CHAPTER 1
He was staring at the sky, squinting to adapt his eyesight to the dim light around him.
The starry canvas with hues of navy blue seemed to reluctantly offer its photons to the observer. The galaxy was faintly visible as a brighter shade of sapphire.
Nebulae were displaying touches of their multicolored gases in mystifying shapes.
Familiar constellations were shimmering almost shivering in the Summer sky. Insects were chirping in the distance. All was still.
He loved the silence, enjoying the inner peace, the sound of solitude. Wrapping himself in his aloneness was a welcome break, a cherished relief. He could feel the sweet embrace of the warm night air sheltering him.
Tonight, he would explore the universe, he would learn, he would reflect, he would find himself again, cut off from the crowds, away from the doubters, removed from his dreary life.
A shooting star briefly lit up the atmosphere, the moon was a no-show tonight.
Stargazing; it had always been his diversion, his passion, he knew the names of all the brightest stars, the most colourful nebulae. He would dream up new geometric figures in the sky, patterns only, He, saw.
He often reflected upon other worlds and wondered if life had appeared there on some distant exoplanets. It hit him that somebody there could be wondering the exact same thing and he smiled.
For as long as he remembered he had always wanted to be an astronomer or an astrophysicist as he was frequently engrossed in the latest theories that were to revolutionize the understanding of universal laws.
As a schoolboy he used to muse over the curvature of space-time around massive objects that led to our perception of gravity and time. Black holes were especially mind-boggling, they had led to insane conjectures which he would often ponder. He had also been avidly drawn to all the hypotheses of probable beginnings of our universe and its likely endings. The original inflation of a singularity was widely accepted among intellectuals.
At an early age he was able to conceive that galaxies were separating at an increasing rate as if an energy of unknown origin was growing tired of the emptiness and filling up space.
He would explain to adults that some of the perceived mass was still unaccounted for, he even thought up the theory of parallel universes whose mass would be felt from unfathomable distances as a candidate for dark matter.
He was fascinated by particle physics.
Those fundamental elements always seemed to be fractioned into smaller components whose whereabouts where unknown until a consciousness was ready to literally wish it into existence.
An offshoot was string theory, all particles being brought to life by the vibration of those tiny filaments in ... 11 dimensions.
He sighed, all of it was old news, he longed for more amazing revelations. He certainly could have been the inventor of new theories, the father of exciting breakthroughs.
All that is could be made up of vibrations of different frequencies in large dimensions the size of the universe. This could surely explain particle entanglement. He surmised.
He let his mind wander and pictured himself being the recipient of the highest science award, surrounded with countless admirers that had rejected him in the past. He scoffed, 'not in a million years' he thought.