is magnified up to our level."

"Like superconductivity?" Robyn suggested.

"Correct. We've known for thirty-five years that if we get a loop of wire cold enough, resistance falls to zero. An electric current will actually flow around inside it forever. Also if you get liquid helium cold enough, it will become super-fluid. Viscosity, which is the gooey property of syrup and ketchup, literally falls to zero. Start the stuff swirling around inside a beaker and it will never stop moving."

"How does that really work, Jerry?" Dory asked. She remembered the concept well from the excellent private school operated by the Church of End Dome.

"That part is still not very clear, even today. The electrons in the loop, or the helium in the beaker, join up in pairs which talk to each other somehow, instantly, no matter how far apart they get. When one electron or helium atom zigs, the other one zags, and the result is no net resistance to their flow."

"Isn't that perpetual motion?" Hunky accused. She knew that was the goal of almost every crackpot garage tinkerer these days.

"You're right to be wary of that, Hunky. In a way, yes it is, but it's not very useful. You see, there's no net profit of energy, and in fact it takes energy just to keep everything cold enough for superconductivity or superfluity to even work at all."

"So it's like a wheel with no friction,” she suggested. “It spins forever if you leave it alone, but if you try to draw power off it, it just spins down to a stop."

"Exactly! Now, here's what I did after we brought Robyn's toys home from Proxima and set them up here in Wiley. I fired tangled pairs of electrons from a super-conducting ring at tangled pairs of super-fluid liquid helium atoms in a little glass lens, and I got tangled pairs of light bouncing off it, in the form of twinned photons of purple light."

"So it combines every form of super-blank-ity-blank-blank!" Dory said.

"Yes! One of the twin photons corkscrews right, the other one left, and if they hit a target atom it doesn't know what to do so it just sort of stands up at right angles to our universe, and for lack of a better term I'll say it's 'phantomized.' Does everyone sort of follow me so far?"

The girls all grunted in the affirmative.

He pointed to the end of the clearing, about a hundred yards away, where he had prepared a science project containing some water and his own working copy of the Golden Gift. Several colored wires led away from it, to a small wooden box held in Jerry's hand.

He said, "Now picture the water inside a glass sphere as a bunch of very tiny ping pong balls bouncing off each other as well as bouncing off the inside of the glass. This gives you a pressure to the water, a certain resistance to being squeezed. But if you fire a phantom ray at it, all of a sudden the Ping-Pong balls start traveling straight through each other and only bounce off the glass."

Jerry flipped a switch on his hand-held wooden box. This turned on his copy of the Golden Gift mounted inside, but there was no visual indication that anything was happening to the sphere of water.

Dory said, "I'll take your word for it."

Jerry smiled. "You won't have to just take my word for it, in just a few more minutes." He flipped another switch. Inside the science project relays clicked and valves opened. "I am now pouring more water into the glass ball. Quite a bit more water, in fact. In the phantom state, water molecules can exist superimposed right over the top of each other, occupying the same space at the same time."

"So now the sphere can accept almost any amount of additional phantom water," Robyn put in.

"At least until the phantom ray is turned off."

Jerry flipped another switch on his box. Seven seconds later there was a silent fireball that felt like it would singe their eyebrows off, followed an instant later by the sound of an explosion so loud, so huge, they were forced to retreat deep into the woods around the clearing, because someone was sure to investigate. But there was no black powder, no evidence to find at all except a big crater.

When they found a place to hide in the trees, Jerry told them, "Water isn't normally compressible, so it re-expands violently to seek its normal density, and if there is any resistance to that, it gets very hot. It gives off far more energy than it takes to phantomize the water in the first place."

"So there's a hidden source of great power," Robyn said.

"Yes, and there indeed is the principle of a phantom compression engine that could soon be running cars and airplanes literally from tap water. No more reliance on gasoline. We can rig homes with hot water heaters and furnaces that run basically for free. I haven't even begun to imagine all the possibilities."

Hunky had something to ask. "Joey, you say the phantomizer beam makes water molecules stand up at right angles to our three dimensions. I can't even imagine in what direction that is."

"And I can't even point in that direction,” Hunky. All I can say is that instead of lying flat in the present 'now' they stand up in time and become say, a few seconds 'thick.' Does that make sense?"

"I think so. It's sort of like the way a hundred coins lying flat on a table will cover a wide area, but if you stand them on end and they'll pack tight into a single roll.

"But if the phantom water is moving through itself," Dory asked, seeing a glaring flaw in the theory, "how come it doesn't move straight through the glass also?"

"Because I've prepared the glass by supercooling some raw glass so it doesn't go anywhere, phantomizing the glob, re-heating it, blowing it into a sphere, and annealing it slowly in an oven. Phantomization, it turns out, is a one-shot deal. Every particle that is made into a phantom has something like a little mailbox flag that remains up forever, and nothing will coax that particle to stand up ever again. It is the only exception to the rule that particles are identical on the most fundamental level."

"So a power plant using phantom compressed water in a closed loop will never work," Robyn noted.

"Correct, Robyn. Only water which has never been phantomized before will work, and after that it is useless for power and fit only for drinking or washing. But a hundred years from now, even with the whole world using this process, only a tiny fraction of one percent of Earth's sea water will have their little 'mailbox flags' up.”

“How does the Golden Gift maintain a supercooled state?” she asked.

“Reverse thermocouple. If you put two dissimilar metals together and heat one side of them, they're like a battery, they give you electricity. But if you put electricity into them, they separate into hot and cold sides. Then you can air-cool the hot side and it keeps going down in temps.”

“So what does the Golden Gift do with the hot air after it carries the heat away from the hot side of the thermocouple?”

Jerry shrugged. “Phantomizes it. Makes it go away.”

“Just one more technical question, Jerry. Where does the Golden Gift get the electric power to do all of this?”

“If you supercool some wire and pre-phantomize it just like my glass, it won't disappear when it is phantomized again, because of the mailbox flags I spoke about. But any electrons that wander into that wire while it's being phantomized will disappear. The wire develops a constant positive charge. So you get current flow, and depending on how you coil the wire, it's greater than the power required to operate the Golden Gift.”

Robyn said, "This discovery of yours will only make us rich if we retain control of it."

"Who better than the Boda to keep this secret? They could threaten to torture us with fire and we wouldn't blab it, because as you have assured us, we who have been Changed can choose to die at any moment by an act of pure willpower."

"Can you put the guts of your phantomizer in a box that will eat itself if anyone tries to open it?"

"I see where you're going, honey," Jerry said. "Of course I can. A lead-lined box so no one can scan it with x-rays. We'll rig it to self-destruct if they try to use sonic imaging too. No reverse engineering like I just did with your Golden Gift. We can have a total monopoly."

Robyn smiled. She had accomplished her goal. Her husband had done all this by himself, without access to any of the lore of the elohim, and without Sharing with Robyn via the Purple Cable. It wasn't that Robyn had tested her husband for her own purposes, but that she allowed him to see what he could do for himself.

Now Jerry and Robyn could use the Purple Cable at last, and join in the kind of wild fun that Hunky and Dory had discovered.

Robyn gave the Golden Gift to Hunky. "Your turn. Let's see what you two come up with."

• * * * *

In the waning days of Eli, the last king of Nath from the House of Ravenmaster, many prophets predicted that the kingdom would face utter destruction unless the king's subjects repented, but the people did not want to hear that message, and therefore they sought to kill those prophets on the principle that if you kill the messenger, the bad news goes away.

And it came to pass that most of the seers went into the king's Prophet Protection Program. He took payment in the form of oracles and he was exceedingly blessed by El for the rest of his life, which unfortunately was a matter of only a few more weeks, not many years.

Bron Blackseed, the commoner who was the author and leader of the movement to overthrow the king, executed all the prophets who did not seek sanctuary in the king's castle at Hadal. But the elohim Yeshua and Ariel he dared not touch, and it was said a new prophet was come into the land of Nath from Earth, chosen by Binah himself, who had recently taken possession of the body of a woman, and was traveling to the temple of Binah in Menkal.

And it came to pass following the massacre of the prophets that El sent upon Nath a great destruction of wind and fire, such a one as never had been known anywhere upon the face of the Land We Know. But Bron Blackseed attributed the disasters to a chance confluence of those natural misfortunes which are prone to happen everywhere from time to time.

For Blackseed had rejected the teachings of Yeshua that the land of Nath was chosen of El for those who serve him. Yeshua taught it would someday be the home to a New Sechem that would come down from heaven and be the dwelling place of the LORD in a new messianic age, and all the inhabitants thereof would fulfill the covenants El made with Abraham and his children long ago.

Blackseed openly said all the elohim were figments, and the individuals who styled themselves elohim, namely Belial, Ariel, Yeshua, and this new one styling herself Binah, were only nephilim and humans deceiving the people by playing to their superstitions. And he said the supposed God of Nath, this El, was most assuredly a figment, for he did not even merit having someone pretend to be him in the flesh. Blackseed told the people the Land We Know had come to exist only by a fluke, and operated only by the laws of chance, which explained the catastrophes.

So Bron Blackseed did not repent, nor did he disband his revolt, and he sought to capture Yeshua and Ariel alive. But Ariel was sequestered in the house of King Ravenmaster, while Yeshua fled to a cave near the city of Adjara and watched everything from afar, and recorded it on metal plates.

And it came to pass that Prince Derash, the only son of King Ravenmaster, came forth from Hadal and gave battle to Bron Blackseed, who was in the Shaula Wood, and brought him into captivity, but Hovan the son of Bron, who would later father Telan Blackseed, went into the camp of Derash with a squad of elite soldiers and released his father.

And Bron Blackseed came again after Derash with his army, and they clashed in the ravine of Anixi, and Derash was driven down the brook to the plains of Nolesh. Then Prince Derash turned and fought Bron, and drove him below the Enkaa Dam to the valley of Armak.

The next time they fought on the plains nigh to Mizal. There Untanirok slew Derash, but in his death throes Prince Derash sorely wounded Hovan in his thigh, which took him out of the service of his father for two years.

And after Prince Derash Ravenmaster was slain, El sent a curse upon the land so that when people set objects down at night, in the morning they were found to have disappeared. But Bron Blackseed said the missing goods were not a sign of the power of El, but indicated only thieves. And everyone started keeping their worldly goods and weapons on their own person, but Nath was steadily impoverished.

And it came to pass that King Eli Ravenmaster came out of Hadal and gave battle to Bron Blackseed, who was driven to the wilderness of Shikah, nigh to Linan. For the king waylaid a part of the army of Bron because they were exceedingly drunken. And seeing his foes flee before him, the king turned back, went to the city of Adjara, and plundered the house of Bron Blackseed.

And all the people in the land flocked into either the army of Bron Blackseed or the army of the king; yea, even the women, the infirm, and the children.

Blackseed's revolution had been so bloody that the whole face of the land of Nath was covered with dead bodies, but no one took the time to bury them because they were busy marching to make more dead bodies. And the land exceedingly stank.

Then King Ravenmaster pursued Bron Blackseed across the plains of Nolesh to the shore of Lake Enkaa and gave battle for three days. Bron fought with his back to the water. And the people loyal to Bron grew exceedingly frightened and fled west to the city of Mizal, while the king pitched his tents in the valley of the river Armak, and assembled his army on the hill of Ronmok hard by, where he could spy out across the Nolesh plain upon the army of Blackseed.

In the battle Bron smote upon King Ravenmaster with many wounds, and the king fainted from the loss of blood and was carried away. After the battle casualties were so high on both sides that Bron ordered his people not to pursue the armies of King Ravenmaster as they withdrew again to the vale of Armak.

While the king recovered from his wounds he remembered the words Ariel had spoken to him in private, and he saw that twenty thousand of his men had been slain already, and also their families, and he realized that her prophesies had been fulfilled to the letter. But he remained faithful to El.

And it came to pass that Bron wrote a message to King Ravenmaster that he ought to surrender his forces for the sake of the lives of his people. The king answered nay.

And it came to pass that Bron wrote another message to King Ravenmaster that if he gave himself up, and renounced his crown, he would spare the lives of the people. And the king answered nay.

And it came to pass that Bron wrote a third message to King Ravenmaster, saying, "Behold, with me are six thousand staters of silver, and all these I will give thee if thou wilt renounce thy throne and step down."

King Ravenmaster refused to yield to the temptation of the silver offered by Bron, which was enough to buy from Menkal or Alodra two and forty thousand measures of barley or seven hundred head of cattle. And the money had not been taken by the curse of the land, for it had been carried on the person of each person loyal to Bron.

But it could not be used to buy such amounts of provisions in Nath itself, for the war campaign had run well into the harvest season, and many crops rotted in the fields while the farmers fought, either for Blackseed or for the King.

So King Ravenmaster replied, "May El the true and living God curse your money."

And all the people in the land arrayed themselves for battle before the Temple of El. Men, women, and even their children were all armed with weapons and wore armor.

But on the morning the final battle was to take place, the people loyal to Bron Blackseed awoke to find even the money many of them were holding on their person, the six thousand staters of silver, was now gone. It dawned on them that they could not keep their own property on account of the bewitched land, and there rose up a great lamentation.

The did Yeshua come forth from his cave, and prayed the people would now turn back to the Lord El and receive his blessings again, but his hope was in vain, because they were not sorrowful for their sins, only sorrowful for their lost property.

And they said, “Let El return to us our missing silver and gold, and then we will serve him.”

So Yeshua called the people a wicked and perverse generation that avoided destruction by the LORD only through the prayers of the righteous, and if they succeeded in their plan to cut off the righteous King from among them, then the Lord would not stay his hand, and they would be smitten by famine and pestilence and the sword.

But Bron Blackseed was angered by Yeshua's stand, and he rallied the people to loot the gold of the Temple of El, and set the roof on fire, and tear the walls down stone by stone. And the crowd drew near, but Yeshua they touched not.

And it came to pass on the Temple steps Kelamah son of Hanodig gave his testimony, confessing that once he hardened his heart against the knowledge of El. But on the fourth day of the seventh month of the twenty-second year of the reign of King Ravenmaster, when he was traveling through the city of Shedal, in Menkal, the elohim Binah appeared to him in the guise of a woman and told him to return home and go to the foot of the Temple of El and feed a prophet of the Lord, and his wife, who had fasted many days there because of the sins of the people of Nath. Then the blessing of El would rest upon Kelamah.

Kelamah testified that he did find the Prophet Peter Two Feathers and his wife, who said they came from Earth, and he gave them bread to eat, with olive oil, and wine to drink. And Two Feathers fed him in return from the Word of God.

And this testimony astonished the crowd people Kelamah was speaking to, but there were some among them who tried to trip up Kelamah with words so they would have reason to cast him into prison or slay him outright.

Then Peter Two Feathers of Earth stood forth with his wife before the people. He said he had been commissioned by no less than three of the deities of the Land We Know to prophesy before the Temple of El in Nath against the revolt that threatened the life of King Ravenmaster.

If the rebels did not stand down, he said, El would spurn them under his feet and remove the five powers given men.

And the people said, “By whose authority do you preach these words to us?”

And Peter declared, “I am uniquely qualified to preach this message! Know that from from my youth I was trained in the Old Testament, which is the word of El, and the New Testament, which was the word of Bat-El, and the Old Buron, which is the the Word of Chokhmah, and the New Buron, which is the word of Binah.

“But of the Law of Belial I know little, save that it serves only to harden the hearts and stiffen the necks of his servants, and the spirit of Belial seems to have even corrupted the hearts of the people of Nath, if such a thing is possible.”

Such was the power of the preaching of Peter Two Feathers, the Prophet of the Church of End Dome, that he shamed the crowd, and turned them away from sacking the Temple. And they did not touch the treasures stored inside the house of El.

But Bron Blackseed realized he had lost control of the mob, and was filled with wrath. He ordered one of his archers to slay Peter Two Feathers where he stood. And Deborah Two Feathers wailed in anguish as she drew the dead body of her husband to her breast. And Yeshua wept also, and gave report to Binah, Chokhmah and El directly, after the fashion of elohim.

Thus passed the second Prophet of the Church of End Dome, and the Apostle Robyn herself became the third and final Prophet.

Then Yeshua kicked the dust off his sandals as testimony against them, and he took Deborah, the wife of Peter Two Feathers, to the land of Menkal where she would be cared for by the acolytes of Binah. And Bron Blackseed did not hinder them from going, because he feared to raise a hand of violence against any one of the very elohim he taught did not exist.

And to Deborah was given the metal plates upon which Yeshua had engraved an account of the deeds of Bron Blackseed in those days.

And it came to pass Kelamah son of Hanodig prophesied in a mighty voice that El would punish all men for Blackseed's transgression if they refuse to hand him over to King Ravenmaster for justice. And Bron Blackseed caused Kelamah to be slain to prove there is no El.

Then Bron Blackseed rallied the mob once more, and led them on a march to Hadal. There, as the people surrounded the castle, a death squad of five powerful men chosen by Blackseed entered Castle Ravenmaster using those ancient powers unique to men.

And it came to pass the straight man Thrand Pikebreaker caused stones to move and fill the moat, which gave the death squad access to the wall of the castle.

And it came to pass the gay man Magar Hardlash cut a hole in the thick stone wall to allow the death squad to enter.

And it came to pass the trinket Atol Ratrunner caused dark storm clouds to pile up over the castle, to hurl lightning bolts at the archers in the highest parapets.

And it came to pass the bauble Derian Elderwood caused strong whirlwinds to rage about the death squad, protecting them from other archers and horsemen.

And it came to pass the tyke Torr Stonespear, who was a treefeller, caused the castle doors to splinter before the death squad, one by one, until they reached the chambers of the King, and slew him unarmed while he lay convalescing from his battle wounds.

Queen Ilya the wife of Eli Ravenmaster was also killed, as well as Princess Selwyn the widow of Derash, and all of her children. And the whole house of Ravenmaster ceased to be on that day. But Ariel was not killed. Sha served as a witness to the slaying, and through har eyes El saw the death of his annointed king and his whole house.

In his great wrath the Temple of El was destroyed by El himself, by the unbearable white fire of the heart of the sun. And all the treasures of silver and gold within perished, and could not be found by any man when the ruins of the temple had cooled.

And from that hour men found they had no more powers in the Land We Know, just as Peter Two Feathers had warned them, for El himself had departed, and he became the God of the dead, and there he judges men's shades in the Upper Land far in the East.

And Bron Blackseed entered the castle of King Ravenmaster, and he declared the founding of the Republic of Nath, but from that day the house of Blackseed never ceased to occupy the highest office in the so-called republic, and in the fullness of time some of the people of Nath began to say the only difference between a 'High Lord Advocate' and a 'King' was the sounds the words made.

• * * * *

Jerry Shy Bear went down on his wife while they were connected together with the Purple Cable, and he became the first and only man who would ever know what a female orgasm was like, directly, from her end. Because Jerry would be the only man ever to undergo the Change.

After that he entered her and Robyn Shy Bear became the first woman to know what a male orgasm was like, directly, from his end. But in years to come other women would Share with Robyn and they would come to know what she knew.

And the sensation of being Robyn as Jerry pushed into her echoed in Jerry's own mind, and it seemed to sit well with him. In this Sharing Jerry could not hide his memory of his sex with Aaron Anton, because it had been comparable.

Robyn was not greatly outraged. As Binah, she was well aware of the root cause of homosexuality in planet-dwellers. She said, “There is not enough information density in human DNA to code for the exact wiring layout of the brain. There are simple basic rules that neurons follow in the womb when they grow and start hooking up their neighbors, but randomness plays a role. In the case of both handedness and sexual preference (which are independent, of course), this chaos resolves in the form of a bifurcated butterfly pattern with left-handedness and same sex attraction forming a lobe with somewhat less probability of occurring than the other. Fifteen percent of humans resolve as lefties. Eight percent of male humans and five percent of female humans resolve with same-sex attraction.”

“I love it when you talk like a star.”

“You owe me a freebie, Jerry.”

“That little tryst was before we got married!”

“I get one free homosexual dalliance,” she insisted, and he grudgingly accepted, but he said he'd be happier about it if he could at least watch. And Robyn snorted, because there was little chance of that happening.

In the Sharing Robyn could not hide from him her experience of being a star, or the things she knew from the lore of the elohim. Jerry knew directly from her mind that Peter Two Feathers was dead in the Land We Know.

She said, “That makes me the Prophet of what's left of the Church. So if you will accept it, husband, I offer to make you the Apostle. I'm afraid there's not in the way of promotion opportunities. As a slow-burning red dward star I've got about ten trillion years of life remaining to me.”

His acceptance of the position was expressed non-verbally, directly, mind-to-mind. And Robyn said she needed to take him on a short tour. Using the records obtained by El using the angel of Binah long ago, Robyn showed Jerry all the worlds and moons of Sol that would be revealed to mankind much later when the Sojourner series of space probes were sent aloft in the 1980s.

And Jerry learned that El, the famous deity of the Hebrews, was actually the son of Robyn-Binah. He had no idea that Robyn was truly the mother of God.

Next Jerry marveled at the icy world Gorpai in the Agena system, which had only a single, narrow unfrozen band along the equator where the whole pre-flight history of the nephilim had played out. And he saw the close double world of Hybla-Dia in the Rigilkent system, which was a whole new frontier recently opened up to them.

Then Robyn showed him Barnard's Star, the next-door neighbor of both the sun and Alpha Centauri, yet a sun that Binah had never spoken to. And Jerry learned that Barnard's Star moved more rapidly than any other nearby star.

“Barnard's Star calls herself Yefefiah,” Robyn said, “and just like me she has no planets. Yefefiah is one of the oldest elohim females. Eleven billion years old. She's a 'runaway' star, and she lives her life in stroboscopic time. Once every century or so she wakes up for a day, looks around, talks to the other elohim, and sees that her position in space has changed. In twenty of her days, she moves one light-year. So she's something of a tourist who flies above and below the plane of the galaxy over and over while it turns. Many elohim have tried to court her, but she has no time for them. Someday I hope to meet her.”

Jerry saw the thick planetary accretion disk forming around Epsilon Eridani, and he saw the mighty white star Procyon, twice the size of the sun, quite a contrast from dull red Cickas 5115, a star even more dim than Proxima.

She took him to the Hyades star cluster in Taurus, and then the Pleiades cluster further on. There Jerry could look back to see how the Earth's sun was snuggled in along the outskirts of Collinder 285, a former cluster which was widely scattered now, but a few core stars remained close together, and men called it the Big Dipper.

None of the names Robyn gave for these things, of course, matched what Earth astronomers assigned to them.

Next Robyn took Jerry up and out on Yefefiah's projected track, far above the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, where the sun dimmed far below and was lost among the stellar clouds that gave shape to the Orion Arm. She pointed out Rho Cassiopeia, 4,000 light years away from Earth, a huge supergiant star 100, 000 times more luminous than the Sun.

“Behold Mastema, my absent elohim father.”

And Jerry learned there were 2 billion trillion stars in the visible universe, but only a tiny fraction of these were awake like herself.

Then Robyn took him further out and up, until he was looking at the forty galaxies of the Local Group, dominated by the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.

Robyn said, “There were 500 billion such groups of galaxies in the visible universe. We count ten billion large galaxies like our own, and a hundred billion lesser galaxies.”

And Robyn took him even further out, and Jerry saw the Local Group was just a satellite of the Vega Supercluster, which had 150 large galaxies and a thousand dwarf galaxies, all bound together by gravity. It was a galaxy made up of galaxies, and the core was 35 million light-years away. And it was only one of 300,000 superclusters in the universe.

But the whole Vega Supercluster was moving toward the Great Attractor near the Centaurus supercluster. Meanwhile the Scultpor and Phoenix superclusters formed part of a long wall of thousands of galaxy groups stretching across a billion light years of space.

And Robyn showed Jerry the Bootes Void, 300 million light-years across with no clusters at all, only a few lonely galaxies scattered within. This was the structure of the largest scale of the universe: Walls of galactic superclusters, which formed the surface of large voids. The universe was built like a vast sponge.

Then Robin took Jerry all the way out, so he could see the entire visible universe at once. She explained that it had a radius of 14 billion light-years, simply because it was about 14 billion years old. In another billion years it would be one billion light-years bigger. And every observer in the universe found himself at the center of his own visible universe of exactly the same size, but the true size of the universe may be infinite, or near enough to infinite as never mind.

After this they unplugged from each other and lay naked on the bed, separate selves once again.

Jerry felt utterly insignificant. Robyn's grand tour was too much for him, or for any mortal, to bear. “Why do you need me?” he asked, and it was plaintive, almost a wail.

Robyn had no answer. Besides, she wasn't feeling very good at that moment. She rushed into the bathroom to vomit. When Jerry heard this, he followed her. “What's wrong?”

“My period is two weeks late. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means I'm a fertile little bunny. It means you're going to be a daddy.”