By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Wormhole
BBC Sky at Night speculated last week about wormholes, space-time portals between dimensions. We pass through these between Saugatuck, Douglas and reality each day.
My favorite is on board an Interurban bus. Step up, a door wheezes shut and gravity spits you out through its vortex, the Blue Star Bridge.
The BBC says a Chinese research team headed by physicist Kamal Nandi found if the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy were a wormhole, it could create two images of a distant star.
Sci-fi writers find such speculation indispensable. Film classics ranging from “Donnie Darko” to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” to “Godzilla vs. Megaguirus” take wormholes for granted, although no one has ever found one. In other science news, if all the ifs and buts were candies and nuts, what a merry Christmas we would have.
My own research shows, through the eyes of Kamal, I need only needles to poke holes through the time-space fabric folding back on itself to reveal no Saugatuck-Douglas Chinese restaurants.
“I thought we were all about diversity here,” I complained. That’s one more thing we have in common: one complaint makes you hungry for more. Who’s here to hear?
“Go to Holland,” my research team advised. “The Interurban sends buses there every Tuesday. Walk into the Wok Inn, you’ll never walk out.”
“Why not Douglas?” I asked and was teleported to behold Blue Star Highway split into multi-lanes painted, striped and signed so I couldn’t find how to turn into the Red Dock safely.
“It’s closed,” said my research team. “After years of government-funded studies, we’ve found snow everywhere.”
“The Chinese,” I said, “contend if I pass through a wormhole, two images of the Star of Saugatuck should appear, each docking for rum punch and poetry readings.”
Poring over new images from the Hubble space telescope, my research team concluded my take on Nandi’s findings was loose indeed.
“All I want,” I cried, “is a plate of dim sum, ballads read aloud and Baccardi mixed with Hawaiian Punch. Instead, I see Blue Star tangled like Chinese noodles leading to a park named for beer.
“Beery Field is the heart of Douglas,” they said.
“Which is what?” I asked. “A city? A village?”
“A state of mind.”
“Turn the bus around,” I commanded. “Let’s go to Saugatuck instead.”
No Chinese restaurants appeared there either. Snow had driven complainers indoors. One griped about lack of sidewalk plowing and salt spread; another about plowed snow piled where he and employees park so customers have no access, plus too much sodium threatening summer begonia beds.
Across the river sat four floating homes and lawsuits piled high as Mt. Baldhead. More lawyers had been unleashed to go over lease agreements to turn the radome into do-re-me-fa- …
“What kind of alternate universe is this?” Kamal’s team asked upon arrival.
“Who knew you were coming?” I asked.”
“The Chinese flew,” Donald Trump explained.
The researchers started applying for grants to collaborate on co-operated laboratories where they could speculate if a tree fell down the slope due to spraying for Oriental bittersweet, could they win more grants so their research would be more sound. “There are all sorts of invasive species,” Nandi enthused, “we can eradicate.”
“Starting with you,” said Trump.
“Where’s your wife from?” asked Nandi.
“Enough xenophobia!” I cried. “Science shows in-breeding increases likelihood of mutations. Everyone is from somewhere else.”
“Not me,” claimed one local proudly. “I’m the 20th generation born in the old Douglas Hospital.
“I didn’t know you were Native American,” I said. “Or what now is The Kirby was a medical center that long. Or it was/is exactly where we stand now.”
“There’s only one way to solve this,” Nandi said, calling the Interurban. The blue bus transported us through a wormhole to Pullman Tavern.
“Let me guess,” said Zeke the Bartender, assessing our crew of mixed physicists, ex-president, lawyers and pundit. “Orange Blossoms, Gunfires and Chit-Cha Toddies …”
“With eggrolls,” added Perry Mason.
“Aren’t you fictional?” Zeke asked.
Another TV star appeared in the distance: Trump in his former role on “The Apprentice.”
“There’s a wormhole in my orange,” Nandi complained.
In walked the BBC Sky at Night team.
“Why do journalists write about things you don’t understand?” asked Zeke.
“Our jobs,” answered a Brit. “We’re here in the colonies to cover Prince Harry and Meghan.”
“They’re in California,” said Trump.
“We got lost trying to pass through Douglas,” said another Brit.
“More invasive species,” groused Trump.
“What do Harry and Meg have to do with wormholes?” asked Nandi.
“What does this have to do with anything?” I asked.