“Then enlighten us, Sal. Tell them about your own personal Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.”
“It’s simple, and there’s not a single fine-tune in it: the Big Bang was not the beginning, but was instead the seismic instant marking the separation between our current period of expansion and the cooling from a previous one. What we know as the universe is actually a membrane, or what we call a brane. We theorize that our planet exists in a universe that contains at least eight unobservable dimensions. Our brane is separated from another brane by one of these dimensions, and when these two branes collide, it creates what inflationists consider a one-off event—the Big Bang. However, we believe this event actually happens every trillion years. Like a child’s sand castle on a beach, it is built and torn down with the regularity of an ocean wave.”
The Kavli team snickered.
Cooper raised her hand. “What would that look like?” Without turning around in her seat, Pearl offered Cooper a thumbs-up. Sal walked to the whiteboard and drew an image that looked like two pancakes being used as cymbals. “Like this,” he said.
“No. I mean, what would it look like if I were standing right here when it happened. I want an image, not a diagram.”
Sal dropped the marker on the table. “You’re asking what it would look like if you were there, in the middle of it?” Cooper nodded. “It would be the stuff of daydreams. The most beautiful thing imaginable. First, the approach: You wouldn’t feel it, but something enormous would be moving along a dimension you couldn’t see. Then, when you collided with it, space would be infused with a nuclear brightness, an ungodly burst of radiation, and it would become hotter than a billion suns. Everything else in the universe—the galaxies, the planets, the stars—everything would be evaporated in an instant. The quarks and gluons that made up everything in the previous cycle would join the flood of new quarks and gluons created at the moment of the collision.” He met Cooper’s eyes. “The cycle would be renewed.”
“So if I’m made up of quarks and gluons,” Dwight said, “and, of course, I am, you’re telling me I will live again.”
“What I’m saying is that in our model, the universe is not lost in a sea of multiverses, not one of countless and random possibilities. Instead, it’s a single, cycling entity.”
Pearl set her knitting aside. “So we just bang and crunch over and over again?”
“I’m saying that every trillion or so years, the universe remakes itself as an echo of its previous form. Controlled evolution. Every corner of space makes galaxies, stars, planets, and presumably life, over and over again. Instead of being a product of chaos and unexplainable beginnings, the cyclic model—our model—has an explanation for ‘what happened before the Big Bang.’ It’s fucking elegant as hell that evolution works just as well for the structures of galaxies as it does for opposable thumbs.” He looked over at Lisa and the Kavli team. “Now, all that being said, if we find measurable b-mode polarization this season, none of what I just proposed is true.”
“And that would be bad,” Pearl said.
“No,” Sal replied, “that would be science.”
Suddenly, the galley door burst open, and an empty Heineken went sailing through the air before shattering against the back wall. Bonnie stood in the doorway, unsteady. Cooper noticed pink blooms on Bonnie’s cheeks and a milk-white beauty about her skin that she’d never seen before.
Bonnie brushed her lank hair out of her eyes. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m going on record right now that I’m glad this shit is over.” As she propelled herself into the galley, knocking over a pair of empty chairs, Dwight sprung to his feet to stop her, but tripped over the hem of his cloak. “Get out of my way, you stupid-ass skill monkey,” Bonnie growled. Cooper looked over at Pearl. She had drawn her pink bandanna over her eyes and was slumped in her chair as if trying to dissolve. Next to her Birdie stroked her knee soothingly.
“Bonnie, stop,” Dwight pleaded. But Alek stood up and pounded the top of one of the dining tables. “You stand up here,” he said. “Let everyone hear.” He assisted Bonnie onto the table.
Once Bonnie was steady on her feet, she looked down at everyone. “I just wanna say that I’m outta here tomorrow. Tucker and the powers-that-be have decided to demote me but I refuse to spend an entire winter at South Pole chopping other people’s onions.” Pearl’s face remained obscured behind her bandanna. “So this crazy adventure’s over for me, but guess what? I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad it’s over, and here’s why: it means the end of the bullshit I’ve been dealing with since October.” She looked down at Dwight. “You don’t come to South Pole to ‘strengthen your relationship,’ Dwight. You don’t come here to push boundaries so you can exchange sex e-mails with a fucking mini-doughnut vendor you met in a cosplay chat room!”
Dwight sank down in his chair.
“Come on, Bonnie,” Sal said, laughing. “Stay. We love your hoosh.”
“Nah, Sal. My time has passed. It’s time for you guys to eat another woman’s hoosh.” She soft-shoed her way off the table and walked out of the galley.
Birdie turned around in his chair to look at everyone. “What’s hoosh?”
The lectures over, everyone filed out of the galley and into their respective bars and lounges, Cooper hung back and waited for Pavano. “Someone slipped the flight manifest under my door last night,” she said.
“Yes, everything’s been arranged. They’re expecting us.” He scuffed the floor with one of his boots. “I take it you are still interested in coming?”
Cooper watched as Sal stalked out the door. “More than ever.”
*
The West Antarctic Divide was one of the most remote locations on the planet, but it was also, Cooper was certain, one of the loudest. The metallic roar of industrial generators made the screams of the 319’s engines sound like a kitten’s purr. The site was strewn with communication flags of all colors, from lemon-yellow to Achtung-orange; these were attached to one another by lengths of rope, designed to guide anyone caught in a whiteout. A plywood admin building stood sentry at the entrance, with a communications shack attached. Beyond those stood what looked like a dollhouse version of the fuel arches at Pole: these were, Cooper gathered from the hand-drawn map Pavano had made for her during the flight from South Pole, the drilling arch and the core-handling arch. So it was here that the fate of the world, or the global warming hoax, would be decided. This was sacred scientific ground, but to Cooper it looked like any other stretch of Antarctic ice occupied by humans.