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It was as if somebody had pressed pause. The sun nearly rose as normal and then stopped. It lingered below the horizon, waiting politely, and there it stayed.
The first to notice it was the postman out on his rounds. ‘Such a funny thing,’ he thought, as he pushed a couple of bills and a postcard into the letterbox at Number Nine. ‘I must look it up when I get home.’ Next to notice was the cat from Number Nine, returning from a profitable night’s fighting. She was surprised to find her path home, normally bathed in the cheery promise of the oncoming morning, to be grey and distinctly unpromising. Finally, Tuffin, the incumbent of Number Nine, noticed something was amiss when he picked up the post from his doormat, let the cat in, and felt a distinct nighttime chill drift through the open door, as a visitor slipped in unbidden and unseen.
Far away, in one of the many alternative universes, a little alien girl was playing marbles with her friends. Each of her marbles was a universe similar in scale to ours. If she was on target, her marble would smack into another, and something special or terrible would happen.
Sometimes the universes merged into one; sometimes they exploded into bits and were scattered across the street; sometimes they just disappeared. But today, with a light-speed flick of the wrist, she deftly broadsided her competitor’s best marble and pocketed it.
Life in the little girl’s universe was very much like ours. The scale was different of course. The people were the size of thousands of our universes glued together, which meant their buses and whales were unimaginably enormous. They had stupidly wide streets to play marbles on, astronomically thick books to learn from, and absurdly long holidays to take every trillion years or so. Being so big, they had massive brains and were so clever they could do almost everything anybody has ever thought of. If they wanted to see the latest James Bond film, they just had to think it. If they felt like a skiing trip, they just had to bend their knees and imagine it. If they wanted to be rich, they only needed to lie down, close their eyes, and they would find themselves bathing in a diamond-encrusted jacuzzi soothed by bubbles made of gold leaf. There was just one flaw in their otherwise perfect existence. Ever since this alien species had evolved (let’s call them Martians for short from now on), they’d had all their culinary needs met by just one single foodstuff. It was as though food source and consumer sprang out of the cosmos together in perfect harmony. All the nutritional needs of our little Martian girl and all the other Martians could be met by a single root which grew abundantly everywhere with no nutritional or care needs of its own. No planting, watering, sunshine, fertiliser, no air, nothing. The trouble was the root tasted of nothing. Not unpleasant; just not anything at all. It was neither sweet nor sour, crunchy or soft, fruity or bready. It resisted any sort of flavouring. It wasn’t improved by cooking, so no cookers or stoves were found in the Martian kitchen. In fact, no kitchens existed in the Martian home.
The root was always served cold and a little bit dirty, and our little Martian girl, all her friends, and all the other Martians endured, rather than enjoyed, the same thing for every breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper for the duration of their lives, which were of course infinite. Their mighty brains, able to solve all the problems set by anyone anywhere in the universe, could not conjure up a single flavourful foodstuff to fill their Martian tummies.
Meanwhile. our little girl examined her winnings. It was the best marble because it was the busiest. Stuff was always happening in its universe, much of it really bad; but occasionally something good would occur. One good thing was the emergence of a tiny blue speck called
Earth, and then a bunch of people with heads and bottoms and feet just like the Martians. Her astronomically vast brain allowed her to zoom in on the Earth and see what was going on everywhere, in one go. Most of the time, in most places on Earth, everybody seemed to be making a mess of things; but in one part of the planet, on one particular street, in one particular house, the person who lived there caught her eye. For you see, together with being a champion marbler, and despite the dearth of tastes available in her universe, our petite Martian was an enthusiastic ‘savourer’. Savouring was her second favourite pursuit after marbles. Even if the ubiquitous root tasted rubbish, she still enjoyed swilling its muddy essence around her mouth and imagining numerous exotic tastes caressing her palette. Tuffin, as she now knew the resident of Number Nine to be named, seemed to savour his breakfast, eleveses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper, so much that he made noises such as ‘yum’, ‘ahh’, and ‘delish’ at every meal, and ate every day, rather than every ten million years as the Martians did. So, with her curiosity inflamed, she popped inside her new best marble and in a trice arrived at Tuffin’s home. (This dislocation of spacetime triggered a cosmic pause, and this explains why, as reported, on this day the sun stopped in its tracks and Tuffin felt a distinct nighttime chill as the visitor let herself in without him knowing.)
As it turned out, he was pleased to have company on such a gloomy day, and this unexpected and slightly pushy little girl was especially welcome given her sunny disposition. She petted the cat and complimented Tuffin on the ducks flying on the wall and the empty fish tank. She told Tuffin that she was conducting a school project on the diet of the people of Earth. She gave her story authenticity by sporting a brown leather satchel stuffed with schoolbooks and recipes. Tuffin expressed satisfaction with this explanation and praised the Martian for the ambition and scope of the project as he led her to his kitchen and opened the door to his larder. The little girl’s Martian eyes grew wide at the sight of Tuffin’s larder, stuffed as it was with tins of evaporated milk, chicken curry, meatballs in tomato source, and mixed fruit in syrup. Along with the tinned goods, Tuffin had white sliced bread, a jar of dried split peas, and a tin of mustard powder; but on a higher shelf she saw a long row of small boxes in pink, cream, brown, yellow, and tan that mystified her. Her exceptional brain was able to determine the contents without opening the packets, and it was clear they contained nothing edible to the human species. Tuffin noted her appreciation of his top shelf and lifted a packet down for her to examine. ‘I take one of these with every meal,’ he said, ‘in rotation through all the flavours, starting with strawberry, the pink one.’
The little Martian was intrigued. The packet clearly contained nothing but chemicals and colours. She had been brought up on good, wholesome, natural food that sprung out of the ground, the air, the walls, and floors, and, despite not tasting good, ensured that all aliens had regular bowels and eternal lives. She copied the contents of the top shelf into her satchel without Tuffin noticing, thanked him for this help, and left at a time a little before the time she arrived. Tuffin closed the door before he opened it to keep out the chill that wasn’t there, and the sun rose having never paused.
Back in her universe, she set about examining the packets. She tasted the pink powder first. It was disgusting. Then the cream one which was even worse. The brown one nearly made her sick. She progressed through all the colours and found them all equally inedible.
Disappointed that her journey had been in vain, and being an impetuous young lady, she tipped the rest of the contents of her satchel into the sink, turned on the taps, and attempted to flush the bilious carnival of colour away. Immediately, a boiling, bubbling fountain of syrupy slop burst out of her plughole and hurtled down the street, engulfing her marble-playing friends before they could escape. Like the collision of a million black holes, her universe
erupted into a galaxy of colours: pink, cream, brown, yellow, and tan; strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, banana, and butterscotch smells. The foaming brew swelled the Martian sewers and invaded their homes, running down the walls and windows and filling their baths. No corner of their universe was exempt from the tidal surge of foam which congealed in a multicolour slime, encrusting every inhabitant in a sugary shell and stopping them in their tracks for eternity.
Back on Earth, the postman had looked up ‘days when the sun didn’t rise’ in his copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The only account he found was in 79 AD, when, in a town near Naples, it was reported that the sun appeared to have stopped in it tracks, the inhabitants were engulfed in darkness for several days, and all of then died on the spot. ‘How frightening,’ he thought. ‘I am so glad I live in Kent.’ Meanwhile, Tuffin was enjoying lunch. As always, he preceded his spaghetti hoops with a generous portion of Sticky Whip. Today, it was butterscotch flavour, his favourite.
January 22, 2022