Repulsion Universe

A balloon that we are constantly traversing. A step west means two steps from east. There is a train, but it goes just halfway and slows to stopping. The continent is impossible. A lot of people write in to the editor. Its expansion is confounding motion. The ocean thins, becomes shallow, giant squid we find lying on the beach are revealed to be quite small. It was an optical illusion, like when you dipped your finger partway in the glass of water, how it looked crooked. You had to drink quickly; the glass expanded, cracked, lay in three pieces; the door receded as you reached. Remain in your seat, Elizabeth. It's the safest place. It's going to get very cold, and even your hands will be too far to reach.

Beautiful Complicated Aether

The aether is billions of invisible gears turning around hexagonal cells. Everything is hazy in this universe. It smells like smoke, an invisible factory working everywhere. Their are 27 words for types of lung disease, all are terminal. The coffins are very long and thin. And mechanical. There are no funeral processions because each coffin has a tiny engine. They rumble down the street and drive straight into the graves. At night when the streets are mostly empty except some people waiting for the late-night bus into town, the coffins race down the main drag going way too fast. Sometimes a coffin gets way crazy out of control and maybe collides with a telephone pole. The coffin is cracked along the side and someone's dead leg is showing. The ambulance and paramedics arrive, but what can they do? The coffin is looking pretty bad. It's not even sputtering any more, it's just lying there, not moving, leaking radiator fluid. So they take it down to the cemetery and bury it.

Beautiful Simple Aether

A sponge you can walk through. A magnet bends it. You hold the magnet next to your arm that bends below your elbow. Or, we are all underwater. Light is a wave. It doesn't slow our movement. Everyone speaks very slowly. Telegraph lines work really well. There is a piano in this universe, but it sounds muddled. It is underwater. I am also underwater. The water is invisible.

Simple Forces

There are centers of power. Capital cities in the world of particles. There are little stones in space and there are God's laws causing them to fall towards and away from each other. There is nothing else besides this. Sometimes even God falls apart a little. People speak French in this universe and the King has not been killed. Nothing rotates as it falls. Not even a cat or a piano. Paris decrees gravel be laid down everywhere.