It was New Year’s Eve on the last day of the universe. Without looking away from his television screen, Benjamin Jones committed the most important act of his life. In all of space-time, in fact. He reached for his mug.
Benjamin loved tea.
13.772 billion years before, give or take, depending on some small error bars, events were set in motion. The first of these events took the form of a tiny explosion, as an infinitesimal point of nothing got nudged out of kilter in a very, very specific way and the resulting energy imbalance expanded into absolutely everything. More or less.
Benjamin really loved his tea. Nothing fancy, just an everyday brand that had become his favourite after years of experimentation. It was, however, made exactly how he liked it, and Benjamin was an expert. Not many people knew Benjamin was a master tea maker, least of all Benjamin himself, since strictly speaking, he was mainly an expert in making tea for Benjamin. Thousands and thousands of cups over years and years, each one in some small way a little closer to perfection than the last, with small adjustments in milk (first or last, volume, brand, fat content, species of origin), how long to leave the bag in, temperature, whether to squeeze, how hard to squeeze. Even the right shape, colour and thickness of mug was considered, not to mention where and when the tea should be drunk, a significant part of the taste experience being perception, environment, and of course, mood. Countless small decisions, some conscious, most unconscious, all directed toward improvement, via the satisfying end-point feedback of an increasingly magnificent cup of tea.
The universe was also coming into being on Benjamin’s television: 65 inches of glorious tru-color, [sic] ultra-hi-definition [sic] doing wonderful justice to how it must have looked, if one was able to stand outside of space-time. It was very impressive.
Benjamin was so impressed it took him a moment to realise the mug in his hand felt odd. It was his favourite mug and had been for some time. He knew how it should feel when full of tea. Excellent tea. He knew the amount of force his fingers and thumb should need to exert to balance and lift, exactly how warm the body of the mug should feel against the outside of his index and middle fingers after the optimum cooling period (depending on ambient conditions).
The mug was cold. Cold and empty. Benjamin, forced to switch mental track, moved his gaze from television to mug and a small but growing feeling of spiritual emptiness manifested behind his solar plexus. The source of this uneasiness was the realisation that he hadn’t actually made the tea that should have been within easy reach at this, the moment of want, the moment of need. He had certainly thought about it, he remembered that much, but had evidently not converted that thought into action. He began to get to his feet but stopped, hands on the arms of the chair. With all the cruelty of associative memory, thinking about his feet and the kettle caused him to remember that he had meant to go out and replenish his depleted tea stock earlier in the evening, but this too he had forgotten. “You know what thought did?” he heard his father shouting from his childhood, “Nothing! He just thought he did!” The shop would be closed now. Perhaps even closed for the holiday.
Benjamin sat very still, his eyes fixed on the television. In the black, black pupils of those eyes, two tiny reflected universes continued to evolve. Universes of energy, then particles and patterns coalescing within them. No, the particles and patterns were the energy, an eternity of time, unimaginable numbers of galaxies, scattering like dust, each teeming with uncountable stars, forming, exploding, reforming, incredible forces generating heavier atoms, molecules, chemistry, and in one tiny corner of one dust-mote galaxy: life.
The telephone rang. Not his mobile, but the landline which he never used. No one used landlines.
He completed the action of standing, interrupted a second earlier, and answered the call, slightly anxious that he had no forewarning of the identity of the caller.
“Hello?”
“Hello Benjamin.” What a beautiful voice. Oh, it was… well, the voice was very familiar, he would place it in a moment.
“Yes, speaking, what can I do for you?”
“Well, first let me wish you a happy new year, Benjamin. Are you having a nice evening?”
“Er, yes, happy new year to you too”
“Thank you Benjamin, that’s very kind. Now, how about your evening, tell me how you feel, Benjamin.” The voice was warm, nice, like a drink with friends in leather armchairs. So familiar. Yes! Of course, it was… Blast! Gone.
“What?”
“I need to know how you feel. Right now in this moment.”
“I’m alright. I was just watching TV. Look- “
“Benjamin, I need to know how you feel about the tea. It’s important.”
Benjamin stared at his mug, then at the window.
“Can you see me?”
“Please Benjamin, you must tell me how you feel. A great deal depends on it, and in a moment you’ll have forgotten.” The tone was friendly, but insistent and authoritative, a favourite teacher you wanted to please. “I will explain, but first take a moment for me, look inside yourself. Be absolutely honest and tell me about the tea.”
Benjamin shrugged. “Okay, well, I was watching a documentary I’ve been looking forward to, and when there’s something good on, I always like to have a cup ready before it starts.”
“Ah, yes!, anticipation! How wonderful. Tell me, this cup of tea, examine your memory, how much were you expecting to enjoy it? As you reached for it, what were your thoughts?”
“I love tea.” Benjamin thought back to the moment the universe had exploded into being, “And this one was going to be beautiful. Perfect. I was really going to enjoy it, but…” He shrugged.
“But what, Benjamin? Don’t stop, this is fascinating, exactly what I’d hoped for. May I call you Ben?”
“Er, I prefer Benjamin.”
“Of course, I’m sorry, that was crass of me. Tell me, what happened next?”
“Well, I realised I’d forgotten to make the tea and the programme had started, and as if that wasn’t bad enough…” Benjamin trailed off as he examined his memory of a few minutes ago and felt ridiculous.
“Benjamin, I think you’ve been trivialising your strength of feeling in this matter, as you believe the context to be trivial, but you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“Well not getting a cup of tea isn’t the biggest thing, I mean with everything that’s going on in the world, it does seem petty.”
“You need to give yourself permission to engage honestly with your emotions. You feel how you feel, regardless of what prompts it. I’m sorry, I’m interrupting. Please, do carry on.”
“No, you’re right. I was really looking forward to a cup of tea and some TV, and if I’d just remembered to go to the bloody shop, everything would be okay. Everything.” Benjamin thought of the unused, unbought boxes of teabags on the shelf in the deserted shop, sitting useless in the dark, their potential untapped, while he stood impotent a short walk away. For some reason he thought of the plants the tea had come from, its long journey between continents. He thought of the people who had picked the leaves and packed them, the drivers of the trucks, the crew of the ship and the things they must have seen on the road and the sea. He wondered what all those people were up to at that exact moment in all their lives. He thought of the colossally destructive majesty of the collapsing star, in which all their elements had been formed, and all the long, empty wilderness of time as they all slowly came back together, guided only by the miniscule gravitational force between tiny particles. How long must two grains of sand have orbited each other before they met and started the whole process again? He felt oddly emotional, and tears ran down his cheeks.
“I felt terrible,” he said, “really disappointed. I know there are worse things in the world, but right there, right then, I felt bloody awful.” In fact, the more Benjamin thought about it, the more the voice at the other end of the telephone was right: this was important.
“I felt it in my stomach, and then all the way up to my brain, and I knew that if I’d just remembered the tea, if the world had been just a bit different, a little bit fairer, then things would be fine, but they’re not.” Benjamin picked up the cradle of the telephone and returned to his seat. The universe was still going. “I still feel terrible,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Benjamin, to ask you to think about it, I really am. Often it’s not the absoluteness of an experience that matters where feelings are concerned, but the context, the priming factors throughout your narrative.”
“Eh?”
“I won’t go into detail, but I said I would explain, so I will tell you that this evening has been the culmination of a great deal of organisation over a long period of time. A lot of hard work. This has not been a trivial matter.”
“Oh. Okay.” Benjamin regarded his empty mug. He was starting to feel uneasy and he wasn’t sure he wanted tea anymore. ”Well what happens now? Where do we go from here?”
“To be absolutely honest with you Benjamin, I don’t know, I just needed to explore exactly how you felt at that specific moment, under those specific circumstances. What happens next is no real concern of mine. I expect things will carry on, one way or another.”
“Who are you anyway? Do I know you?”
“No, you don’t know me, Benjamin, but thank you so much for your help. It really has been most instructive. I’m sure you’ll feel better when you get some tea.”
“Okay. Well, it’s been weird talking to you, but I think I’ll just have to try to enjoy my documentary without tea.”
“Oh, that’s not a documentary, Benjamin, but do enjoy it.”
The line went dead, leaving Benjamin holding the receiver, the universe reflected in his eyes.
AA
