The Book of The Universe
By Matthew Green
Karen Julius scanned through yet another encyclopaedia index, desperately searching for information about glaciers. She’d been told to do a project about glaciers for her GCSE Geography resit at college. She’d put off doing her resits for a year, but she’d realised that there weren’t many prospects for anyone without GCSEs. The reality that you could get perfectly valid non-GCSE qualifications without having any prior qualifications had completely eluded her.
Nothing.
She tossed the encyclopaedia back on the shelf.
None of the encyclopaedias at this particular library or, for that matter, any of the other libraries she’d visited had any information on mountains, let alone glaciers. In fact, she was hard pressed to find information on anything other than the origins of butter. That didn’t bother most of the local people.
All any of them cared about was butter.
And tea.
And, yes, crumpets as well, and maybe some nice wholemeal bread.
But that wasn’t the point.
She leaned over to the shelf and grabbed another book. She nearly pulled her arm out of the socket while trying to remove it, it seemed to be lodged in quite hard which was surprising because there was a clear gap of three inches to either side of it and above. Once she finally removed it she looked at the cover.
It was blank.
She looked inside.
It was also blank.
This didn’t actually surprise her. No doubt someone thought it was really useful and had broken the bank on the library budget in order to purchase it.
She leaned over to put it back on the shelf but found it wasn’t there. What was there also didn’t surprise her. She was intelligent, but she also had a very limited imagination as far as things go and never quite managed to see things in a worst case scenario (like most normal people, or at least most normal people who are never in any case disappointed, do).
There was a room just beyond where the shelf had slid from and in it, resting on a rased pedestal was a book. No doubt thrilling new information in the world of butter, Karen thought.
She approached the book and noticed various signs written in large, bold lettering saying things like: ON NO ACCOUNT, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, NEVER, EVER TOUCH THE BOOK. THE FATE OF EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON IT.
Karen stepped over the barbed wire fence surrounding the pedestal and picked up the book. It was very old and dog-eared, but the writing on the front had been restored perfectly. It read: The Book of The Universe.
She opened it and read the first sentence: And time began.
The rest of the page was very technical and quite impossible to follow, so she skipped forward a few pages, and read on: The early land based plant life survived by absorbing water contained in the soil, and generating starch through a complex process of photosynthesis which worked by...
And what followed was quite a complex explanation on how plants of the era survived.
It occurred to Karen that this might be the main scriptures of a new and minor religion (‘cult,’ for those of you who don’t know. Cults aren’t necessarily Satanists, as some people might think), but it wasn’t like any religious book she’d ever seen.
There didn’t seem to be any gods. As far as she could ascertain from the first page, these people believed that the universe had started, without any divine intervention whatsoever!!
Karen thought the sentence was worth the extra exclamation mark. It seemed this book was the religious book for atheists.
She decided to skip straight to the back page, to see what the most recent entry to the book was. She read: And the universe collapsed in on itself, the mass of everything which ever existed, all energy, all matter, occupying less space a single electron would in the living universe. And then the huge mass of everything, gravity being the same as acceleration, caused time to halt. And it ended.
Which was crossed out and written, or rather, scrawled in very bad handwriting was the sentence: And the universe stopped contracting and remained a constant size for ever and all life forms around at the time lived in peace and harmony together. Happily ever after.
Karen didn’t like the second ending. It lacked...closure. Time halts because of Einstein's law of relativity (not actually invented by Einstein, but certainly discovered by him), but the business about everybody living happily ever after was just silly.
It wasn’t until this point that Karen noticed the shelf had slid back into place behind her. Then she noticed a figure coming from another doorway at the opposite side of the room. She couldn’t quite tell what it was but it was definitely alive. The lighting was terrible in the room. You could get eye strain reading in light this low, Karen thought.
The life form was definitely humanoid. At least, vaguely humanoid. There was more hair than is normally associated with being human, but that didn’t mean anything. Did it?
The beast stopped in front of her and appeared to be appraising her through curious eyes. The creature appeared to be wearing clothes. It was animal fur, or at least, imitation animal fur, with a huge hood covering most of it’s head. Karen wouldn’t have known the difference if the animal was still wearing the fur.
"Put the book down," it stated in such a matter-of-factly way that Karen couldn’t help but obey.
"Who are you?" she asked as she stepped back over the barbed wire fencing which surrounded the pedestal.
"I think the question is more a matter of who are you!" the beast pulled the hood back over it’s forehead and Karen was astonished to discover it was a man.
He smoothed out his long beard. "I’m waiting," he said.
"Oh, er, my name is Karen Julius. I’m, er, that is to say, er..."
"Silence!" the man bellowed. "Your a pretty little thing but I can’t stand stutterers." (The main woman in a story is always pretty, almost without exception.)
"I’m sorry. It’s just that the book case moved away and I couldn’t help but come in and-"
"Snoop around," the man finished. "Yes, I know. You people are always sticking your noses in where they aren’t wanted."
"What do you mean ‘you people’?"
"Well, y’ know. Women folk," he reached over for the book and then opened it near the front. "Do you know that in thirty twenty four women are going to completely do away with men? Nothing but a bunch of meddlers if you ask me."
Karen attempted to look at the page but the man snapped the book closed.
"Come on. I mean, you can’t predict the future that easily."
"Simple, simple child. You just don’t understand," the man’s voice showed genuine sympathy with not even a trace of mockery. That was just all the more annoying.
"Why’s someone crossed out most of the last page and written it in differently? Are you trying to create another sub-religion branching from this one?"
"Come again?"
Karen almost kicked the man in frustration, but she managed to refrain herself. "Just what is this book all about? What’s so important about it?"
"This is The Book of The Universe," he said it as if it was sufficient explanation in its self.
"So?"
The man was losing his patience.
"Listen," he said, "and I will explain it to you:
"The Book of The Universe is exactly that. It is this book which controls how history unfolds. It’s a metaphor for reality, it shows that the whole development of the universe was fixed from day one, that nothing, from the tiniest electron, to the largest, most complex, most intelligent biological organism in the universe has any control over its own future. Our fates are all sealed. There’s no way out of it."
Karen considered this for a moment. "What about the part you altered at the back?"
For the first time since she had met him, the man smiled. It was a smile similar to that of a man who has just discovered that the clicking sound in the back of his BMW was just a twig caught in the wheel.
"That was my greatest achievement," he beamed. "I spent years trying to change parts of the book, but every time I’d cross parts of it out, the ink would disappear. It occurred to me, Jerimiah Holiday (for that is my name), that the reason for this was that altering the middle of the book would cause discontinuity in the timeline, so I skipped straight to the back and erased the words back over on themselves, and then simply wrote in my preferred ending to the book."
He stood looking at her expectantly.
"Sounds perfectly logical," she said, hoping it was what he wanted to hear.
It suddenly occurred to Karen that she was taking all of this in and believing every word of it when it was quite obviously the babblings of a madman.
Jerimiah suddenly looked like he realised something.
"Why did you ignore my sign, anyway? I’d like to think people would take me seriously."
"Well, you know... Why are you in a secret room in a library?"
"I’m the head administrator of this library. I can bloody well do what I like as long as I pay for it myself," Jerimiah sounded like he was desperately trying to justify it.
"Can I go now?" Karen had an urgent need to get away from there in case this madman turned out to be a psycho.
"On two conditions," the man said.
Karen was always wary when someone said "on two conditions" but, none the less she said: "And those would be?"
"One, you must tell nobody about the book and two-" he chuckled to himself- "do a twirl for me."
Karen wanted to say no but she wasn’t sure what would happen if she did. So instead she twirled. She was sure she heard the click of a camera while she was facing away from him, but she couldn’t be certain._
And then she ran away as fast as she could.
And Jerimmia clicked his camera more frantically than he had ever clicked before.
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Karen ran the rest of the way home without thinking much about what Jerimmia had said.
He was obviously insane, believing that the universe was controlled by a book. Yet he seemed so sure of it. Karen still wasn’t prepared to believe, no matter how sure of it anyone was.
She stopped, looked around, and when she was sure she wasn’t being followed she strolled leisurely home.
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He looked around and when he was sure nobody was watching he fished in his pocket and removed a key. It was exactly the key he had been looking for. He put it in the lock at turned it before silently swinging the door open.
Once inside he noticed the burglar alarm about to go off. He retrieved another key from his pocket and deactivated the alarm. He liked to come prepared.
He stolled over to the bookshelf and removed a book, placing it gently on the floor. He did this again, and again, placing all the books in a neat stack. The simple process of elimination.
Eventually, he found a book which offered more resistance than the others, and refused to leave the bookshelf fully.
The shelf swung open away from him and he stepped through into the secret room beyond. He approached the pedestal containing the book he wanted and leaned over the barbed wire surrounding the pedestal, increasing his reach by gripping the book between his ridiculously strong middle and forefingers. He took pride by the fact that he knew doing this increased his reach by valuable inches, not many people did.
Before leaving he closed the secret entrance, replaced all the books, reactivated the alarm and locked the front door.
People saw him leaving the library, but nobody cared. He had a key, and that meant he was there legally._
He strolled home, confident in a job well done.
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"Karen," her mother called up the stairs, "there’s someone here to see you."
Karen stirred in bed. "Go away," she muttered.
Karen staggered down the stairs, still not quite awake, or even sure who she was. She approached the door and saw what looked like a bear. After searching her memory for bear like people she realised it was Jerimiah.
"What do you want?" she asked, still in a groggy stupor, "You’ve got your photographs of my behind, now go away."
"And a very nice behind it is too. You must work out," Jerimiah complimented.
"Well, I do a bit of jogging if that’s what you mean and I... hey, just go away."
"I was actually taking pictures of your hair, very nice that is, too."
Karen suddenly had the feeling that this hairy madman was going to retrieve an axe from somewhere about his person and scalp her. Maybe those clothes weren’t animal fur, but rather woman hair.
Jerimiah swept past her and into the living room.
"Why don’t you come in?" Karen said.
She closed the front door and peeped around the corner into the living room.
Jerimiah was lounging in the arm chair. Karen would have told him to leave, but she was still terrified of him.
His eyes met hers, and he gestured her to enter the room. She did so reluctantly and sat down.
"What do you want?" she hadn’t meant it to sound like a threat, but it did non the less.
"Man, you women get so crabby at the smallest compliment. If I’d said you had pretty eyes, or alluring cheek bones you’d have been a very happy person, but compliment a female on another part of their body, a non-head related feature and they’re all sexual harassment suit. Let me tell you something, lot’s of women of pretty faces, but it’s a precious few who have bodies which are anywhere near attractive."
"That’s not why I hate you."
"Oh. Sorry."
It was so hard for Karen not to forgive him, he just had that kind of voice. In fact, she didn’t actually hate him, she was just terrified of him.
"Why are you here?" her tone was gentler this time, more demure.
Jerimiah took a deep breath. "Now, I don’t want to shock you, try to stay calm."
"I’m calm, I’m always calm," she lied. She knew Jerimiah could tell, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it.
"Okay, well," he took a deep breath, "the Book of The Universe has been stolen."
Karen had never been so relived in her life. "That's all? I thought it was going to be something big."
"I think you fail to see the implications of this. That book controls everything. If someone who knows how to use it gets hold of it they could change everything, the very nature of reality."
Karen shrugged. "So how does this concern me?"
Jerimiah scowled. "You’re the only other person, apart from the thief, who knows of it’s existence. I can’t tell anyone else about it."
"What exactly is it you’re wanting me to do?"
"Help me regain possession of the book, of course" he said this as though it was obvious and she should already have known so.
"How am I supposed to do that?"
Jerimiah sighed. "I already know who has the book, I just don’t know where to find him. I need you to help me."
Karen could feel her whole weekend sliding into a compost heap of insanity. "Just let me get dressed first," she grudgingly agreed.
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Karen an Jermiah walked side-by-side down the high street. She prayed to the supreme force that doesn’t exist but was actually created by the emperors of old as a means of controlling the peasants that nobody she knew saw her with this fur clad... individual.
Karen suddenly realised that she didn’t know where they were going, so she asked Jerimiah.
"The Library," he replied, of course is what his tone of voice seemed to imply.
"Why?"
Jerimiah didn’t answer.
"Who stole the book, then?" Karen persevered, hoping to get an answer to at least one question.
"A man named Haugan Logid."
"Who’s he?"
Karen noticed his face contort in anger, so she didn’t press the question any further.
He didn’t answer, so they walked the rest of the way to the library in silence. Uncomfortable silence, Karen noted.
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Haugan Logid sat in his study, reading a book called: The Laws of Reality. He liked this book, but it was as a fly is to an antelope compared to the book of the Universe.
Not that The Laws of Reality wasn’t a valuable book, of course it was. If you were to alter the text in The Laws of Reality by very definition The Book of The Universe would have to be affected, and therefor the universe itself would change.
Haugan Logid also possessed the two-page brochure named The Force of Life. He had a good collection, and soon...
There was a rapping at his front door. He closed the book and answered it. A man stepped through into his hallway.
"I got the book," he waved the book in the air, "Now give me my five hundred pounds and I’ll be on my way."
Haugan pulled twenty-five twenty pound notes out of his pocket. "How much extra will it cost to have you hang around while I talk at you in an evil and underhanded way?"
The professional Burglar thought for a moment. "Five hundred quid."
Haugan handed over athousand pounds and the Burglar stuffed it in his pocket.
Haugan gestured to the book, the burglar couldn’t help noticing that he was missing the index finger on his left hand. "With this book, I will be able to see the future, maybe even alter it. I will be the king of the Universe."
He opened the book to the back page and read the last few sentences. "The fool. I can’t even begin to explain the problems this ending will cause."
"What’s the big deal?" the burglar asked. "I mean, it’s just a book, right?"
"Just a book!" Haugan bellowed. "Blasphemer! This is more than just a book," Haugan waved The Book of The Universe above his head histerically. "This book controls the very fate of the Universe!"
"All right, all right," assured the Burglar. "No reason to get so irate about it."
Haugan scowled.
******************************************************************************************
While Jerimiah was rummaging through the cupboards for who knew what, Karen glanced at the empty pedestal.
The room didn’t look quite the same without it’s musty old centrepiece. For the first time, she felt sad for his loss. Karen couldn’t help but feel sorry for this man. He wasn’t a bad person, he was just very, very, very, very odd.
"Ahh. Found it," Jerimiah said from inside a drawer.
"Found what?" Karen dreaded to hear the answer.
"This," he held a severed finger infront of her face. Karen almost threw up.
After careful inspection it became mind-numbingly obvious that the finger had been severed many years hence, and then freeze-dried, so as to prevent, or, from the looks of it, slow the process of decay.
"What do you need that for?" Karen could feel herself walking into an ambush from which the only way out would be to dig her way through solid diamond.
"This," he explained, "is the severed left index finger of Haugan Logid."
Karen couldn’t prevent herself from saying "Oh," before she realised that this was not explanation enough. "So what?"
Jerimiah held up his left hand. Karen noticed he was missing his index finger.
"Haugan Logid and I used to be very close friends," he said. "We spent years together attempting to tap into the very fabric of the Universe in order to retrieve The Book of The Universe. Before we managed to take possession of The Book, we gained two other books. The Law of Reality and The Force of Life.
"After we won The Book, we decided to create the ultimate bond; a bond which would prevent either of us from betraying the other."
"You got his finger, and he got yours."
"Precisely. We decided the three books would be kept in my library, with The Book of The Universe as centrepiece," Jerimiah took a deep breath, as if choking away bad memories. "It wasn’t long after that he attempted to steal all three books and run. I caught him as he was leaving and managed to regain possession of The Book, but he escaped with the other two.
"I then moved to a different library, the one I run now, in a different town," Jerimiah’s shoulders slumped. It was the first time Karen saw him as nothing more than a man, although what he said was defiantly nonsense. "But I can’t escape him. He has my finger, he can follow me anywhere."
Jerimiah straightened up. "Get the string from out of that cupboard over there." Jerimiah pointed to the other side of the room. Karen approached the cupboards and started aimlessly searching through it.
"No, that one there," Jerimiah yelled out, getting quite aggravated by the stupidity of people in general.
Karen didn’t appreciate being ordered around, but she was still terrified of this character, so she found the string as quickly as she could and handed it to Jerimiah.
It was a very short piece of string, barely six inches long, but it was all she could find, and Jerimiah seemed satisfied by it. He tied the string round the finger, and held it up by the loose end. Karen stared, slightly intrigued as the finger turned in the air before finally settling so it was pointing in a southerly direction. Karen could see that the strong was being pulled several degrees forward, as if being blow by a gust of wind.
But there was no wind in the secret room.
"That’s where he is," Jerimiah said. "South."
Karen didn’t believe a word of it, but she still asked the question: "How far south?"
"I don’t know. The finger isn’t capable of revealing that. We’ll just have to travel south until we find him. He can’t be all that far away."
"If he has a car, or went on a train he could be in France by now, or even further," Karen complained.
"He won’t be in France, if he was there he’d also be to the east. I believe he’s somewhere in this town."
"He knows you can find him using his damn severed finger, so why in all creation would he stay in the local area," Karen couldn’t believe she’d just said that. It was almost like admitting that the finger did point in the correct direction.
Jerimiah grabbed her arm and pulled her along. "Follow me," he ordered.
Karen dreaded what would happen next.
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Haugan and the Burglar were seated in Haugan’s living room. Wood was burning in the old-fashioned open fire that Haugan liked so much. He liked the smell, and sometimes to just watch the flames until the intense light and heat gave him a migraine.
"Would you like to know what will happen to you tomorrow?" Haugan asked the Burglar.
"Err... sure, anything for a giggle," the Burglar replied. He didn’t like the expression which darkened Haugan’s face when he said that.
Haugan opened the book roughly in the middle. It said something about an ‘age of enlightenment’ which occurred in the seventeen hundreds. He turned to the next page. What he saw troubled him. It was a description of how, in the early twenty-two hundreds, women would have no more use for the male population of humanity, and they would eventually die out when no more were born.
That wasn’t what bothered him though. What bothered him was that there was a gap in the book of four hundred years. He couldn’t even see the future which would happen within his own lifetime. He couldn’t see the past which had already happened in his own lifetime. The book was useless.
"So," the Burglar asked, "what happens tomorrow?"
Haugan didn’t answer. He’d noticed that four hundred years worth of pages had stuck together and was busy trying to separate them. He hadn’t noticed before because the pages were so thin it was unreal. There were several hundred-thousand-million-billion-trillion pages contained within a book which should, by all rights have held less than six hundred pages.
Haugan managed to get his nail between two of the pages, and then he tore the edge of the paper on all of the inaccessible pages. Several words at the edge of the paper had been torn off.
Haugan could see the loss of so many words having a noticeable affect on the way things were, but he doubted it would affect his plan.
"Mr Burglar," he said, "allow me to explain my plan to conquer the Universe;
"I know that you can’t alter the book from the middle, so I will simply write in a new ending. An ending where I come back to life and rule the Universe for all time, a never ending rein of glory. I will word my alternate ending in such a way that people will have relative free will, keeping things interesting, but no-one will be able to overpower me, or take my throne. At that point The Book of The Universe will become obsolete, and will no longer be required to guide the fate of man."
"According to that book, man won’t exist that far in the future," the Burglar pointed out, knowing that he was talking to a crazy person, but a crazy person who had recently given him one thousand pounds, which wouldn’t be subject to tax deductions.
"Ahh, I will write my future so that males will once again exist. And so that females will all be beautiful and all want me. But they will not expect any sort of commitment."
The Burglar nodded. "Sounds like my kind of life."
"You can come back to life too, if you wish. All women will want you, also. Not as much as they want me, of course, but you will get them," Haugan promised.
The Burglar didn’t believe a word of it.
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Karen and Jerimiah hiked through a farmers field filled with wheat. Karen was certain they were trespassing, but didn’t mention it to Jerimiah.
They had been walking for more than six hours, following the finger. Karen was very thirsty and very hungry. She thought they’d never stop walking.
And then they saw a cottage.
It was a quaint country cottage, in the middle of a wheat field. Karen couldn’t help but think it was in a very poor location. But who was she to judge? She’d failed geography in school, along with almost every other subject she’d taken.
There was smoke coming out of the chimney, something which isn’t seen very often, and an expensive car was parked at the front, with a trail of dead wheat where the wheels had crushed it.
"That’s where he is," said Jerimiah.
"You’re sure?" Karen asked. In the last six hours the finger had pointed directly through many houses, and none of them had been the correct place.
"Yes."
"Do you think maybe he’ll give me a glass of water?"
Jerimiah didn’t answer.
Karen didn’t like what that implied.
Jerimiah strode casually to the door and pulled it open, despite the fact that it was double-bolted and latched.
Karen wondered if Jerimiah would pay for the damage to the door frame or leave it up to Haugan’s insurance company. She decided it would probably be the latter.
Haugan jumped to his feet as Jerimiah entered his living room closely followed by an attractive young woman he had never met before. The Burglar stood as well, but he did it in such a manner as to indicate he had all day to do it.
"Jerimiah!" Haugan exclaimed. "How did you find me?"
"The same way you found me," Jerimiah said. "Give me the book."
"You have no more right to it than do I. We worked together to get it."
"You only worked to get it because you want to control people. I can’t let The Book be used in that way," this sounded like a threat, although neither Karen, nor the Burglar could see how.
Shrugging off the last sentence, Haugan said: "I’ve noticed there’s a space of four hundred years where the pages are stuck together. Am I right in assuming this is some kind of safeguard to prevent people from seeing their own future?"
"How the hell should I know," Jerimiah was approaching Haugan, arms raised, ready to take the book by force.
"Mr Burglar, Kill him!" Haugan demanded.
"Hey, no way, I’m a professional Burglar, not a murderer."
He left the house, and Karen heard the sound of a car engine stalling, and then various curse words, and the sound of metal clanging against metal.
Jerimiah was running now, heading towards a direct collision with Haugan.
Haugan side stepped Jerimiah and found the book flung from his arm by the attractive young woman, about whom Haugan was already having numerous fantasies.
The Book of The Universe landed in the fireplace and started to burn. Both Jerimiah and Haugan winced.
When Jerimiah realised that the Universe wasn’t going to disappear, he said: "The destruction of the Book of The Universe won’t destroy everything because the Universe existed long before The Book itself did," he made a convincing performance of sounding like he knew this all along, but everyone could tell he was lying.
Jerimiah turned to Haugan. "Looks like your evil plans have been foiled."
Haugan roared a roar which sounded exactly like a lion’s roar. It was frightening.
"Come on Karen," Jerimiah said, "let’s go."
As they were leaving, Karen had to ask the question she had been dying to ask since she met Jerimiah the previous day. "Why do you wear those fur clothes?"
"What? I’m not wearing any clothes."
They passed the Burglar, who was busy hitting his car with a crowbar.
"Man, you need a shave."
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Jerimiah returned to his secret room, tired from a long day of walking and destroying his only reason for living. He wondered if his altered ending to the Universe would remain, or if things would return to the originally planned course of time.
Then, he noticed on the pedestal there was a book. It looked brand new. He read the title.
It said: The Book of The Universe, and in smaller letters, towards the foot of the cover was written: Revision two.
He opened it to the back page and saw the last words, written in the proper type of the rest of the book, were: Happily ever after.
THE END