Free Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas

the monster. And in the end, you will come to nothing . After a quick shower, I’d taken B to the beach. I did this every morning in the winter, and some days it woke me up, but most days it didn’t. Today I’d been looking at all the little barnacles clinging to the rocks, and remembering Darwin writing about their evolution, and the female barnacles that at one stage had a ‘husband in each pocket’ – like Libby, I’d thought with a smile. If we were living in some sort of Second World, what was the point of evolution? I supposed Newman would say that the whole point of evolution in the First World would be the ultimate creation of the right scientists, and then their Omega Point. I wondered what the creationists would make of that idea: that the ultimate purpose of evolution is to create God.
    While I’d been looking at barnacles, B had been fishing for a big rock that I kept throwing in the sea for her. She strutted around with it between times as if carrying the rock was her important job. Animals hadn’t seemed to figure much in Newman’s afterlife. They had in Plato’s, I remembered. If you were sick of being a human, you could ask the Spindle of Destiny if you could come back as a dog or a horse or a sparrow and have a less troublesome life. According to Plato, evenOdysseus chose to come back as a normal citizen in his next life because he couldn’t be bothered to have adventures any more. But it didn’t sound as if Newman was a fan of the quiet life. What was wrong with sitting around eating pizza if it made you happy and you didn’t hurt anyone? Why was this worse than, say, slaying a dragon or rescuing a maiden? The idea of a thousand years of adventure just made me feel tired.
    After a while longer in the ferry queue I thought I was going to drop off, so I started doing the Waterwheel, a breathing exercise I’d learned a long time ago. To breathe like a waterwheel, you breathe through your nose but imagine your breath entering your body at the base of your spine, continuing up your spine, stopping for a second at the bottom of your throat and then tumbling down the front of your body, exiting somewhere around your navel. The Waterwheel eventually creates the sensation that you are breathing in and out at the same time, and that the air is like water constantly flowing around you. It is both relaxing and energising at the same time.
    I learned the Waterwheel when I was eight. It was the beginning of October in 1978, and my school was closed because of the strikes. We hadn’t had a holiday that year because of my brother Toby being born, but suddenly one day my father said, half to me, and half to my mother, ‘Meg would like a holiday, wouldn’t you?’ and the next day we got in our old car and drove to Suffolk. It wasn’t much of a holiday at first. My mother was busy with Toby, and my father was working on an important paper and worrying about his promotion application. We’d rented, or perhaps borrowed, a house on the edge of a forest, and for the first few days I simply sat on my bed and read books about children who go on holiday and find criminals in caves,or enchanted castles or dungeons with treasure in them. My parents occasionally said I should go out and get some fresh air, but I got the impression they didn’t much care whether I did or not. Still, when the books ran out I went off to explore the forest. Perhaps I wanted an adventure, like the ones I’d been reading about. Perhaps I did just need some fresh air.
    Each morning I would make cheese and pickle sandwiches and a flask of tea and go out for the whole day, wondering what I’d do if I met a fairy, or came across a monster in a lair. I knew I wouldn’t tell my father. It was a bright, crisp autumn, and early in the morning cobwebs glowed white with dew between the low branches of trees, and robins and thrushes sang high-pitched songs that echoed through the forest. Cones were beginning to grow on the branches of