“I lit your streets and you called us yellow vomit” fidgeting with the microphone, sodium continued after clearing his throat. In the parliament, men and women sat behind great oak desks; labels were printed across each of them. Sodium’s was labelled table salt.
Presently, he was interrupted by chlorine. She was sharing the podium with him.
“Speak for yourself; we scuttle the sea bed together does not mean I will share your ignominy” sodium was taken aback a bit; his hands shivered. With the back of his hand, he mopped his brow before pulling out a crumpled sheet of paper from his trouser pockets and spreading it open before him.
“I soaked your dark alleys with crimson light”. The speaker’s nervousness showed in his petered voice. He brandished his helplessness; since the first installation of the planet, he was betrothed to chlorine and never imagined a life without her. He feared the worst; a divorce with chlorine would mean annihilation – oxidation.
The big breasted, cat eyed, wide mouthed, and short legged creature – oxygen, the belligerent, pugnacious and unpleasantly fat woman. She was looking askance at the thin boned, lean framed and panicky sodium from behind her desk; she shared the desk, labelled water, with hydrogen.
“Come on. Stop it you two. Don’t bother us with your antics.” This was cobalt; he had the map of Persia tattooed on his back. It was his birth place; legend has it that his discovery preceded his most favourable uses. For instance, cobalt was used to brush the ceramic facades of old mosques, Ming porcelain and Venetian glass.
“You are in love with your own abundance” cobalt was known for his intolerance. His origins were royal and presence meagre; he hated abundance and loved affluence. “You have compromised our sanctity; betrayed our confidence by patting each other’s back.” Shifting in his chair to face Neon, he continued “I seek for a motion to dethrone oxygen from the position of first lady”
This evoked pandemonium; some heehawed and some hush hushed. Speaker calcium realised that noble gases represented by neon seemed inclined and in favour of Cobalt. Calcium knew that the ensued chaos won’t settle down for a day or two; he adjourned the session and ordered for the reconvening at a later point in time. He was dressed in a white tunic like the ancient romans did.
They never reconvened.
Meanwhile at CERN, scientists were trying to find the higgs boson particle. To nurture the idea that gravity was made up of this particle, led to the massive scientific experiment touted the LHC. More than any other time in history, twentieth century proved the most fruitful. Electrical forces found their lineage linked with magnetic forces; the finding resulted in a public announcement of their marriage. An ‘incest love’, some have called it; but electricity was too resilient to be bothered with such petty social conventions. As for magnetic force, she was too shy and never left home alone. Always found in company of electricity, not a soul bothered them thereafter.
Weak and strong nuclear forces in the seventies found that they were the only living cousins of the happily married ‘electromagnetic’ couple. The weak nuclear force abhorred Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate, for making the discovery. To what use was this discovery? The nuclear forces played out on a different level, quantum level; while the former, electric and magnetic forces whirred peacefully in the cosmic levels. It was an unhappy finding for both the forces; former felt the latter too strong and latter felt the former too weak.
To make matters worse, scientists were now trying to unite gravity with the ancestral force; it was believed in the scientific community that the present fundamental forces, indistinguishable from one another, were indeed, the cousin forces of one and the same ancestor. This pursuit was incentivised by the fact that a blank point lineage distribution of all the fundamental forces would lay down the theory of big bang on solid grounds.
During the experiments of Second World War, both the nuclear forces gained an acquaintance with powerful elements such as Radium, Arsenic and Mercury. Now they figured it was time for the brief acquaintance to shake hands vigorously; the nuclear forces baited some of the elements in a hope that the raucous parliament of elements would ban the cantankerous first lady ‘oxygen’ from surveying the planet alone. This would essentially mean that the human scientists at work would be asphyxiated and the project CERN would collapse. Gravity, who was hated by the rest of the fundamental forces, and the elements alike, would never find himself associated with the majority.
Gravity was hated for several reasons; one, it was a weak force; two, it was mighty unpredictable – exerted force differently in different areas of the cosmos. Three, everyone knew that it was outrageous to hold heavenly bodies with such a feeble force as gravity, “With a magnet the size of a pin head, I can control objects greatly defying gravity under its own nose” magnetic force was famously quoted in the parliament sometime back to showcase the revulsion everyone shared with gravity.
The fabric of space time, being crinkled for a long time, had given birth to dizzying forces in the crease folds. For instance, gravity multiplied itself in the creases, while the rest of the forces stayed put in their essential covers. Gravity was the reason neutron stars exploded and the strong nuclear force hated gravity for this reason.
Sometimes, hatred was uncalled for.
“My whole existence is a waste and I can’t bear the phantom bodied force for liberating me”
Hydrogen blamed gravity for not holding the star debris tight in the early stages of the formation of universe. Hydrogen’s blame had so much mettle in it, parliament of elements pronounced that all the elements should stay clear of gravity, for they all were merely young and had to trust the oldest (hydrogen) of them.
The alliance of cousin forces and elements feared that if gravity was to be associated with the fundamental lineage, it would dethrone the others and a dictatorship would ensue. The universe would enter a dark age. It would be a fast regress, a collapse into an abyss of darkness. Everyone was haunted by the extreme temperature and pressure conditions that prevailed fourteen billion years ago. Given a chance, gravity would run its course of cataclysmic heavenly dances; it would toss the galaxies together; coalesce bipolar stars; retrace the nebulae; sanction more of those regurgitating black holes.
Notorious gravity, under its rule, over the dark ages (initial five billion years) had sanctioned more stars, more galaxies, more planets and more constellations than what the universe could have handled. An overpopulated universe actually helped create the elements; stars with massive collection of hydrogen and helium exploded (fancifully by gravity) and created in their debris, higher elements such as iron and calcium, which were to revolutionise the cosmos with their appeal for democracy.
By the time gravity was dethroned, universe was whimpering with dark matter and dark energy; the vastness of universe confounded the newly found democracy. Millions of years passed, amidst strange vacillations, peace was gained, lost and restored for good. No one wanted those days back.
Meanwhile, scientists at CERN laboriously racked their brains to produce a higgs boson particle. “Gravity travels at the speed of light.” Said one scientist, lowered his rimless glasses and proceeded “a photon, mass less particle or otherwise light, generates maximum speed in this universe”.
To this, the young scientist seated on a backless piano chair responded “you mean from E= MC^2, a massless particle converts all of its energy into speed, and technically should be the fastest”. With an air of enthusiasm, he continued “I think I know what you are getting at. If gravity can travel at the same speed as the fastest in this universe, it should also be composed of a massless particle”
The elder of the two concluded “Exactly. You see, a massless particle has to be the fundamental particle; it should have been present from the beginning. Universe could not have manufactured it later, for a part of the energy would have been used up to create mass by that time.”
Only time will tell if the alliance of cousin forces and the elements would succeed.
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