Oscillating Blues

There weren’t that many out there and we’d been fooling ourselves for how long. The Universe wasn’t as big as we thought. Now we knew. The tip off wasn’t so pleasant but then they never are, hate a snitch, don’t you? They threw brick bats at him at first. Then real loathing drove him back to anonymity and safety. He didn’t care if they knew or even what they knew. He wanted to be left alone. The neighbors helped him take care of it. They were bristling.

Harry played back Henrietta’s data in real time. The Cepheid variables sang a different song based on their initial reaction. Harry couldn’t find the end point, but, no matter, the harmony gave away the beat. And the Earth realized that blue shift existed. Harry only predicted and others in China saw it first. Their device was fast enough to show it to the rest of us. We watched in awe. Hubble extrapolated red shift for all it’s worth. Based on Levitt’s work at Harvard, he astounded us with the red shift. Blue shift wasn’t even there even in Telsa’s dreams. That we could go on so long thinking we were a direct current was an Edison or so some hip kids called it. Big Bang meets Little Death; Petit Mort was coming and coming.

All the time Harry depicted doom, he was amazed at his optimism. Still smiling, graciously taking the time to help, he never felt the crisis that swelled up in everyone else. He could even joke about it. “Slow motion won’t kill yeh. But it can sure slow you down” All kidding aside, this made him less popular with his friends. Fear of the now known tensed everything up, no one was joking. Comedians were pariahs and the friendly gesture didn’t exist anywhere. All pervasive, this spread over the Earth so quickly there was no name for it. Harry himself couldn’t call it anything. Leave it up to a kid in the Philadelphia suburbs to name it Swell Time. We all knew we were a bubble about to burst but we didn’t know what that meant. Savants were furious, howling in the rain of real time predictions spewing out of the information stream. Everyone that wasn’t wild was plugged in. Along with everyone else, Harry was ready to pop. All in order was a common goal.

It was so apparent that light could not penetrate many things. The lights in the sky were not so numerous when you realized they were related. Blue shift coded them and so new to Earth, they were a mystery. Everyone overlooked the cusp it was so subtle. Then the drift started to ask questions. The East focused on pattern, the West looked for intelligence, never questioning. The token passed between them was the first derivative, and then the second. There was a sudden understanding that changed everything. Blue pulsed so weird now that it made red look different, change changed everything again.

Backing away from light years, astronomers were quick to say, “Time has undergone a change. We are focused on time and not distance. The speed of light is a variable and chaotic right now.” That was all they would say to the public. That is not all that they wanted to hear. The Public shivered, collapsed on itself, hugged and cried. Stop! Stop it! Please, just stop it! The eraser power of the Universe was real and threatening with spooky blue shift. Life looked with askance.

“Just swell!” Harry exclaimed to himself and shook the paper, held his arms down low, standing there in the morning before breakfast. The Feds were going to claim more of the prize. Booby prize, thought Harry remembering the booby traps he experienced in a war. Nothing was going to sleep like Big Bang when Little Death peeked once in awhile. Blue shift was all pervasive now and Harry’s sleep was disturbed. Not by the possibility of sudden death by a blue shift upheaval, no, that wasn’t Harry’s jumpiness, his was familiar, weak and worth defending, he did it all the time. ‘I’m all that I’ve got’ He thought that for most of his life and now, near the end, he thought the thought over and over again. Off he went, a troubled man, but open to new things he hoped would crop up today.

“End all be all” Harry’s comment went unheard to the focused faces looking at the new prediction. No one wanted to know the future; it was still unpredictable, except in this instance. And it was coming, hard and fast. Blue shift brought volcanoes, earthquakes, deluges and more. Finding a safe spot was every ones desire but not their reality. Luck was in great demand. Leave it to chance was a relaxation many sought in ways unimaginable before all rules broke down. ‘Anything goes’ was a common cry from the lips of many. It wasn’t Hell but it was Chaotic. Down, down went Harry’s thoughts,”Our will makes this happen.” Don’t let it go. Go deeper and understand it. The thin connection between the Earth and the Universe disappeared for once for him but didn’t register. Not yet, he followed his habits, drank his beer, smoked, and thought all the while, never going for the obvious. It was so clear! Blue shift erased time. We wished it so! Looking forward raised him out of his chair. He didn’t know where he was going, just gotta go, he thought once more with clarity and purpose this time, “Got the Blues, baby, don’t cha know?”

The shimmer of the gravitational wave wasn’t seen by anyone. Beautiful in itself it removed all past. Reset, start again, maybe next time, Life wasn’t defeated, it wanted too much.