“Ow!” exclaimed five-year-old Eva.
Her older brother Ken looked up from the comic he was reading. “What is it?” he asked.
“Paper cut,” mumbled Eva.
“I told you to be careful,” Ken replied.
“If I were Ant-Man this would never have happened,” Eva retorted.
Ken rolled his eyes. He never understood his sister’s irrational obsession with the Marvel superhero.
“Ant-Man can grow fast,” declared Eva.
“Yes, I know,” said Ken resignedly, aware that he was about to be dragged into a long-winded ode to Eva’s idol.
“He can shrink too,” said Eva.
Ken decided to test Eva’s knowledge.
“How small can he shrink to?” Ken asked.
“As small as an ant,” Eva promptly responded.
“Actually – ” began Ken.
“And even smaller,” continued Eva. “He can even shrink into the quantum realm.”
The quantum realm, thought Ken. Fancy words for a five-year-old.
“What’s the quantum realm?” he challenged.
“It’s a place so small that it’s another world,” said Eva deftly. “It has its own universe and creatures and time and everything is so small that you and I can never see it.”
“So at a subatomic level you think there could be a whole world of creatures living ordinary lives?” said Ken, interested in spite of himself. “So technically if your hand is made of atoms, and then you zoomed in some more, and even more after than, you would enter a quantum realm within the atoms that made up your hand, and in that realm you could find creatures living in their own homes, having their own conversations, completely unaware that they are part of your hand?”
“…yes,” came Eva’s response. Ken knew he had lost her, but continued anyway.
“So then what would happen to the quantum realm’s inhabitants when you get a paper cut? Would they feel it? Or because of the size difference would it make no difference to their world?”
“You know, Ant-Man was in the quantum realm for five hours but for the Avengers it was five years,” replied Eva wisely.
“That’s right, time would move differently,” said Ken, lost in thought. “So then how would your getting a paper cut in three seconds translate in their world?”
Ken and Eva’s philosophical musings on the Ant-Man universe were interrupted by their mother calling them for dinner.
“This is quite the storm,” said Ken’s mother.
“Definitely unusual,” Ken’s father responded. “But given the general state of things, we seem to be on the luckier side.”
Ken and Eva caught traces of their parents’ conversation as they sat around the dining table. They were acting cheerful, but Ken noticed that all did not seem to be well. His mother had a worried frown permanently on her face these days, and his dad was always switching on the news. And then there was the storm – even Eva could see that it was unusual. Their part of town had never before experienced such a ceaseless downpour; the rains seemed never-ending, stretching on and on until all the streets were flooded and their parents couldn’t go to work anymore and everyone just sat at home and watched the news.
Although he and Eva were not technically allowed to watch grown-up news, Ken snuck in a few peeks when he got the chance, and what he saw made him decidedly nervous. His dad was right, they seemed to be lucky compared to what he saw on TV. All over the world, strange things were happening – earthquakes, forest fires, flash floods – and all at the same time. ‘Climate crisis’ was a phrase he heard a lot, coming from worried news anchors.
A loud, wailing siren suddenly pierced through the house. Everyone looked up in alarm. The siren was coming from outside, blaring through the entire neighbourhood. Ken’s father rushed to the living room and turned on the news. The screen was blinking red as a message was broadcasted:
“We interrupt this program with an emergency announcement: Extreme wind speeds have been detected, and all residents are urged to move to their basements immediately. Forecasted wind speeds are reported to be strong enough to cause considerable damage to building structures and pose a high safety risk. We ask everyone to take shelter underground and await further news.”
Ken looked at his mother. The worried frown had been replaced by a grim, set expression.
“It’s time,” was all she said.
Ken and Eva watched as their parents sprang into action, bringing out pre-packed bags stocked with food, clothing, water and blankets. They seem to have prepared for this already, thought Ken. But when had all this packing happened? And why didn’t anyone tell him how serious the situation really was?
“Come on, Eva!” he yelled. Determined to play some part in the drama that was unfolding, Ken assumed a protective position next to his sister and began shuttling her down to the basement.
Once everyone was inside, Ken’s father secured the basement door and turned on a smaller TV in the corner of the room.
The same warning message was still being broadcasted, but it was now accompanied by a shrill howl coming from the wind blowing ferociously outside. Ken glanced up at the window near the roof of the basement, which looked out onto their front lawn, and saw all manner of sign boards, poles – and was that a tree? – flying past their house. Listening closer, Ken could hear a harsh, grating, ripping sound every now and then through the screeching wind. He guessed that’s what rooftops being pried off houses sounded like.
Inside the basement, communication signals were beginning to fail. His parents were desperately trying to catch the latest news, which was now flickering on his father’s mobile screen.
“Warning – nuclear reactor – extreme –” were the last broken fragments of communication Ken heard before his dad’s phone screen froze and refused to load further.
“Mom, what’s that?” asked Eva, pointing fearfully out of the window.
Ken rushed to the window, climbing on top of a few boxes to get a better view. The wind was still wreaking havoc, but now in the distance Ken saw what Eva was pointing at. He couldn’t tell what it was exactly, but it was bright – too bright. Ken shielded his eyes and scrambled off the boxes, a split second before an ear-shattering explosion made their walls shake and shattered the basement window, sending glass pieces flying everywhere.
BOOM!
Ken’s parents immediately covered him and Eva, protecting them from the shards of glass that had fallen around them. But even from under his parents’ cover, Ken could see that the brightness was increasing, growing more blinding by the second, swallowing everything around them –
“You ok? That looks like quite the burn.”
“Yeah, I turned on the gas too quickly and accidently burnt my finger. It’s pretty bad, but I’m running it through some water and I think I have some cream for it somewhere around here.”
Billions of trillions of light years in a general outward direction, two Beings were having a conversation.
“What do you think of the nanocosm theory from yesterday’s lecture?” asked one Being.
“The one where at an infinitesimally small level we contain universes within the matter that makes up our reality, even our own bodies?” replied the other. “I don’t buy it, personally. That at a subatomic level there could be actual creatures living within universes and completely unaware that they might just be contained within a miniscule part of my finger? Sounds rather absurd, doesn’t it?”
“Well, if it were true then I’m pretty sure you just killed a planet or something with that burn,” chuckled the first Being.
“That must have been quite the fright for them,” replied the second. “Now, where did I put that cream?”