Italo Scowlvino’s Cosmic Comics
Three predictions arose in response to Edward Hubble’s discovery of the uniform expansion of the universe. In the first, the universe is expanding sufficiently slowly that the gravitational attraction between the different galaxies causes the expansion to slow down and eventually to stop. The galaxies then start to move toward each other and the universe contracts. In the second scenario, the universe is expanding so rapidly that the gravitational attraction can never stop it, though it does slow it down a bit. Finally, there is a third kind of solution, in which the universe is expanding only just fast enough to avoid re-collapse.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
When I decided to run away from home, I didn’t think that years later I’d be running still. But it’s true, I never turned around. Now I couldn’t if I tried.
When I ran away, my siblings ran away, too. By no standard, was I the eldest or most respected child. Yet something about my leaving must have inspired them. They didn’t follow me literally. They ran their own ways.
Then, my parents split up. All of my expectations about running away, and for that matter, my expectations of the bonds keeping our family together, were apparently unrealistic. I expected our parents to plead us to stay, to warn us of the dangerous world towards which we were running, threaten punishment upon our return. None of this happened. Instead, my parents themselves ran away! Divorce is their right, of course, but don’t divorced parents have to split custody of the children or something? They didn’t even follow any of us children, they ran away somewhere else.
Where were child services through all of this? They up and ran away, too. As did the courts and the whole government, which abruptly disbanded. Again, I didn’t think of myself or my family as influential. I suppose our family combustion could have been too disturbing for everyone else to sit by and witness. Or perhaps, the community, which was very close-knit, interpreted my actions as running away from them and took offense? Or maybe, they felt envy as they saw me leave, as they always wanted the opportunity to occupy some space of their own. It’s true that we didn’t have a lot of space, then.
Being a child of normal psychology, I thought I was the center of the universe. It was then a jarring experience to resolve that I would run away from the central place that I knew and run towards the rest of the places. These places, I soon judged, were infinitely vast and therefore their true center was also infinite, and certainly bigger than me.
Yes, it turns out I was wrong, I was not the center of the universe. I was in the center of- at that time a very small universe. Then, a big bang, and a long time later, I am a galaxy far, far away.
I figure there are three scenarios for how this plays out.
- The lot of us will realize the gravity of our actions, and that there’s more bringing us together than pushing us apart. We will slow down and eventually stop in our tracks, turn around, and like a rom-com reunite.
- More realistically, there won’t be collective remorse, or not enough to generate the apologies and forgiveness that would bring us back. It might be wishful thinking, anyways, that a bunch of galaxies running away would be able to come back. Oh, if only I could turn back space. After all, we each have our own paths now. Part of life is acknowledging that we’re all alone. We may have started out feeling like we were in it together, but we’re alone. Eventually, we’ll all get sucked in by a black hole and then evaporate into anti-matter.
- Also, death by black hole — there are black holes inside every galaxy, slowly consuming us from within, and if those don’t do it, there are black holes waiting for us out there, there are more of them than us. Though the others and I may wish to reunite and attempt to slow down, slowing down is all we’ll be able to achieve. It it will be impossible to reverse course, at the rate that we’ve been running away from home. If only I had started us off at a slower pace.
I don’t want to die. But when I do, I guess I’ll finally lock in a time-place in space-time that will mark the farthest I’ve ever been from home and yet also the farthest I ever will be.
I ran away from home because I wanted more and didn’t know how much more was out there. Now I want less.
