The Collectors run billions of experiments on the time scales of universes, subtly tuning the galaxy parameters this way and that, making bangs bigger and lesser, dialing fundamental physical constants a hair’s breadth at a time. They are continually sharpening pencils and squinting into telescopes. When the Collectors have solved a problem that was formerly mysterious to them, they destroy that universe and recycle the materials into their next experiment. Our life on Earth represents an experiment in which they are trying to figure out what makes people stick together. Why do some relationships work well while others fail? This is completely mysterious to them. When their theoreticians could not see a pattern, they proposed this problem as an interesting question to explore. And so our universe was born. The Collectors construct lives of parametric experiments: men and women who adhere well but are shot past one another too briefly—brushing by in a library, passing on the step of a city bus, wondering just for a moment.
