24
24
T HE NEXT MORNING, YOU go downstairs to ask your mum for a lift into town. You have your backpack all ready. In it, you have some Voynich-related tomes, a pad of paper, and an unnecessarily large number of pens.
Your mum is brushing her hair while looking in the hallway mirror. Her hair seems to be thinning. Clumps of it are coming out as she brushes it. She doesn’t seem to care. She just brushes it again and again – her manner serene. You think maybe she’s turning into an old man or something. Briefly, you think having an old man for a mum might be nice.
‘Can you drop me off today?’ you say, after hovering for a while.
Your mum looks at you in the mirror. ‘Where?’ she asks, as she brushes and brushes and brushes. ‘You want me to take you to Bobby’s house?’
You frown. ‘Who’s Bobby?’
Your mum also frowns. ‘What do you mean, who’s Bobby? He’s your friend. He’s your friend from school.’
‘Oh, that was years ago. That was my old school. I don’t know him any more.’
Your mum gazes at you in the mirror, stops brushing her hair. ‘He’s not your friend any more? Did you have a falling-out?’
You backtrack. ‘Maybe he’s my friend. I just haven’t seen him in a while.’
‘Then why don’t you want to go to his house?’
‘I just meant I wanted to go to the library. I usually go to the library these days. I have an essay to work on.’
‘An essay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gosh. How time flies.’ Your mum inspects the hairbrush. ‘I thought Bobby was your friend.’
‘He was.’
You think about your friends. There’s a girl who smiles at you in the chemistry lab, the same one who asks to copy your homework sometimes. Maybe she is your friend. Or maybe Maggie and Tracy are your friends. You are not sure. You think friends might have to be the same age as you. Also, it’s kind of their job to speak to you, or at least be cordial, so you aren’t sure they count as anything much.
‘He was my friend,’ you clarify. ‘But he’s not my friend any more. We don’t go to the same school so we don’t get to hang out as much.’
Your mum resumes brushing. ‘I see,’ she says, dragging the comb from the top to the bottom of her hair.
‘So, can you drop me off today?’
‘Where?’
‘Town. I want to go to the library in town.’
‘The library?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ah, no, no can do. Not today.’
You despair internally. ‘No? Why not?’
‘You’re not going there today.’
You despair some more. ‘Why not?’
‘You know those people I see? The people I see about my mental health?’
‘Yeah,’ you say, because you do. Once or twice, they have come inside the house, brandishing their clipboards. Mostly, though, you think your mum goes to them. Your dad drives her.
‘Well, they suggested we hang out more. Go on day trips. Make memories together.’
‘OK.’
‘And my sister agreed. Though she can’t actually come. It’ll just be me, you, Dad, and Cousin Paul.’
‘Why’s Cousin Paul coming?’
‘Your auntie’s working. He can’t be by himself all day.’
‘Right. And what memories are we making?’
‘We’re making the memory of going to a museum. In London.’
‘OK.’
‘Does that sound fun?’
‘Sure.’
You have no idea if a museum in London sounds like fun. You can’t remember ever going to one.
At your thoughtful face, your mum puts the hairbrush down, looks at you concernedly in the mirror. Her eyes are round and sad again. ‘You don’t think it sounds fun? You think we should go somewhere else?’
You look at her reflection. ‘Oh, no,’ you say, ‘I think it sounds really fun. I’ll really like it. I’m sure.’
‘It’s a museum about the universe and space. I remember you used to have a thing about aliens. Maybe they will have an exhibit on aliens and the universe and you will really like it.’
Your dad appears from the kitchen. ‘It’s not just about the universe,’ he says. ‘It’s fun for all the family.’
‘All the family?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that sounds good, then.’
YOU THINK YOU FEEL excited about the trip to the London museum. You think that’s what your belly is telling you. Or maybe it’s telling you you’re hungry. It’s certainly telling you something.
You watch the rain come down as your dad zips down the M3. Your cousin is sitting next to you. You try to ignore him, let yourself sink into a daydream. In your daydream, an old woman lets you into the museum with a crooked key. In your daydream, the museum turns out not to be a museum but instead a kind of library – as big as an aircraft hangar, with rows upon rows of ancient and dusty texts in temperature-controlled cabinets.
‘She’s talking to herself again,’ Cousin Paul says.
Your dad is frowning at the car in front of him. Your mum appears to be asleep.
‘So she is,’ your dad says, uninterested, braking to join a queue of traffic.
In the end, the museum is nothing like a library the size of an aircraft hangar. Instead, it is simply a museum designed for human children, in which there are indeed many human children. Some of the human children run around, pointing at the various bits of the exhibits. Others sit on benches or loll on the floor. There are parents, guardians, and accompanying adults too, many wandering around with blank expressions on their faces.
You are also wearing a blank expression. In your opinion, the fun for all the family is not that fun.
Here you are – squishing your nose against the glass panel behind which a skull of a Neanderthal is displayed. Though the skull is very near to you – and though this is the closest to a Neanderthal skull you’ll ever get – the skull feels about as real as a pixelated image on a TV screen. You wish you could be more interested in it – this skull of this early human. But to be more interested in it, you’d need to be closer. You’d need to hold the skull aloft to feel how much it weighs. You’d need to peer inside and see its hollowed-out insides. You’d need to give it a little sniff.
Your mum jabs you sharply in the ribs. ‘What did you just do?’ she asks, her voice stern.
You turn to your mum. It’s not like your mum to jab you. You look at her fearfully, wondering what possessed her as you nurse your ribs.
‘Did you just lick that?’ she asks.
You hesitate. If you recall correctly, you did indeed just lick the glass. But you didn’t mean to. You were daydreaming, not quite aware of what you were doing.
Your mum shakes her head. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she says.
Your cousin appears. ‘Did she just lick what?’
‘She licked the glass,’ your mum says.
Your cousin grins. ‘Cannibal!’ he says, skipping around. ‘Cannibal, cannibal, cannibal!’
Your dad – who was only moments ago conversing with a volunteer – now comes marching over.
‘She just licked the glass,’ your cousin says to him.
‘She just licked the glass,’ your mum repeats.
Your dad seems uninterested in this fact. He doesn’t ask you if you just licked the glass. Instead, he asks your mum if she just jabbed you.
‘Did you seriously just poke her like that?’
Your mum falters. ‘She, um…’
‘Are you OK?’ your dad says to you.
You nod. ‘Yeah,’ you say.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah,’ you say again.
‘Come here,’ your dad says.
You don’t come there. Instead, your dad comes to you and proceeds to give you a big squeeze. Otherwise known as a hug, this big squeeze slightly stresses you out. However, you know that your dad is doing it out of kindness – and so you give him a squeeze right back. He seems to appreciate this. After what feels like far too long, he backs off, puts his hands on your face to cradle your Neanderthal skull.
‘I love you, sweet pea,’ he says. ‘Let’s have a nice day.’
You nod. ‘OK, Dad,’ you say. ‘I love you too.’
Next, he turns to your cousin. ‘Let’s have a nice day, OK?’ he says to your cousin, his tone more threatening than loving.
Your cousin shrugs. ‘OK.’
Finally, he turns to your mum. ‘Let’s have a nice day, OK?’ he says to her, his tone now closer to loving again.
‘OK,’ she says.
And so, you move on to the other things in this museum. These things are more interesting. According to a sign, they are ‘interactive’. You mull over the word. You aren’t sure what it means. Does ‘inter’ mean between, just like ‘international’ means ‘between nations’? Does ‘active’ mean ‘exercise’? What would ‘between-exercise’ mean? You look around for a passing academic to discuss your linguistic conundrum, but all you see are parents with tension headaches and children running amok.
In any case, over there is a massive model of an ear. As several other children are demonstrating, it is possible to walk through its ear canal. This intrigues you. You start to wander towards the ear canal, but your dad beckons you to another room. It is time to move on again. You wonder if – in his attempt to have a nice day – he is trying to speed through it.
You are now in a room for those drawn to goriness. In this room, there is a body of a human being that you are welcome to dissect. The human body in question is not a real human body. It is simply a model human body made of bits of plastic – the revolutionary material of the twentieth century! see PLASTIC FANTASTIC next door – that you are welcome to pull apart and put back together again under the supervision of several members of staff.
Your mum apparently finds this a bit too much, and so you move on to the extensive exhibit on electricity. Here, you can pedal on a static bike to see it light up a bulb and also touch a globe-like thing. When you place your hand against the globe, tiny lightning bolts are drawn towards you as if by magic and not by science.
This is when your mum approaches you. ‘What do you want to do, sweet pea?’ she asks. ‘Do you not like it here?’
‘No, I do.’
‘You want to stay? You want to look at the things?’
‘Yeah, yeah I do.’
You finger the leaflet in your pocket. According to the leaflet – which you read earlier – there is a section on aliens and space stuff. It is in the basement, next to a space called a ‘planetarium’. Also according to the leaflet, the planetarium is the perfect place for your kids to see horizons stretch out and feel inspired. You don’t have any kids, but perhaps you would like to see horizons stretch out and feel inspired.
‘Can we…’ you say, trailing off a little. ‘Um, you know you said that, um…’
‘What is it, angel?’
‘You said space stuff? You said there was space stuff?’
Your mum nods enthusiastically. ‘You want to see the space stuff? I thought you’d like that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad. I’ll grab the boys.’
Your mum fetches your dad and cousin, and then off you go.
As it turns out, the planetarium is a kind of cinema. In this cinema, there are seats that tilt backwards. This is because the screen is on the ceiling, so you need a tilted seat to see it. Also, the cinema only shows one film on repeat – a thirty-minute thing called The Solar System .
You sit down. On your left is your cousin. On your left-left is your dad. On your left-left-left is your mum. On your right is a boy. He is not part of your family. However, he looks oddly familiar.
Various members of the public gasp when the room darkens abruptly. Others let out a yelp when the chairs tilt backwards and the hitherto unremarkable ceiling comes alive.
On the ceiling-screen, flaming spheres and icy winds and the infinite void appear. A beat later, the sound of a man’s voice surrounds you via the cinema’s state-of-the-art surround-sound speakers. He is the narrator. Within the first two minutes, he says the words ‘billion’ and ‘trillion’ and ‘quadrillion’ a million times. You don’t exactly know what ‘billion’ and ‘trillion’ and ‘quadrillion’ mean – at least not in the same way you know what ‘three’ and ‘twelve’ and ‘fourteen’ mean. As far as you are concerned, these words just mean ‘really big’ or ‘really lots’.
You are enjoying the show, but are soon brought back to earth by your cousin’s voice berating your dad.
‘Oi,’ your cousin says. ‘Oi, wake up.’
You glance to your left, see that your dad has fallen asleep, so much so that he is actually snoring. Your cousin – apparently as annoyed as you are by this – shakes him awake.
‘Sorry,’ your dad says, before falling back asleep again almost immediately.
‘Hello,’ the familiar boy says on your right.
You examine the familiar boy. You definitely recognise him. Curly hair. There are only so many people you know in the world and even fewer of these people have curly hair.
Your mum leans over to grab your wrist gently. ‘Sweet pea, please stop talking. We’re meant to be quiet when the film is on.’
You bat her away. ‘Go away,’ you say, batting her away.
You focus on the familiar boy. You recognise the familiar boy, then you remember the familiar boy – who he is and why he is familiar. He looks the same, you think. A bit taller, you think – though of course he is sitting down. A bit goofier, maybe. He has adult teeth now. They are slightly too big for his mouth. You can tell this because he is grinning at you and the grin takes up half his face.
‘You came back,’ Bobby says warmly and brightly and nicely and kindly.
Your cousin pokes you in the ribs. ‘Who is this? Who are you talking to?’
You bat your cousin away. ‘Go away,’ you say, batting him away.
In but a moment, the narrator will explain how small you are compared to the infinite sprawl of the expanding universe. Planets, asteroids, celestial bodies not otherwise specified will whoosh by you in super-fun HD. You will feel dizzy with the bigness.
‘Welcome to the universe,’ the narrator will say. ‘We hope you’ll feel at home.’
Further reading:
The Solar System: A Short Guide
101 Super Fun Family Days Out
Really Big Numbers: A Bazillion Indefinite Hyperbolic Numerals