When Worlds Collide

I was sitting in Rick’s Cafe Americaine, drinking beer and watching American TV with some friends. The tape had been made in December of 1992, and we’d all seen the shows on it a hundred times. These days, we only pay attention to the commercials. While I was looking at a warning about a blizzard in Iowa, my friend Tad was rattling on and on about quantum theory.

Somebody once gave Tad a copy of Stephen Hawkings’ book A Short History of Time, and ever since then he’s become a prophet in the cult of four-dimentional thinking. Unfortunately, his thinking is about as four-dimensional as a layer of nail varnish. He was telling me about a screenplay he had written concerning a Thai boxer who could see three seconds into the future because he thought in four dimensions.

“Your boxer read Hawkings?” I asked.

“No!” He got it from an old monk in a monastery in Laos.”

“The guy spent years in a Buddhist monastery, and he comes out to make a living by beating up people for money? He didn’t study very hard.”

“Sure, he did. It’s just that... Oh, the hell with you. Doesn’t matter, nothing does, when you look at it in 4-D.”

Tad was quiet for a moment, staring with the rest of us at an ad for “A Charlie Brown Christmas Special”. Finally he said “It’ll all be over in 10,000 years, anyway.”

“Why?” I asked him. “What happens in 10,000 years?”

Tad sat up straight on his barstool and cleared his throat. “That’s when our sun will burn itself out.”

He immediately got a lot of attention at the bar. Somebody told Noi, Rick’s number one bartendy, to turn down the sound on the TV. Tad turned around and leaned back on the bar, addressing the room. “The most reliable estimates I’ve seen say nine to fifteen thousand years,” he said, “then, supernova. Then a black hole, then...” and here he gave us a fatalistic but superior smirk, “...nothing. No more solar system, no more universe, no more time, no more nothing.”

There were murmurs at the bar. Nobody believed him, but nobody could really disprove what he was saying. Very few rocket scientists drink at Rick’s. There were, besides the tourists, some oilmen, one guy who owns a failing shrimp farm, one who teaches English in a hotel, and one who’s living here on the proceeds from the auction of his grandfather’s stamp collection.

Then a voice came from the end of the bar. “I am sorry, friend, but you are mistaken.” We all looked to where the voice came from, and saw a guy dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and a pair of tuxedo pants. He was standing unnaturally erect, with his head turned towards Tad but his body still facing the bar. The bar in front of him was empty, no cigarettes or ashtray, no book or newspaper, no bottle or glass. He was barefoot, and his feet were enormous.

Most of the regulars at Rick’s know each other. In fact, we usually know more about each other than we would like. I didn’t know this guy, and by the looks on their faces I could tell that nobody else knew him either. Tad huffed and puffed and said “I’ve read it in a book.”

“Then you misread your book, my friend.” The words came out flat and expressionless. “Ten thousand years is less than a heartbeat of geologic time, let alone celestial time,” he said. “Your sun is burning its hydrogen at the rate of 10,000 million tons per second, and at that rate it will last another 2 billion years. And when it does burn itself out, it will mean the end of this small solar system, but certainly not of the universe, or of time itself.”

“Oh yeah?” argued Tad. “How do you know?”

The guy smiled at Tad, or at least he did something with his lips that exposed a lot of very small, very white teeth. “I read it in book.” he said.

Every bar has its know-it-all, and Tad is ours. Usually, the subjects he lectures on are so esoteric that nobody ever questions his authority. He turned red and blustered, “Look, I’m telling’ ya, you jerk, that the world ends in nine to fifteen thousand years!”

“Will you bet?” The stranger reached into a pocket of his pants and pulled out a crumpled US$100 bill. It was very old and you could only tell the denomination by the portrait of Benjamin Franklin on the front. All four corners were missing. They looked as if they had been bitten off.

The stranger put his museum piece on the bar and, taking Tad’s beer bottle, placed it on one corner to hold the bill down in the draft from the ceiling fans. I realized why the four corners were all missing - he must have been putting sweaty bottles on that bill for quite a while, maybe even in terms of celestial time. “I ain’t got a hundred bucks,’ sulked Tad.

“If I am wrong, you may have my money.” said the stranger. “If I am right, you will purchase for me one bottle of drinking water.” I was beginning to get the creeps, but I was interested. There’s not much out of the ordinary that happens on Phuket.

“Ah, hell,” said Tad. “If this son of a bitch is that thirsty, I’ll buy him his damn water. Like I said, it doesn’t matter anyway, if you think about it in four dimensions.”

He ordered a quart of water from Noi, and the stranger showed us his teeth again as with a snap he pulled his bill out from under Tad’s beer. He wadded it up and stuffed it back into his pocket. The girl brought him his water and a glass. The stranger ignored the glass and picked up the bottle. He tipped his head back until his open mouth was pointed at the ceiling, then he poured the whole two litres of purified water down his throat, glug-glug-glug. He sure seemed to have an awful lot of teeth.

When he set the empty bottle down on the bar, it hit with a solid thunk. He looked around the room with eyes that had suddenly gone bloodshot. There was a faint whistling sound, and two small bubbles appeared and burst at his nostrils. “Very goooood,’ he mumbled. His speech had gone all slurry, and he was drawing his words out into long, quiet syllables. “I thaaaaank you, frieeeeend.”

He started for the door, walking very carefully, studying the floor. As he passed Tad he said, “It may be as you saaay, frieeeend.”

“What d’ya mean?” asked Tad.

“It may happen sooooooner than even you suspect. You should be caaaaareful how you talk to strangers in baaaaaars.”

Then he went out onto the sun-baked pavement of the street. He looked up and down for a moment, and started off towards the beach on his big feet with that same careful gait, studying the ground as he went.

There was a noticeable easing of tension in the room after the stranger’s departure. Tad grabbed his beer and drank, and I could see a little crescent of green paper stuck to the bottom. He put the empty bottle down and fumbled for a smoke.

“Man,” he said. “You meet all kinds in here.”

“Yeah,” I answered him, taking one of his cigarettes. “Everybody comes to Rick’s.”

© Steve Rosse. All rights reserved by the author.

----------------------------
If you enjoyed this short story of Steve Rosse's  you can easily purchase his book 'Thai Vignettes' online here at Bangkok Books.com: http://www.bangkokbooks.com/php/product/product.php?product_id=000025&sub_cate_name=&sub_cate_id=

Most books published by Bangkok Book House are available at Asia Books, Bookazine, B2S, Kinokuniya, Suriwong Chiang Mai, DK Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Lampang; all airports, many hotel outlets, supermarkets (Villa, Friendship Pattaya), The Books (Phuket, Krabi), Singapore including airport, Hong Kong airport and many smaller independent outlets throughout Thailand (www.bangkokbooks.com).