Rebuilding the Universe. Out of Lego.
Sometimes a day just doesn’t quite go the way you expect it to. For instance, yesterday, when I spent a solid hour and a half discussing the inevitable heat death of the universe and the concept of entropy with a 10-year-old. While building Lego.
It was an interesting day.
It’s been a while since I contemplated the cosmic, as it were, despite literally being in the middle of a short story about a bunch of astronomers on an orbiting space telescope. I’m just getting into some of the objects they’re actually looking at, which consisted of me searching for some cool stuff in space and trying to shoehorn it in. But even though I’d been reading about phenomena halfway across the universe, I hadn’t been thinking about them properly.
Until, that is, the aforementioned conversation with the aforementioned 10-year-old. In which we ran the full gauntlet from light pollution and stargazing to the mechanics of entropy (which I realised I don’t actually know that much about), and how, ultimately, everything in the universe will probably be reduced to dust and ashes floating in the infinite dark.
I would like to reiterate that this conversation was taking place in the middle of a Lego workshop, in which my fellow supervisor and several other children were happily building houses out of plastic bricks and trying not to pay attention to our discussion of how humanity will probably not survive long enough to even see the end of existence itself.
It’s also not the first conversation like this I’ve had with this kid. They are wise beyond their meagre years, and we’ve discussed many things that I’m pretty sure I had no concept of whatsoever at their age, including immortality and why you’d want it, or not. (Aside: in my experience there are 3 stages to one’s attitude to this concept. 1: ‘Wow, living forever sounds amazing!’ 2: ‘I have to outlive everyone I’ve ever loved? No thank you!’ 3: ‘Screw you all, I’m never gonna die!’ I am at stage 3. [With the caveat of ‘as long as I can choose to move on if and when I feel I’ve seen enough of infinity. Everyone go read Surface Detail and watch ‘San Junipero’ from Black Mirror.])
But despite the fact that I profess to write science-fiction, despite the fact that I read so much of it, I haven’t had a proper conversation or properly thought about the real ‘big picture’ concepts that underpin so many of the best works of the genre in a very long time. I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy and comics and lower-concept pieces lately. Most of my conceptual thinking has been about stuff like the Warhammer 40k universe, in which the many, many horrors are visceral and deeply unpleasant to think deeply about – but also very well defined. Servitors and Tyranids are really horrifying to consider the full implications of, but those implications are largely immediate and tangible.
The end of the universe? The quadrillion-year future? That’s something else altogether. That’s real ‘middle of the desert at midnight’ thinking, when you look up into the infinite and see it looking back at you. And it’s terrifying. But it’s wonderful too.
I think it might be time for me to break out the Asimov and the Iain M. Banks and start thinking about humanity’s place in the universe again. Let’s get high-concept, shall we?
In summary, kids are much better conversation than you might think.
