11  The Grand Clock of Total Order

Cangemi still hasn’t replied to Katy Weller’s query about her last essay score. She’s only permitted one fifteen-minute tutorial per week, but it’s not like there’s a line of students waiting to get in. What do her tuition fees actually pay for? Arriving early and sitting in the front row was the only way to make sure she could grab a minute with him after the lecture.

“All this is very well,” he says, “but why do we experience time?” A pause. “In a word, survival.”

This makes total sense to Katy’s scientifically wired mind. To propagate life, species must store memories and project behaviour. That way they can make the right choices. Katy likes to think she makes good choices for her future. She wants to publish research, not hide from curious minds in a cosy office.

“Yet humans have expanded their memories and projections to a level beyond survival. Time is purely emotional to us.”

Katy is less sure about this part. She writes down a few questions and hopes there will be a chance to ask them.

The professor scratches his head and continues as though he is letting everyone into a big secret. “We use so much time-based data to inform our decisions, we’ve become scared of death, not focused on survival.”

This might be so, but with each step of her life meticulously planned, Katy can achieve great things. After a masters, a doctorate, and becoming the head of a global research company, she’ll make real change. Her mates would tell her to be impulsive and carefree like them. But she doesn’t have mates.

“An interesting question persists. What if our universe is merely a part of a bigger construct, experiencing time and emotions foreign to us? This might sound fanciful, but it’s something that can never be disproved.”

Katy is fine with the idea that her plan and her universe is part of something greater. On her notepad, she writes the words ‘universe’ and ‘clock’ with an equal sign between them. A question mark is added.

The numbers are undeniable. Kate Weller grips the desk, trying to ground herself while the permutations and combinations fire through her mind like loose electrons. She thought she would scream, dance in joy, run into her team’s office and share the news. Something stops her.

Through the collection of radio-telescope data, Kate’s team has correlated the movement of over two hundred galaxies. Waiting for the huge numbers of independent studies to report back has been like watching far-off planets spin helplessly on their own axes. Now the model is complete. On the screen in front of her, Kate sees the bigger picture and feels crushed by the perfection of its total order. A lump builds in her throat. For once, her heart is full.

The speed of orbits, trajectories of celestial bodies, the distances between spiralling masses all correlate in fractal beauty. Kate understands that rather than forming part of a bigger picture, they are movements in a massive machine.

Apart from her work, she has nothing to lose – an expensive apartment with never-worn party dresses and an empty fridge. Here is the paradox: her life has led to this discovery, but presenting the universe as a time-keeping mechanism will strip her of all credibility. After years of waiting for the stars to align, there is no one with whom to share the beauty.

She starts to format an email entitled ‘Project Radio Findings’. All Kate needs is a way to sell the idea to pique the interest of the institute board. Once they see the patterns she does, they’ll surely grant her the next round of funding. On screen, the cursor blinks.

Yes, there are anomalies, blips in the data, but these could simply be swells and draws of emotion, subject to an invisible biological force. Could the universe be a particle in a multi-dimensional brain?

The sprawling pot plant in the corner of her office always calms her. Kate runs her fingers through its jagged leaves. If plants and humans can connect, why not something bigger?

In the next thirty minutes, Kate types out the top-line findings. Until now, she never knew she could compress years of research into a convincing one-page argument. Is it convincing? She deletes the text and tries again. And again. The afternoon passes.

By eight pm, she has it. Her finger hovers over the send button. There’s no going back from proposing an answer to the true meaning of the Cosmos. It will occupy the rest of her career, but the battle for proof will never complete her as much as that first look at the results.

In the time it takes to weigh up her options, she contemplates how minute this decision is in the grand scheme – pot plants, cities, planets, galaxies, universes are all interconnected moving parts in something unimaginably great.

Time elapsed: an infinitesimal measurement of one of the billions of components in the grand clock of total order