The Accidental Physicist

The cave was the villagers' fault. They'd been going on about it for days — "the sacred cave," "the cave of the ancestors," "the cave that Chief Clive must definitely not enter because it is forbidden." Which, obviously, meant Clive was going to enter it.

He went at night, because forbidden caves feel more appropriate at night. Squawk came too, perched on his head, muttering about bad decisions.

The entrance was hidden behind a curtain of vines at the base of a cliff. Inside, the air changed — cooler, metallic, wrong for a cave. Clive's hooves clicked on stone that gave way to... tile? He squinted in the darkness.

Then he found the light switch.

It wasn't a cave. It was a laboratory. Old, abandoned, covered in dust — but a laboratory. Machines lined the walls, their screens dark, their cables coiled like sleeping snakes. A chalkboard stood in the centre, covered in equations that looked like someone had tried to write down a headache.

"What is this place?" Clive whispered.

"Trouble," Squawk said. "This place is trouble."

Clive approached the chalkboard. The equations meant nothing to him — symbols and numbers arranged in patterns that might as well have been modern art. He picked up a piece of chalk, mostly because it was there, and started doodling. A spiral. A banana. A little sheep wearing a crown, because why not.

The room started humming.

It was subtle at first — a vibration in the floor, a flicker in the overhead lights. Then the equations on the chalkboard began to move. The symbols rearranged themselves, sliding across the surface like they were alive, incorporating Clive's doodles into their patterns.

"What did you do?" Squawk squawked.

"I drew a banana!"

A machine in the corner coughed to life. Sparks. Grinding gears. A sound like reality clearing its throat. And then, in the middle of the room, a hole opened in the air.

Not a hole in the wall. A hole in the air. It was round, about the size of a door, and inside it was... everything. Colours that didn't have names. Shapes that hurt to look at. The faint sound of something that might have been music or might have been screaming.

"That's a wormhole," Squawk said, with the calm of someone who'd given up on being surprised.

"A what?"

"A wormhole. A tear in space-time. You opened a tear in space-time by drawing a banana."

The wormhole pulsed. Then it pulled. Clive felt it in his wool first — every fibre standing on end, leaning toward the hole like iron filings toward a magnet. Then his hooves started sliding on the tile.

"SQUAWK—"

"HOLD ON TO SOMETHING—"

There was nothing to hold on to. The wormhole swallowed Clive like a drain swallows water — one second he was in the lab, the next he was nowhere, tumbling through a tunnel of light and noise and the overwhelming sensation that the universe was reshuffling itself around him.

He caught glimpses as he fell. A planet shaped like a ring. A fleet of ships made of crystal. Something that looked like a traffic jam, but in space. A cat, floating, looking unbothered.

Then he hit the floor.

Metal floor. Cold. Bright lights overhead. And standing above him, looking down with enormous glowing eyes, were creatures that were very definitely not from Earth.

They were tall — seven feet, maybe eight — with silver skin that caught the light like water. Their eyes were the size of tennis balls, luminous and unblinking. One of them held a device that beeped as it scanned Clive.

"Remarkable," the alien said, in a voice that sounded like wind chimes. "A wool-based lifeform. And it appears to have created a stable wormhole."

"I drew a banana," Clive said from the floor.

"The calculations are flawless," another alien said, studying a holographic display. "This creature has achieved what our civilisation has attempted for centuries."

Clive sat up. "I really need you to understand that I drew a banana and this happened."

They weren't listening. Alarms started blaring — red lights, spinning, the universal language of "something bad is coming." A holographic display showed a fleet of ships approaching, angular and menacing.

"The Galactic Bureau of Order," one alien hissed. "They've detected the wormhole."

The tallest alien turned to Clive. "You created the wormhole. You're the only one who can guide us through it. Will you help us escape?"

Clive looked at the aliens. He looked at the approaching fleet on the display. He looked at Squawk, who had somehow made it through the wormhole and was perched on an alien's head, looking as bewildered as a parrot can look.

"I don't know how any of this works," Clive said.

"That hasn't stopped you before," Squawk pointed out.

Fair enough.

"Alright," Clive said. "Let's go."