At times, during this assignment, I found my head exploding, like a really big inhalation of poppers.
No, not from actual amyl nitrate mixing in from my air supply, but from the sheer mind exploding facts, right here, in front of my eyes. Like fireworks, inside my eyes. Like hot and cold flushes bursting through my heart. Like everything I remember, my dogs, my children, my house and the overgrown lawn and market stall on a rainy Tuesday. Bursting into their constituent molecules, atoms, electrons and the insty bity bits that they’re made of, too, bursting into yet more insty wincy bity bits. And for those utterly tiny, utterly insignificant subatomic particles: muons, gluons, leptons to be here, every single one, now, being forged, cast, moulded, hammered, conjured into existence.
Each and every one. Of my dogs, my children, my lawn, the single raindrop on top of my market stall. Everything we see today, planets, stars, galaxies, is squashed into an even smaller size than a fraction of a fraction of a billionth of an atom. Here, in this fraction of a fraction of a billionth of a second, space fairies are hard at work bringing order to the universe.
I swallow and think, “no shame in being freaked out.”
This is the start of the universe, my universe, after all.