Limit of Expansion

The researcher waited expectantly, but not impatiently, for the timing signals from its colleagues in distant galaxies. Impatience was a crutch for those races that still had physical forms, not for those who were lattices of quantum probability. Yet for all their advancement, there was still the question: what would the ultimate fate of the universe be? Was the mass of the Universe sufficient to halt its own expansion? If not, the universe would continue to expand until everything was so far away from everything else that no interaction was possible and heat death would occur. Was there enough mass to reverse the expansion, ending in the collision of all matter? Or did the Universe rest on the knife’s edge of probability, where there was just enough matter to hold the whole thing together, expansion slowed to the point of imperceptibility but did not reverse? Then the universe would continue indefinitely, allowing the matter it contained to find its own fate.

Countless civilizations had spent thirty billion years experimenting, measuring, and speculating. Until now it was too close to call. The researcher considered it a point of academic curiosity only; all of the three possibilities still left fifty billion more years: enough time for life to be completely eradicated and to rise from nothing to its pinnacle thousands of times more. But finally the time had come to know. In the next few moments, the quantum communications tracking the distance between far-flung galaxies would verify whether the expansion had continued, halted, or reversed…

Having been filled to its utmost with Divine breath, the bubble burst, leaving a sticky, pink film on the face of an oblivious, child-God. She giggled, peeled the mess off of Her face, poked it back into her mouth, and resumed chewing.