Not with a bang, but a tumble. In the beginning was noise. A cataract of worlds or entities rolling and cascading in fearful clatter. The cosmic atom, the world-box, has disgorged. Here is bursting galactic expansion into free area. Avalanche of noise and bright color. Not chaos, but thunderous exodus; and every particle bearing its own thunder sign. This is beginning, this is happening! Let no least part of it ever forget the primordial tumble that is the beginning!
Then, the stable state - and memory. The first thought ever thought anywhere, anywhen: It's as though I've been here before.'
-R. A. Lafferty, 'Symposium', collected in Omega, edited by Roger Elwood (1973)
