Cautiously, the observatory head approaches Ding Yi. “Professor Ding, the governor will be here. Persuading her to accept the invitation wasn’t easy. Please, I beg you, use the influence you have so that she’ll increase our funding. Originally, we weren’t going to bother you with this, but the observatory is out of funds. The national government can’t give us any more money this year. We can only ask the province. We are the main observatory for the country. You can see what we’ve been reduced to. We can’t even afford the electric bill for our radio telescope. We’re already trying now to figure out what to do about this.” The observatory head points to the ancient star atlas plate Ding Yi has been admiring. “If selling antiquities weren’t illegal, we would have sold it long ago.”

At that moment, the governor and her entourage of two enter the auditorium. The exhaustion on their faces drags a thread of the mundane into this otherworldly place.

“My apologies. Oh. Hello, Professor Ding. Everyone. So sorry for being late. This is the first time it hasn’t been pouring outside in days. We’re still worried about flooding. The Yangtze River is close to its 1998 record high.”

Excitedly, the observatory head welcomes the governor and brings her to Ding Yi. “Why don’t we have Professor Ding introduce you to the idea of universal contraction….” He winks at Ding Yi.

“Why don’t I first explain what I understand, then Professor Ding and everyone else can correct me. First, Hubble discovered redshifts. I don’t remember when. The electromagnetic radiation that we measure from a galaxy is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This means, according to the Doppler effect, galaxies are receding from us. From that, we can draw this conclusion: The universe is expanding. We can also draw another conclusion: About fourteen billion years ago, the big bang brought the universe into being. If the total mass of the universe is less than some value, the universe will continue to expand forever; if it is greater than that value, then gravity will gradually slow the expansion until it stops and, eventually, gravity will cause it to contract. Previous measurements of the amount of mass in the universe suggested the first alternative. Then we discovered that neutrinos have mass. Moreover, we discovered a vast amount of previously undetected dark matter in the universe. This greatly increased the amount of mass in the universe and people changed their minds in favor of the other alternative, that the universe will expand ever more slowly until it finally starts to contract. All the galaxies in the universe will begin to gather at the gravitational center. At the same time, due to the same Doppler effect, we will see a shift in stars’ electromagnetic radiation toward the blue end of the spectrum, namely a blueshift. Now, Professor Ding’s unified field theory has calculated the exact moment the universe will switch from expansion to contraction.”