“It had been a quiet few days for Hungry Paul since his Yahtzee conversation
with Leonard, quiet days not being uncommon in his schedule. This had
given him the opportunity to ponder the expansion and contraction of the
universe as observed in localised form in the life of his best friend. Edwin
Hubble, had he looked inside Leonard with his telescope, would have
recorded that everything was just as the universe would ordain it. The thing is,
for Hungry Paul the world was a complicated place, with people themselves
being both the primary cause and chief victims of its complexity. He saw
society as a sort of chemistry set, full of potentially explosive ingredients
which, if handled correctly could be fascinating and educational, but which
was otherwise best kept out of reach of those who did not know what they
were doing. Though his life had been largely quiet and uneventful, his choices
had turned out to be wise ones: he had already lived longer than Alexander
the Great, and had fewer enemies, too. But he had now become awakened by
the thought that, no matter how insignificant he was when compared to the
night sky, he remained subject to the same elemental forces of expansion. The
universe, it seemed, would eventually come knocking. And so it was that over
a mid-morning scone he read a short article in the local freesheet with a sense
of cosmic destiny.”