Wanna know about Life, The Universe, an’ all of that? Well I’ve gotcha covered. Bring in the barstools kidz, and let’s talk.

What is this Universe thing anyway?

We got some ideas. Ever since Horace Z Zong was replaced in his clack by a Horace Z Zong-sized chunk of the more-than-white-hot crysosporadicon which (it turns out) is only found in the heart of certain white-hot dwarf stars, our best minds were – . . . umm, we didn’t really have that many brilliant ‘best minds’ but we had some people that were – . . . aw heck, what am I saying? We had Pesters that thought rings around us and were happy to share that with us so we could think we’d figured it out.

And they came up with . . . Ytivarg! 

Ytivarg

You Terrans, hehehe. You’re wondering what the Universe is. You wanna know why ya think that it seems to be full of mostly matter and not not-matter (or as you call it, antimatter) and that’s why you had to invent shemshoit ideas like dark matter and dark energy and stuff? Yeah… And that right there’s another reason you haven’t had too many interstellar visitors stick around once they’ve had The Talk with any of you and realise what ya believe…

The Universe is one of an infinite amount of universes that are all an infinite number of single-electron Universes acting like conventional physical electrons. And you know what? It doesn’t matter, because you can’t change it anyway!

No. You guys are still wondering why the Universe expands and seems to be bigger/heavier/wossnamish than it is and is expandin’ faster than you know why and faster at the edges no matter where you stand.Â

“It doesn’t fit in with our facts!” you say. “What is this mysterious force pushing the Universe apart against the force of gravity?” (Uh – did I just give it away there? Sorry.)

You know how in your ‘classical physics’ everything that can go in one direction can go just as easily in the opposite direction? Even time? That’s how that one electron, moving incredibly fast, can form that One Electron Universe? Forwards. Gravity. Backwards. Ytivarg. Forwards. Gravity. Backwards. Ytivarg. 

Anyway this famous Zorga… – This anonymous Pester – worked it out. Stuff can run forwards in time, stuff can run backwards in time. Gravity can pull on stuff, ytivarg can push on stuff. You guys haven’t figured that out yet. Every place is ‘up’ compared to some other place. If you choose your starting point just right, and learn to dance between forward and backward, push and pull, and do it just right, you can get from here to there in no time at all. What goes up don’t necessarily ever have to come down.

See, your Universe – our Universe, this phase of the Big Dance – is expanding because you guys got it wrong. You saw an apple fall and went “Ah yeah! Gravity! A force between objects with mass, where the strength of the force is proportional to the masses of the objects involved and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them! We are sooooo damn clever!”

And then ya go all blank-like when someone ask you “What is mass? How does an object acquire mass?” and then you need God Particles and even more stuff, and meanwhile, the Universe is flying apart instead of gravity pulling it all back together. Where is your HiggsBoson now, hah? You realise it sounds pretty flaky as a whole theory of everything, but you’re prepared to accept it.

Until someone gets the right idea. 

Now prepare to accept this: If the whole Universe was full of a force that looked like a particle one instant and like a vector force another (and don’t pretend you haven’t said that exact same thing to explain how light dances through the Universe) and that force just pushed in every direction equally, you could see that the exact same results would obtain. An object shields the force of ytivarg depending on it’s “mass” field.Â

The mass field obeys the Inverse Square Law. If you put two “mass”-having objects near to each other, ytivarg pushes in from every direction equally – except from the direction where the other object is, where their “mass”-field blocks some of the ytivarg from that direction. And so they act as though they were attracted to one another when in fact they’re being pushed together.

And the Universe keeps expanding, but faster at the edges where there less ytivarg, again because of the Inverse Square Law. Oh and the “edges” are the edges because they’re further away from you. Cos ytivarg.

So pshaw! Ye know nuthing, Jon Snow!

It’s easier to let yourself get pushed than try and get yourself pulled into a particular direction, and because everything’s reversible, even ytivarg, you can have a seemingly monopolar force. Dance right, and you can keep going only up up up by letting yourself fall.

And that’sÂthe way Clackertech works. The cryptosporadicon just – sometimes, most times – works to keep your particular dance inside a really really reallysolid bubble, which is why you can transport a whole city inside an egg, at impossibly high (yet also zero) velocities, from here to anywhere else where there’s a shemozzle receiver, and it all arrives still in the same shape as it went in. Most times…

(AUTHOR’S NOTE:I’m proud to say that a friend and I actually thrashed out this basic theory of Ytivarg in the mid-80s, over a cone or two of some fine weed and a bottle of some fine Verdelho Vinho Verde. Portugal has the honour of sparking one of the greatest thought experiments a pair of 20-something year olds ever concocted. It feels great to be vindicated by that linked article. )