An Alternate History of Time

A cricket ball was hoicked out of a mildly high dimensional universe by a galactic batsman. Having descended down to an unoccupied universe, the ball hit a piranha that was floating in nothingness and fused it with consciousness. Awake, the piranha was at once furious and hungry. It proceeded to viciously shred the ball into many sub-atomic pieces. Thereafter, the piranha was never seen or heard again. It is said that it went off somewhere in search of the batsman who had hit the shot. The story could not be verified till the time this piece went to press.

If it were a tennis ball or a golf ball, I would not have been around to write this article. But, it was, in fact, a cricket ball. And someone had given it a good rub so that it was a little shinier on one side than the other. This shine had survived even down to the sub-atomic level which led to a kind of a reverse motion. The particles, instead of floating away, started to converge. It seemed they wanted to gain their form back.

The reverse motion moved past the tipping point without losing a heartbeat and soon threatened to tear through the fabric of time and space. From the other side of the fabric, the batsman (yes, the same one, they just couldn’t get him out; it helped that he owned the only bat in that universe) assumed it to be another shady tactic of the fielding side and hooked it out of that universe again to widespread awe. This is also referred to in the history books as the big bang. No, not the one with Debbie in it. That came a lot later. And hardly worth a plop, if you ask me. You may want to check out Sheila instead.

It was such a ferocious hit that the ball immediately dissolved into gazillions of particles who then shat their pants and raced away at a breakneck speed. They have not stopped since. In fact, they are running away even faster, petrified to the core. Some found comfort in numbers and clustered around to form stars. The early stars crumbled under the collective fear of the willow and so the particles formed even complex structures such as galaxies to hide within.

Over time, the memory of the big bang started to lose its intensity and some of the particles settled down in distant parts of the universe in the form of planets. A few decided to lead the revolution to form their own cricket team to tame the galactic monster batsman. After quite a few trial and errors involving fins, webbings, tentacles etc, they moved onto four legged animals. Seeing that such animals could not throw a ball if their lives depended upon it, they finally zeroed onto a two-legged creature.

By now, so much time had elapsed, that the two legged creatures weren’t sure of their place and purpose in the larger cosmos. Initially, they amused themselves with sex, religion and wars. They were then depressed for a while but after a bout of cold, they quickly discovered philosophy, rock-n-roll and drugs. Nowadays, they mostly scratch themselves, fart and make faces in no particular order.

And now, the most intelligent cluster of particles walks this earth in the form of yours truly. I mostly think deep thoughts and withdraw money from the ATM. Yesterday, my ATM asked me if I was single and I responded – No, just delusional.