The View From The Start

The universe unfolds before me like a radio falling to pieces and reassembling itself.
In the first few seconds the expansion of matter is overwhelming. My eyes didn't evolve to understand what I’m seeing, the moment of creation itself, they cannot see into the infra-red or ultra-violet. They cannot perceive magnetic pulses or radio waves.  Yet they do perceive it's majesty in a cacophony of light and colour that is so beautiful I almost weep.

The initial flash lasts mere moments and soon the atoms of existence are spread across billions upon billions of miles, miles that have only existed for minutes. Bands of softly pulsing red dust stripe the darkness of the freshly minted void. As I watch the bands swirl around themselves, pushing inwards until they are barely visible and then the first star is born in a flash of fire and pure energy. It is followed by another and another, faster and faster, flowers blooming in the dark.

Then the stars begin their waltz, slowly at first, then faster and faster, circling and spinning around one another, occasionally colliding, lighting up the darkness with the fury of destruction. The stars begin to group together, twirling around in ever more complex pattern. The remaining dust left from the moment of expansion is drawn towards the dancers but before it can begin to coalesce into planets the first stars are dying.

They burnt too bright, too quickly and fall back in on themselves, seeming to sigh with relief as they do so. Some simply fade to darkness, others rage against the dying of the light, exploding with a force that shakes their fellows. Some swell massively swallowing all matter around them, huge red eyes in the darkness before suddenly contracting to a single point of darkness, only visible because of the dancers that are drawn to them.

The black holes order the mayhem of the dance, creating whirlpools in space around which the stars and their newly born children turn gracefully. Some step to close to the void and are swept in, vanishing completely, but most tread a careful path around the edge.

And already, before some stars are even born, half the original giants are darkening. They begin to blink out one by one and now the holes in space are somehow drawing one another together, pulling everything back to the centre. The living stars begin to crash once more; matter is crushed, pulled, stretched and flattened. Seemingly as quickly as the universe began it is gone, leaving only a single tiny sphere that crackles and burns with all the matter of existence. And I could hold it on the end of my little finger.


Project Codename: Watcher
HIGHLY CLASSIFIED
EYES ONLY

Report on test subject 15
Professor Michael Flinch

Another disappointing result for the viewer. The subject was placed inside the machine at 0900 hours on 09/09/2020 and all readings during the test were well within expected margins of error.

Unfortunately when the subject was removed the result was the same as tests 1-14. Subject failed to respond to stimuli of any kind, his pain responses were non-existent, brain functions were flat lining. Any useful observations made have been lost along with the Subjects mental faculties.

Only positive is that he was still able to speak, albeit only one phrase which he repeated over and over: 'The end of my little finger.'  It seems that despite our hopes the time-space viewer is an unmitigated failure. Expected results have failed to appear and we can no longer justify government funds or indeed our colleague’s minds in this futile endeavour.

The viewer is obviously not capable of everything we had hoped for.


Project is suspended indefinitely.