Calendar

            The setting was a quiet suburban village, which lay three laps outside of the great dome of Veloria. The year was seven thousand, one hundred and twenty six, which was the extent of Arcazian history. The time of day was thirty-five units past zenith; the sun was setting in a fiery blue haze.

            All these things were as they were because Teroni Methuzala just happened to be sitting in his laboratory, gazing out of the window at this particular time and place, when a great idea came into his head. He would contest the will of creation and bring into being the most spectacular achievement man could ever dream of - the 'Trigon mind' but alas this story is not about him.

            Denori Rori was just another seedling of our universe, who happened to live in the same village as Teroni Methuzala. Things were not as they were because of him, although he did have many original ideas of his own – one of which led to a great discovery .... What was his discovery? He discovered the end of reality, the instant when our universe would cease to exist as we know it.

            What led Denori to his discovery? No one is certain, but the tale that drifted down the aeons goes like this:

            One day Denori was sitting under an okibu tree (the okibu was similar to the earthly apple, except the okibus were a little larger) watching one of his 'Quantum Fantasy' comics. It had just told him the universe was eight directional: up and down, left and right, in and out and finally forward and backward. It had shown him the forward time universe in the form of metal turning to rust and the tachyon universe, rust turning to metal, also the neutral photon point. It was now explaining how mass and energy, gravity and acceleration, velocity and time were a contrivance, for his benefit, of the same thing, the 'Revilo Knarf Perspective'. It gave sub atomic existences more than one identity and dismissed magical super and sub atomic forces with 'time intricacies', the boundaries of existence being defined by absolutes. It was old headgear and he was getting ever so bored then what should happen? A ripened okibu detached itself and fell from the overhanging branches. It landed squarely on his head - with a sort of dull thudding sound. This was not a unique happening in this particular universe but sadly Denori was picking his nose at the time. Denori grimaced, and put his hand to his aching cranium, after he had got his finger free that is; then made sure his left eyeball was still in place. "Zucking gravity," he cursed in the heat of the moment (the word zucking was not a verb). "Just my luck. If I had my way I would banish all our dangerous forms of life into the nth dimension," he painfully jested. Now that is an interesting thought, he mused. I wonder if there really are other dimensions.

            He had watched much of other dimensions in his 'Quantum-Fantasy' comics and now the drive was upon him to seek out these alternate planes (plane is a much more accurate term than dimension, though most of us prefer the word dimension). He noted the date in his audio computing diary - having an eye on that most famous of calendars, the `Calendar of Famed Names`, the calendar which immortalised all the great people of Arcazia, and that is how it all began.

            Twenty-five years had passed before Denori realised how other dimensions could exist. It was obvious to him that more than one world could not exist at the same time in the same place, so there seemed to be only one answer - the worlds must exist in the same place at different instances, not so much moment to moment, that implied time, they pulsed into reality for an instant of existence alternately.

            After deducting the way in which worlds could co-exist, Denori had a couple of biblo tablets because he was getting a headache, then he lay down for a few units rest. NOT, I may add, under an okibu tree.

            When his brain had settled down again, he continued his line of thought. He knew from his astronomical training that ninety percent of the universe was missing, there just wasn't enough mass to hold the likes of galaxies together. He did not believe sciences explanation of hidden mass and hidden energy; he believed the universe was being acted upon by something outside their understanding; he termed it the Nth dimension. Firstly he drew a picture in his mind's eye, which resembled the oscillations of an electrical sine wave; a pictorial way of showing how electricity pulses on and off, though he appreciated that most people thought of it as simply pouring out of the plugus holus. Every time the sine wave moved itself away from the zero or 'off line', be it in the positive or negative (reverse) direction, every atom of Denori's world came into reality. The rate being the frequency of reality. Needless to say, there was space between his world's pulses for another dimension out of synch with his own. The overlap of the sine waves was considerable, but if you altered the waveform from a sine wave to something more convenient, it was possible to fit many dimensions into one space with a permissible overlap. Some overlap was considered reasonable to obtain the maximum amount of dimensions.

            Another couple of unit's rest and another tablet.

            But what of his world when its waveform sank to the zero line? The answer was simple. He assumed that the waveform was like that of alternating electrical current at unity with its voltage. When the electrons reached the zero line, they didn't just evaporate into nothingness - not at all, they merely lost their potential reality.

            Yes indeed, thought Denori, feeling rather pleased with himself, that is the way it must be. Our perception simply needs a bridge rectifier and capacitor (br+c=dr) to keep direct reality moving smoothly forward.

            Many things changed over the following years. One of the most noticeable items was Denori's stock of biblo tablets, but never the less he continued his thoughts. Most of his ideas fall outside the parameters of this story, but the one we are interested in, is, of course, the one about his pulses of reality. Denori thought the pulses were slowly diminishing in amplitude, due to the slight overlap, which occurred at the dimensional interchange - the zero line. He quickly calculated the rate of decline just in case he ran out of reality, then proceeded to calculate the end of our universe, as we know it. When he had finished his calculations and completed his 'factual' he made his way to the scientific academy of Veloria, to put forth his hypothesis with its implications and, naturally, to receive his just acclaim.

            He was greeted at the academy on audio link by the elected president, who despatched some of his best researchers to consult personally with Denori.

            From their report the president allocated Denori speaking time at the next general meeting, which was to be held two days hence. Denori thanked everyone and then went off to practise his speech.

            Two days hence: Denori attended the meeting at the appointed time. At first he was a little apprehensive but as he stood before the gathering, the certainty of his discovery gave him strength. He spoke in a confident voice.

            The professors, scientists and doctors sat in silence while Denori put forward his hypothesis. When he had finished they said such things as, "Umm," and "Arr," and some said, "Umm arr." One even said, "Where's the bathroom?" He was so excited.

            It appeared to Denori that not everyone was convinced by his rationalisation of the subject, so he decided to strike the master blow. He knew that if he could 'prove' his hypothesis by mathematics, everyone would agree with him. He strode over to the blackboard which was situated where none could miss it (the blackboard was used for prestige reasons only) and there he wrote for all to see, 3+3=6. He simply hoped that his adjudicators would take his meaning.

            The assembly was dumbfounded, shocked and utterly exasperated. They just didn't have an answer to such a technically perfect piece of mathematics. What else could they do but accept Denori's reasoning. When the gathering eventually found their voices, they said such things as, "Well, yes," and "Oh, I see," and one voice at the back said, "That bathrooms illusive.....damn.......too late."

            Amidst the uproar and commotion, the president rose to his feet and appealed to the crowd for quiet. "SHUT UP!" In the newfound silence he looked upon Denori and said, "It has been my pleasure to welcome you here in Veloria, Denori Rori. It is not every day that I have the honour of greeting a man of such dedication and free thought. I propose that this assembly, whom, if I may say, have more qualifications than you have had hot okibus (type of apple pie), allocate for you, a day in the Calendar of Famed Names."

            The gathering burst into applause shouting such things as 'hooray' and the snobby ones, 'hurrah' and when it had quietened down the president continued, "As to keep with the tradition set by our ancestors, we will dedicate the day in which your thought first encompassed this subject, to your honour. Which day was this, Denori?"

            Denori couldn't remember the day on the spur of the moment, with his fluttering heart and all, so he took out his audio diary and asked it with a sort of pleading, please, the date of his first entry on this subject. It took the diary quite a while to come up with the date, but the main thing was, it did.

            "The forty second of Duli," cried Denori.

            "Oh, I'm terribly sorry," said the president. "That's my day."

            It was the first occasion that Denori Rori had looked Teroni Methuzala directly in the eyes, and if looks could kill..................

The End

Post Mortem

            Arcazians believed that the mechanics of our universe were intended to appear correct from the vantage point of any particular individual; for example if our sun went super-nova and we were evaporated, on Arcazia, because of the distance, our sun would remain unchanged on that day, making it a none event. This belief went one step further than the simple idea that the universe is as it is or I wouldn't be sat here typing this sentence. It says everyone's the centre of the universe and the universe is designed to be right from their perspective.

            Considering the above, and the honour of being considered by all, the centre of the universe for a day, it is perhaps not surprising that Denori Rori, whose name never appeared in the Calendar of Famed Names, took matters rather badly. It is perhaps even less surprising that Teroni Methuzala disappeared mysteriously. No one knew where he had disappeared to, but the nth dimension did have a certain ring about it.