Everything that was ever written on any physical or metaphysical surface anywhere, is just a story. Sometimes they’re completely true and inspired by actual events, sometimes they’re not and completely made up, but mostly they’re anywhere in between. Sometimes they’re very much worth expanding on, and sometimes they’re best being left exactly how they are. They should always be told however, by anyone who wants to tell them, however they want to, and shared with anyone who wants to hear them.

Some stories should simply be banned, and never left lying around for others to stumble over. They often have a highly disturbed and rabid niche following, who delight in the depravity or vividly realised sheer horror. Hey-ho, each to their own though (what can you do). I’m pretty sure that this isn’t one of those stories, so it should be fine, the contents of this paragraph are as dramatic and unsettling as it’s ever going to get from here on out. Now that we have dicovered and agreed upon the boundaries, we can move forwards within them, mostly somewhere safely down the middle of the right side of the road (unless you’re somewhere where they drive on the wrong side the road, then you have to drive on the wrong side, instead of the right side, which feels dangerous and will probably take some time getting used to).

Who knows where this road leads to? And who cares? As long as it has something cool and different and interesting at the end of it (unless you’ve been down it before, then you know just fine where it goes). As long as our road has interesting and varied trees or odd and interesting buildings, clear signage, bottles of water, and places to stop and pee, then there’s probably not much to complain about.

We are not alone in the Universe. Anybody who actually entertains that we might be, is looking at dancing shadows on a cave wall somewhere, and not thinking about things sensibly at all. We might sometimes feel like fleas on a single dog, but of course there are other dogs out there somewhere, and some of them definitely have fleas. We don’t know the true size or limits of the Universe, and we never will, and to think we can, is also not being very sensible. Thinking that way is something like being the captain of a ship, who hasn’t seen anything on the horizon for a very long time, and now fears that his ship is doomed to fall off the edge of the world (because nothing else could possibly exist any further than any of this).

We have woven or found explanations for much, and in much detail, but many of the holes that we have discovered are empty, or the answers provided are still not a perfect fit, and are often very incomplete. Sometimes the holes are simply filled with chewing gum, and painted over with nail polish, roughly the same colour as before. We’re not sure if the jigsaw puzzle we just got stuck into is turned the right way up, or if this section really fits with that one. Even the brightest scientist in the universe must know all this, probably all too well, and if they don’t, they are probably not the brightest at all, and might be just pretending to be a scientist, by wearing a lab coat, smoking a pipe, and trying their best to look serious and thoughtful.