[JULIAN sighs]
JULIAN: OK, fine. I’m absolutely awake. What is it you want to talk about?
[EVELYN climbs back into bed, gleefully]
EVELYN: I want to talk about beginnings.
JULIAN: Fine. Once upon a time …
EVELYN: This isn’t a bedtime story.
JULIAN: Heavens above, and here was I thinking I was in a bed. What a fool.
[EVELYN giggles]
EVELYN: A complete fool. So, are you sitting comfortably?
JULIAN: No.
EVELYN: Excellent. So. In the beginning … there was nothing.
JULIAN: Nothing?
EVELYN: Nothing at all. Nothing apart from the darkness and the stars.
JULIAN: Stars aren’t nothing.
EVELYN: OK, OK, there were no stars. I’ll put them out with a cosmic fire extinguisher.
JULIAN: You don’t have a cosmic fire extinguisher – nothing exists.
EVELYN: You are ruining this story.
[JULIAN laughs]
EVELYN: So. In the beginning. Where there was nothing and no stars and no cosmic fire extinguishers to even put out metaphorical stars—
JULIAN: —hang on.
EVELYN: What now?
JULIAN: Surely a beginning is something, too.
EVELYN: Well, I—
JULIAN: A beginning denotes a period in time, and, for you to pinpoint it, time must exist, and if time exists then something exists. So, therefore, thus and henceforth, there is no such thing as nothing.
EVELYN: But—
JULIAN: It’s true, you know it’s true.
EVELYN: No, no, no – there was no one there to witness time because nothing was there. And if nothing was there to witness it—
JULIAN: You mean, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it?
EVELYN: Exactly. And don’t talk about trees falling down.
JULIAN: Sorry.
EVELYN: So, am I allowed to continue?
JULIAN [yawning]: I suppose.
EVELYN: Thank you. So … In the beginning … In the beginning there was nothing. Not a ripple moved throughout the universe because there were no atoms, and there was no energy. And then – because that’s always how things go – and then. And then there was something. It was a dream. Dreams don’t need atoms to form themselves because they are made of something less definite. They are able to form out of air that is only just on the brink of existing behind the darkness. The very thought of air. Nobody knows who dreamed the dream, or where it came from. Perhaps it was a dream that floated over from another world, no one knows. It was ex nihilo nihil fit: out of nothing comes nothing. And that was OK, because this was a time before the word logic had been formed. Before the alphabet had been carved out of stone and time, and before we, as humans, had even started to think of existing. The possibility of us, and of all life, was sleeping. And we emerged from a dream.
[Pause]
EVELYN: And because we come from a dream, we never really know if we’re awake.
JULIAN [sarcastically]: I know I’m awake right now.
EVELYN: If you can do better, then I’d like to hear it.
JULIAN: You want to hear my story on beginnings?
EVELYN: Yes, I do.
JULIAN: And then I can go to sleep?
EVELYN: I’ll consider it.
JULIAN: Right. OK, here goes.
EVELYN: And you’re not allowed to be logical in your beginnings.
JULIAN [clearing his throat]: OK … OK. In the beginning … In the beginning there were several worlds. They were sewn together like the pages of a book you could walk through, and each footstep took you through to another world. It was like stepping onto the first page of a new story. And in one of those stories, there was a man. But the man hadn’t always been a man. He had been born out of a star, and that star had been thrown out of a black hole. Spat out, saliva and all, into the navy expanse of nothing. The star pulsed with its own energy, propelled about the universe at high speed because there was nothing to stop it. It was free. And because it was free, it was able to think. And because it could think, it could will things to happen. The star willed itself to slow down and it began to lose speed, gradually, until it stopped, in one spot, at the far end of the universe, looking out over the darkness. The star was amazed by the sheer vastness of what it saw, and it was afraid. And because it was afraid, it meant it had something it feared losing, and that, in turn, meant that it could love.
EVELYN: Love?
JULIAN: Shhh. Over time, the star changed from a star into a heart. The heart pulsed light out across the universe, and from that heart grew limbs, one by one – until it was a man.
EVELYN: Not a woman?
JULIAN: This is my story.
EVELYN: Sorry.
JULIAN: The heart grew until it was a man. This man was the first man to see the universe. He looked around, and didn’t think he liked it much. There was nothing there. So, he started imagining a world that had things in it. A world that had trees—
EVELYN [interrupting]: How did he know what trees were, if he’d never seen one before?
JULIAN: I thought I wasn’t allowed to use logic.
EVELYN: I know, but—
JULIAN: This is reverse creation, Evelyn. Things existed in this world because he thought of them.
EVELYN: Oh, how clever, that a man thought up everything in the world. And were there people native to this world that he’d conveniently forgotten about? That he had perhaps killed off with a thought?
JULIAN: Evelyn.
EVELYN: Hmmm.
JULIAN [trying to continue with the story]: There was a man …!
EVELYN: OK, OK.
JULIAN: There was a man who thought of trees. And he thought that he’d like to walk among them, so he moved one step forward and suddenly he was surrounded by trees. But it was dark. So, he thought that the world needed something to give him light. He stepped forward again and the world changed into a place that was lit by a thousand stars in the sky. They glowed orange over all of the trees – it was beautiful. But there was nothing to eat, and nothing to drink, and, because the man was thinking about these things, he suddenly realised that he was thirsty, and hungry. So he stepped forward again and there were vegetables, and also water, and fish in the sea. Yes, the sea. The sea was another thing that he had imagined – a shade lighter than the navy sky that hung above it.
EVELYN: And then, in this new world, he found a woman.
JULIAN: Are you taking over my story?
EVELYN: Yes. It’s time for my beginning. There was once a world that a woman owned. She had formed it through years and years of hard work and imagination. It was amazing. It was out of this world. She looked around her, at the trees, and the land, and the sea. She sat down, cross-legged, and started to make a fire with a stick and a stone. At that very moment, a man stepped out from between the trees. He was gazing at the sea as though he’d never seen anything like it in his life.
‘Hi,’ the woman said, getting to her feet. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been here a long time, actually – where the hell have you been?’
[Pause]
JULIAN: I supposed I asked for that.