Reading Instead continues from yesterday
“You don’t need to worry about Louise,” she began. “Wherever she is, she’s fine.”
“But,” said Niamh.
“If she’s not on this planet-”
“Ondine! Will you shut that book and concentrate!” shouted Ms Garlic. There really was no need to shout, she’d frightened the life out of poor Katherine.
Ondine stopped reading. It seemed the lesson had moved on from quadratic equations. Ms Garlic was explaining the history of the word geography. Two thousand years ago, it was invented by combining the words geo, meaning earth and graphein, meaning writing, or description. At the time geography was all about describing the world, mapping out rivers, mountains, every sort of environment, and whoever lived there. She said that it had changed over the years, and turned to write on the board.
“If she’s not on this planet, on this plane of existence, somewhere, then she’s entered another dimension. That’s not a scary thing. It’s probably exactly the same as this one. There’ll be another one of all of us, and she might not even notice.”
“What? Might not notice what?” said Niamh.
“That she’s somewhere else.”
“Really?” Niamh asked, letting that sink in. Fenella nodded, hoping that would be the end of the discussion. It wasn’t. “So are we just supposed to, what are we supposed to do?”
“Nothing,” said Fenella, avoiding eye contact.
Niamh’s shoulders slumped.
“We can’t do nothing,” she said.
Fenella closed her eyes. They were going around in circles.
“I’m going to do nothing,” said Fenella.
There was a peaceful silence, but only for a moment. Niamh had another question.
“So how does that work? The other dimension?” she asked.
“Well,” said Fenella. “We’re three dimensional, time is the fourth dimension, and then there’s about ten more, no, I mean, there’s ten all together. I don’t really know why they need so many, because basically they just mean that anything is possible.”
Niamh waited for more, so Fenella kept talking.
“It’s, not just that anything’s possible, it’s that every possibility has an actual reality. It’s all just in theory, but I guess it makes sense, if the Universe goes on forever, then there’s room in it for every possibility.”
Niamh smiled.
“Every possibility?” she echoed Fenella. “So that means there’s another world where I became a doctor? And another one where I’m a professional ice skater?”
“And another one where you’re a stegosaurus,” Fenella nodded. “The tenth dimension is where there are no boundaries to what can happen, we can’t even comprehend the extent to which it goes on. The possibilities are infinite.”
“Wow, that’s incredible,” said Niamh. For a moment they both thought of all the possibilities. “But if everything is possible, then how can you be so sure Louise is okay?”
Fenella kicked herself for not seeing that coming. Of course, Niamh was right, because of infinity, every good and bad thing possible could have happened. Would have happened. And wouldn’t have happened. Luckily, she didn’t have to think of a response.
“Did someone say my name?” said Louise.
“Louise!” gasped Niamh.
“Ondine!”
“Yep, yep, yep, I’m listening,” said Ondine, shutting the book and sitting up straight. Now that she’d finished that chapter, she could definitely concentrate on what ever it was Ms Garlic was going on about.
***
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