Prologue

In the begin­ning, there was nothing.

And there wasn’t even much of that.

Just the occa­sional dol­lop of noth­ing­ness splat­tered hap­haz­ardly, and with­out design, on a can­vas of absolute void.

And then the big belch hap­pened. And every­thing that was ever going to be any­thing came to be. The very stuff that would some­day be birds and bees and rocks and mimes and car­ports and elk and Stephen Fry and mocha lattes and girls and boys and, oh, just every­thing, popped into exis­tence in a frac­tion of a cos­mic sec­ond. Even if you’d been there you would have missed it, it was that quick. And it was awesome.

A sun was born and plan­ets formed, in that way that they do. And at least one of those plan­ets, a bluish/greenish affair of mid­dling size, made the hith­erto unprece­dented mis­take of form­ing rudi­men­tary life. Like a fore­arm tat­too of Boba Fett flip­ping the bird, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

From there things moved rather quickly — evo­lu­tion took over and blobs became big­ger blobs and they, in time, became fish and, with­out much delay, and skip­ping over a bit here & there, they became you and me and everyone.

Unfor­tu­nately, it was really all just a great big waste of time.

Because through a series of ridicu­lous and unlikely events, all of it — time, space, Stephen Fry, every­thing — would come screech­ing to a dead halt on the morn­ing of April 2nd, 2010. And utter noth­ing­ness would once again reign supreme.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.