At lunch there is a pause in the drizzle and Odin walks to the store. He gets a sandwich and chips, although he always regrets getting chips, even though he has plenty to regret this week already, much of it linked to his inability to handle emotions properly.

There is a ‘plink’ as the grey crow lands atop a blue compact car.

It’s always a blue car. Maybe the crow prefers blue, maybe there is just a high incidence of blue cars in this neighborhood. Do car colors vary by neighborhood? If so, according to what factors?

Odin shares a ham sandwich with two grey crows and one black one.

There are a lot of pedestrians passing on the sidewalk and Odin tries to time tossing pieces of sandwich so no one notices, although he is not sure why. Huginn and Muninn also seem to be pretending not to know him when people pass, although they probably don’t know why, either.

What say the slain?

At night, at the Large Hadron Collider, when the scientists are all asleep in their beds, the janitors and cleaning women do secret research of their own. Closing all the doors to keep down noise and turning on only one light in ten, they fire up the LHC and seek experimental evidence for the multiverse.

It started with the idea that additional dimensions might be undiscovered because they were too small, and the realization of a cleaning woman that the real reason might be: we didn’t realize what we were really looking for.

What if love was one of the missing dimensions?

After this, other missing dimensions were quickly identified (posited) and found.

Most basically, we (and everything else) consist of strings vibrating in the previously-known dimensions, and in the additional dimensions. Strings vibrate in dimensions including love, and the sacred, and the random and the accidental. They vibrate in beauty and surprise.

The LHC janitorial staff is looking into the following dimensions (and the particles associated with them):

[Dimension - Particle]

Love – Lovoton

Sacred – Sacroton

Surprise – Bikkuriton

Random – Chanceoton

Accidental – Accidenton

New – Novelton

Similarity – Alikeoton

Opposite – Oppositon

Eroticism – Eroton

Orgasm – Orgaton

And so at night, when the scientists sleep, the janitorial staff does its research. In the dimly-lit vastness of the LHC they learn that when you collide a Loveoton and a Sacroton you get a Bikkuriton and a Chanceoton. When a Bikkuriton and a Chanceoton collide, an Accidenton and a Novelton result. A collision between an Alikeoton and an Oppositon gives you an Eroton and an Orgaton. A collision between an Orgaton and an Eroton produces the original Loveoton and the Sacroton.

The janitorial staff work all night on their research.

Yet in the morning, when the scientists file back into work and don their white lab coats and protective goggles, the sleepy janitorial staff have gone home or to their second jobs, and the LHC is spic and span.

 

What say the hanged?

Someone said on the radio yesterday that, toward the end of the Middle Ages, people were worried about the collapse of civilization and the end of the world, and convinced that the end of the world was a literal possibility, and that the only thing preventing the collapse of civilization was the Church, and the hard work of scribes, copying out one manuscript after another, and things like that.

And then, despite their best efforts, it did come to an end. Medieval civilization came to an end, but the world did not.

Instead: Renaissance. An explosion of enlightenment and prosperity.

All that ended were some dark ages.

Could it be, that is what’s happening now all over again?