The Visitor

Aeons had passed. Aeons will pass. So many that they become one. Aeons became like seconds just as you, Sweet Lady, sweep past your admirers unconscious of both their existence and admiration.

Fuzzy patches all around. Universes unchanging even at this speed. Speed that seems so fast to us but is interminably slow to the inky void where the universes live. Elongated spheroids of fresh universes in the blackness blossoming just as you, Sweet Lady, blossom in your ephemeral life.

A scientific mathematician had calculated or, perhaps, will calculate the appearance of the visitor in elegant, flowing, and graceful, mathematical terms. The mathematician knew with certainty of the existence of the visitor but knew not when it would arrive. A detector was built to tell the mathematician of the visit. Perhaps the detector had already been built from those elegant, flowing, and graceful, calculations just as you, Sweet Lady, are elegant, flowing and graceful.

Multitudes of aeons passed before one of the fuzzy patches became uncountable points of light spread over unimaginable vastness. The remaining fuzzy patches remained unchanged, static in their spatial fastnesses. Only one opened up, slowly, so slowly, just as you, Sweet Lady, open up to the ardour of your favourite admirer.

Speeding through aeons as straight as possible, as straight as a point of lust. No target, no goal, no aim only moving, only heading one way without deviation. So it had been. Since birth it had headed in this direction. Had it been borne? Had it always been? There was no telling. There was nobody to tell. The mathematician knew or, perhaps, will know about the visitor. He was keen, agog, thirsting for proof just as you, Sweet Lady, thirsted for proof of admiration.

Even at unconscionable velocity the points of light remained as points of light for more aeons. There was no need for impatience. There is always time. Time everlasting. Somewhere, ahead, a light brighter than the collective universes had ever known blossomed briefly. For a fraction of a second it appeared, dominating all the other lights as far as could be detected just as you, Sweet Lady, overawe everyone who knows you with your brilliance.

Over time it faded. It grew through billions of years, into another fuzziness in the inky blackness. The visitor sped towards it as if this was to be its destination. Unknowing, unwitting, bearing down on the new universe. The points of light it contained spread out gradually, so very slowly. They became individuals inexorably becoming identifiable as separate entities. Their growth was insidious. The nearest ones became discs and clouds themselves but the farthest remained as points of light still, unchanging, unmoving. Just as you, Sweet Lady, remain unchanging, your beauty unmoving.

The scientific mathematician checks his detector and his calculations or, perhaps, he will check his detector and his calculations. There are so many variables. He confronts his fears and checks his calculations, those elegant, flowing, and graceful, calculations again and again. He is certain that the visitor is coming, he is not sure if it will come to precisely this spot. Perhaps it will miss and go somewhere else? Certainty becomes uncertainty, assuredness becomes doubt, confidence erodes away as the years pass and age creeps onto his stooping shoulders—or will creep onto his stooping shoulders. He checks his detector again or, perhaps, he will check his detector again. Just as you, Sweet Lady, check your make-up and hair just one more time before entering the dance.

There are more. Those that might have visited are spreading out in all directions. They have appeared from the brightness that is now dull and ancient. They, each of them, are newly on their journeys; they are fresh and eager, reaching out their lives into the aeons yet to come and to universes to be visited. They will never die, they are immortal, they are forever young. Just as you, Sweet Lady, are forever young, immortal, your beauty unfading through the reaches of time.

The aeons are swimming against the passage of time. The points of light, ever unchanging, become, suddenly, larger. The discs and clouds have points of light within themselves. Where they were once tiny, almost invisible as individuals, the points of light within them assert their individuality. Perhaps they are coming of age. Perhaps they are being born from one source of light dividing like a single cell into many cells like stellar parthenogenesis. Unfertilised female stars becoming gravid with multiple young in a single universe and single galaxies within the universe. Multiple universes—each spawned from a single blast, spreading their seeds in an infestation of galaxies and then galaxies into stars. Numbers beyond the capacity of any mind to count. Just as you, Sweet Lady, swirl into the dance, becoming multiples of yourself in the after image on our retinas.

Aeons have passed, aeons have yet to pass. They meld into each other seamlessly, becoming one. Time has no relevance, as the galaxies grow, imperceptibly, larger. Each one showing fringes of individual stars, the stars at the centre so close as to be one seething mass of heat and white hot, boiling, space debris. Shape, occasionally, appears as the galaxies spin like discs tossed carelessly into the blackness by a casual hand, the hand of a god-like child playing with a spinning top made of stardust. Shapes like spirals becoming defined, gradually and hazily, over the aeons. Weaving between the galaxies are clouds. Clouds of dust that rear up or flatten out into mystic shapes. These are clouds where more points of light flicker into life and swirl away to form another galaxy or nebula just as you, Sweet Lady, swirl across the dance forming a star cluster of admirers in your wake.

The scientific mathematician is distraught or, perhaps, he will become distraught. The detectors detect nothing. His aging shoulders sag or, perhaps, his shoulders that will become aged sag. Despair now, or in the future, etches his face. He was sure or will be sure. His mien is one of a person whose life has been wasted or will have become wasted. He returns, or will return, to those elegant, flowing, and graceful, calculations. There are no errors. The calculations are perfect. It is time that is needed, only time. How can we say that there is time when time may not exist for us? Only you, Sweet Lady, whose beauty is fixed in a moment of time; memorable, transcendent over the dullness of such banalities as time.

Patience. Edging through the vast wastes; coursing through the interminable blackness, unstoppable, unseen, velocity unchanging bent on an unknown, unseen, destination. The memory of a billion generations of mortal flesh would see no change in the vista ahead or behind. Only the passage of time immemorial since there was no time would see any changes. Born of a moment when time stood still and velocity was given to the visitor as a set value when there was nothing but blackness and fuzzy patches all around. Travelling for half an eternity, travelling forever, never to stop and, perhaps having never started but has always been. Just as you, Sweet Lady, travel forever in our memories having never appeared and never to leave but have always been.

A spiral arm from a galaxy lays in wait. Perhaps it has always been there—fixed and motionless, hanging in the void like a net waiting to trap the unwary visitor. Is it closer or is it slipping away? Perhaps it is just an illusion, a promise of things to come that are always just over our horizon never to be attained. Something that is desirable but beyond our fingertips, a yearning that remains unfulfilled. Just as you, Sweet Lady, are ever just beyond our grasp but always the object of our desire, a tantalising tactile promise of soft, sensitive sweetness that is, often, succulent.

The visitor is set on a course that has always been a vast curve. Perhaps one day it will return from whence it came, perhaps it has already been around once. This time there is a slight deflection. It is a small change of vector, a change in the course, but it is larger than the scientific mathematician might have allowed for. The visitor hurls itself past Ras Alhague whose massive gravity attempts to suck it into its fiery maw. It speeds on, ever onwards. The mighty star is as nothing, it is just a minor impediment to the journey, the journey is everything—and nothing. Just as you, Sweet Lady, are attracted, momentarily, to an ardent admirer of good grace and handsome appearance but sweep past, untouched, on your journey through your incandescent life.

In another fifty years, the blink of an astronomical eye, a small blue dot appears. It is the smallest object that the visitor has ever transected its travels. At almost two hundred thousand miles per second it passes through the small blue dot in four thousandths of a second. The blue dot falls behind, unnoticed, it was no impediment. The visitor continues, velocity unchanged. The scientific mathematician is overwhelmed with joy. His detector noticed and recorded the passage of the visitor; not only were the calculations elegant, flowing, and graceful, but flawless. Just as you, Sweet Lady, are an image of perfection in the minds of a billion men since time began.