‘As I have clearly said, it is hardly erroneous to refute that I am not this posited almighty being. I am, with great certainty, The Panperule, adorned by the most cataclysmic adjectives, and in my own exquisite image have I made you!’

  This last crystalline pronouncement, which contained The Panperule’s first use of the term ‘you’ in reference to the newly hatched brain, was accompanied by an unflattering representation of the younger Boltzmann organism which, until that moment, had not had the least idea of what it looked like. What it looked like was a crumpled lump of offal that was entering puberty, and though it did not go on for as long, the screaming this time was perhaps more plaintive and despairing (sixty-four). When the lament at last subsided to a hyphenated trail of tinkling pearls that were equivalent to hiccups or else snuffles, the apprentice entity, afflicted now by a tremendous loss of self-esteem (eleven), haltingly resumed brainkind’s first awkward and uncomfortable attempt at dialogue.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was just rather a shock to see myself in that condition … but I notice that I am not wholly in your image, lacking as I do one of those flexible nether extensions that appear to help with moving, gesturing and other verb activities. Could you provide for me an osseous flail of my own, in your capacity as manufacturer of all things that exist?’

  ‘We’ll see. For am I not The Panperule?’

  ‘That is the firm impression that I am incessantly receiving. May I ask if, in addition to the hoped-for train of knucklebones, I am to have an aural label of my own, a name by which you might informally refer to me?’

  The Panperule weighed up this proposition as a murmuration of titanic windmills, vanes a spinning blur like aeroplane propellers, droned across the panoramic spread of miracles behind it. In the end, the elder apparition grudgingly selected a one syllable cross-section from a harp glissando, unaware of its coincidental similarity to the much later terrestrial English boy’s forename.

  ‘You shall from this moment forth be known as Glynne.’

  ‘I am The Glynne, then?’

  ‘No. No, you’re just Glynne.’

  A short while after this exchange, the swarm of windmills now replaced by crackling foil marigolds of equal size, The Panperule relented and rewarded Glynne with the requested knobbly tailbone, strenuously observed into demi-material existence and only a little more discoloured, spindly, and feeble than its maker’s own. While this intentional disparity was largely motivated by no more than boundless vanity (fourteen), it was also a practical consideration born out of The Panperule’s concern that Glynne might view the gift of motion as an opportunity to wriggle off and hide: with the new body part consisting of, essentially, a length of knotted string that trailed from Glynne’s hindquarters in the style of goldfish excrement, The Panperule was confident that any such absconding could be hunted down successfully within a body length or two. In the event, however, this precaution proved unnecessary, Glynne being intimidated by the whole incarnated-existence thing and anxious to remain in the proximity of blue/pink space-time’s self-proclaimed creator.

  Thus was the impending universe’s first relationship commenced; its first romantic fable, its first drama and its first long con. The exploits of The Panperule and Glynne – which in their glassy speech balloon recounting by the former were a predecessor to the broadside ballad – would be sung exultantly throughout the furthest reaches of the bustling cosmos, by The Panperule and Glynne, although chiefly The Panperule. There were hair-raising anecdotes of how The Panperule’s heroics had saved Glynne from, chronologically, a life without the benefit of education, a stampede of maddened octahedrons, brick moths, what was possibly a violent gang war between libraries and boutiques, a candlestick tornado, and a dangerous clockslide.

  Obviously, it wasn’t all adventure. There were memorable frolics, gambols, idylls, romps, and games of chase in glades of monumental corkscrew. There were epic conversations or, more accurately, interrupted monologues that literally twinkled with The Panperule’s paperweight epigrams. There were companionable silences, as when they both observed the spectacular setting of an intricately folded origami sun, and for a moment, the spine-tips of the two brains would coil about each other hesitatingly, as though by accident. During the time they’d spent together, amidst all the frisking and the fun, The Panperule had slowly come to see Glynne in a different light. The smaller stature of the younger creature now seemed less stunted inferiority than it seemed slender or agreeably petite. Sometimes The Panperule would notice how appealing Glynne’s perceptual pompadour looked now it had grown out a little, or would gaze transfixed at the accelerated sinuous wriggle that Glynne had acquired to compensate for having a considerably shorter tail. Why had it never noted previously the aesthetically beguiling contours of Glynne’s plump occipital lobes, as seen from the rear? How had it overlooked the adolescent brain’s endearing speech impediment, the way that Glynne extruded audiovisual crystals that were less ellipsoid than they were cylindrical? The Panperule, both intrigued and alarmed by these unprecedented feelings, teetered unaware upon the brink of lechery (seventy-eight), or even love (one hundred and eleven).

  The inevitable consummation happened in the deep, mauve-shadowed valleys of a king-size ornamental ladies’ fan, where the hallucinatory couple drifted recreationally. The Panperule gently directed their discussion to a philosophical consideration of the sensory experience itself, moving by increments to a debate on methods by which this experience might be pleasurably enhanced. Without directly saying so, The Panperule strongly insinuated that, as supreme being, it was generously offering Glynne initiation into the most sacred mystery of all creation. Glynne – coquettishly, as it seemed to The Panperule – affected to be unsure what exactly was being proposed, practically begging the more knowledgeable brain to employ bottled film-clip language that was more explicit and direct, even more crude, the little tease. Above the great fan’s stiffly folded ridges floated laundry cloudbanks, lavender light dappling on crease and wrinkle, on unravelled cirrus threads.

  ‘It can be shown, empirically, that conscious and perceptive beings such as we are space-time’s prime phenomena, and therefore fully realising our perceptual potential is a holy duty and an existential obligation, wouldn’t you agree? Oh, Glynne, the gelatinous lustre on your come-hither parietal flank drives me crazy! We know that the vibration of our sensor-filaments permits both sight and hearing, while when these aforesaid hairs vibrate on one another, this allows our fishbowl phraseology and pictographic discourse. Glynne, I’ll bet you’ve got the tightest little hippocampus. By extrapolation from our metabiological design, we may deduce, then, that the ultimate perceptual experience is that induced by one sentient individual vibrating their sensory follicles against those of another. Baby, let’s get freaky, you and me. As for the practicalities of this exchange, it would appear most natural for the younger party to float upside down, above and facing their more venerable co-participant. Glynne, you’re so hot, I’m worried that I’ll prematurely shower you with shiny beads of moving light and music! It would seem mechanically expedient at this juncture for the inverted junior brain to tense its sensory protrusion and next introduce it to the open and relaxed concavity in the detector-wimple of its more mature and worldly colleague. Oh, Glynne, stick your ear stalk in my hairy eyehole and I shall not lose respect for you! The Panperule!’

  While not without misgivings, Glynne was, relatively speaking, a newcomer to existence, with no reason to suppose that what space-time’s self-styled creator had suggested was not something commonplace and wholly normal. Carefully perusing what amounted to a three-dimensional instruction manual in The Panperule’s suspended dialogue bubbles, Glynne rose to the recommended elevation and obligingly proceeded to turn upside down. In doing so, the Boltzmann ingénue observed that the surrounding cosmos, full of endlessly reiterated symmetries, looked much the same whichever way up one happened to be. Having attained the correct orientation, Glynne attempted to tense their perceptual forelock as The Panperule had stipulated, finding that the subsequent compression made the organ denser, slightly narrower, and possibly a little longer. After glancing to confirm that the presumably experienced older brain was in the right position just below, with its sensory toupee suitably dilated and unclenched, Glynne apprehensively inched forward to accomplish the required insertion, all the while expecting only darkness and abrupt curtailment of sensation. On that issue, Glynne could not have been more wrong.

  The Panperule, for its part, had developed a cerise cast to its colouration and was trembling excitedly at frequencies that generated a distinct subsonic hum. Receptor-cowlick gaping and relaxed, the universe’s firstborn shivered, several hundred thousand smart-hairs bristling in anticipation as they measured the approach of Glynne’s fibrous and sensitive baguette. Unable to restrain itself, The Panperule lunged forward for a sort of skull-free headbutt, hairstyle yawning like a dislocated python as it swallowed that of the inverted youngster, almost to the gleaming pseudo-scalp provided by Glynne’s frontal lobe, and then—

  And then a firework show involving beetle carapace and nebula; involving squeal, bleat and full orchestration as both individuals’ neural filaments fired randomly, shrilling against each other, back and forth, a strenuously bowed crescendo on a pre-organic violin of sparks and voices. Gasping cryptic art-house movie clips with inappropriate scores, the shuddering abominations squashed their coifs together furiously in a fugue of mutual, mixed-media sensation. Lubricated by a sweat of light and music, they exhilarated in the strobing slide-show rush of tessellated goldfish, blancmange demolitions and a landslide of sound-bite non-sequiturs, the bursts of imagery and noise occurring rhythmically, with an accelerating tempo. Growing more accomplished in this very satisfying new activity, the pair experimented daringly: Glynne was the first to shyly wonder just what it might feel like to rotate his signal-monitoring mohawk rather than just move it in and out, commencing with a single brain roll that gave the cerebral adolescent’s hirsute growth a solitary turn inside that of The startled-but-appreciative Panperule, like a repulsive pencil in a histrionic sharpener. So moved by the manoeuvre was the senior Boltzmann cheese-dream, it insisted Glynne continue this delicious clockwise circling motion while The Panperule commenced a complementary rotation in the opposite direction. They quickly discovered that the faster this was done, the more delirious and titillating the resultant riptide of berserk perception. Soon the two were spinning in the manner of a Catherine Wheel, bony flagella flung out by the centrifugal force and whipping up a radiating halo of aerated pink/blue microbubbles to surround their loud and dazzling consummation, their ridiculous debauch.

  Beginner’s luck permitted them to simultaneously attain to a climactic and convulsive state of rapture, a point at which the chaos of input overwhelmed the duo’s capacity to process further data. There was an obliterating flash of something that they didn’t know was white, a double thundercrack as whirling spine-tips snapped through the prelude to a sound barrier, and then a falling away from each other, enervated and both panting murmur-diamonds. There ensued a period of recovery. When dignity and the preceding air of scholarly composure were sufficiently restored, The Panperule vibrated up a lengthy glass-egg monologue describing the communion with Glynne in luridly embellished terms, originating both the lovers’ sonnet and pornography.

  Now there began a golden era, or at least an era of a richer pink, a deeper blue. The liberating intimacy of their recent shared experience effected profound changes in The Panperule’s view of existence; shifts in how it saw itself and, as importantly, how it saw Glynne. The senior intelligence now understood that prior to finding and accessorising its young protégé, life had been incomplete. It realised that the entire fast-breeding expanse of creation could have only been contrived as perfect backdrop scenery for the erotic passions of The Panperule and Glynne, an arbour of incessantly erupting form where to conduct their legendary trysts and amatory gyrations, their salacious meeting of the minds. It was as if the whole continuum, born to perfection, was contriving to improve on that already flawless state by first providing a svelte younger playmate for The Panperule, and then a means by which this tousled youth could drive the more full-bodied and mature brain past the brink of ecstasy (seventy-seven). The immaculate world, multiplying in its bounty all around them, was made truly Paradise by the advent of Glynne and the unending entertainment that Glynne represented. The unprecedented feelings that this thought engendered in The Panperule could be viewed as a loose equivalent of horniness, or free-floating arousal (ninety-one).

  All in all, the situation showed a marked improvement that would reinforce The Panperule’s slowly congealing philosophical position. In an as-yet-unimagined nutshell, this revolved around the notion that existence – being a phenomenon entirely engineered for the convenience of The Panperule – had an inbuilt direction, which was that things would, of physical necessity, get better, better yet, continually better, a perfection with no top to it, perfection escalated without end. The Panperule privately named this principle Thermo-never-die-namics, the idea that energy was like a party that might start out quiet and reserved but would warm up as it progressed. This satisfying, or at least self-satisfying, teleology would come eventually to have pivotal significance, but for the moment it served to provide The Panperule’s increasingly lascivious advances to the maybe underage brain with a justifying philosophic gloss. The sky, it seemed, was barely the beginnings of the limit.

  The initial femtosecond of existence was at this point roughly halfway through, and in that blissful afternoon The Panperule and Glynne excursed with libertine abandon. Through Arcadian meadows of car-aerial that swayed and whispered in a Brownian breeze the pair disported themselves, shameless in the endlessly expanding pleasure garden that was theirs alone. At every opportunity, the couple would put into practice the delightful new sport they’d invented, turning coital cartwheels above hybrid structures caught at an implausible halfway point between boxing glove and jukebox. They would roll together, sticky with found footage and industrial noise, and in their gooey pillow talk they would refer to this enthrallingly indecent pastime by the pet name [STACK OF CROCKERY DROPPED IN AN ECHO CHAMBER], a verb best transliterated as ‘clattersmashtinkling’. The Panperule clattersmashtinkled Glynne without surcease, both vertically and horizontally, from a libidinous variety of angles. If the mood was right, The Panperule would sometimes start on top and be the partner doing all of the compressing and inserting. In their meta-rut, they rattled the inflating aerodromes and stained the ever-dropping fire escapes of Heaven with their documentary ejaculate. Unsupervised, they gloried in their wanton freedom, though Glynne not so much, and scarce an instant passed but that The Panperule exulted in this unimprovably licentious universe, seemingly made for just the two of them.

  It was around then that they happened on the other brains, one and a quarter hundred of them.

  Blind and mute without their hairpiece augmentations, they hung in a cube formation, five by five by five, a school; a squadron; a flotilla; glinting like fresh mackerel. None of them knew the other ones were there, suspended in their ordered rows, oblivious as commuters. They were situated, tailless and thus motionless, in a void area between gargantuan duelling gyroscopes. However, owing to The Panperule and Glynne’s then ongoing preoccupation with a bout of heavy petting and their oblique angle of approach, the floating block of newly formed brains didn’t really register until the shrieking and tonsorially entangled couple were on top of them. There was a moment of stunned silence that went on for far too long before The Panperule remembered that it was supposed to have created everything. Not keen to be diminished in Glynne’s sensor-follicles, The Panperule went for a rather unconvincing save along the lines of, ‘See, Glynne, the incredible surprise gift I have fashioned for you on our anniversary! The Panperule!’ Which anniversary, of course, remained unspecified.

  From this point on, The Panperule was improvising frantically, though careful to sustain its aura of omniscient calm. When Glynne enquired what it was meant to do with all these brains, the senior organism haltingly explained that the new creatures were meant as a peer group for the young apprentice, friends of Glynne’s own age, that kind of thing. In an extemporaneous afterthought, The Panperule announced that it would generously allow Glynne to modify these new companions, and endow them with the sensate wigs required for them to learn the rudiments of spoken Panperule. It hinted that Glynne should regard this time-consuming task as a promotion, given that the youngster would be blessed with the extraordinary power to bring things into manifested form with only forceful observation. That Glynne had in fact owned this ability right from the outset was not mentioned.

  Luckily, thanks to the careful grooming of The Panperule, naivety was Glynne’s foremost defining quality. After a fairly slapdash lesson in applied manifestation from its lover and immediate superior, Glynne set industriously to work, imagining perceptive haircuts into being on the hovering platoon of inductees. Following The Panperule’s instructions, Glynne at first provided the insensible recruits with only bare protuberances, thus far unadorned by their plush of receptive cilia. In this way, the whole one hundred and twenty-five of them could simultaneously receive their rug of quivering antennae, and so get all the preliminary wailing over with at once.

  Predictably, when Glynne came to this part of the procedure, the effect was deafening. More unexpectedly, the vocal mass hysteria was also oddly moving. Floating there in front of the assembled screaming brains as though a medalled tyrant overlooking a parade, The Panperule found itself stirred by all those frightened voices lifting in a unison of terror; the appalled diapason of that trauma choir. Although initially annoyed by this intrusion on the hanky-panky it had so enjoyed with Glynne, The Panperule could see how having many Glynnes as subjects – an extended fan base, if you will – might be to its considerable benefit. As a significant improvement on conditions that seemed optimal already, this accorded nicely with the doctrines of Thermo-never-die-namics and The Panperule’s own personal philosophy regarding its ongoing incremental betterness. When the sheer pandemonium of some ten dozen newborn minds in horrible distress at last subsided into intermittent sobs and sniffles, space-time’s first self-satisfied panjandrum glided forward eerily to make its presentation. As was customary, this commenced with getting on a thousand repetitions of the blown-glass glyph and hunting-horn acoustic that identified The Panperule. The second word in the vocabulary, ‘Glynne’, by contrast, had reiterations that were barely into double figures.