I feel obliged to tell you, before we start, that you need not read this story. I am not writing this down for your benefit, but for mine, because somehow I believe that sacrificing it to you will end this memory's unsolicited visit. And, although I want to rid myself of its niggling presence, I must confess I would rather not give it up to you. The memory of that lonely afternoon and its quiet corners has been mine for quite some time now. It is my thoughts that have dog-eared its pages and written in its margins and bent its spine. It is my name that stares out, blotted, from the first page. Then again, if I give it to you as a story, it will never be yours and not-mine. It will be ours and not-ours. It will grow and swell with the insights of your imagination, re-animating the passages that have worn through with the insistent tread of my fingertips.

It was a chill autumn's afternoon, lit by a strange shade of yellow; its edges stained with the unsettled air that inspires soliloquies. My fingers felt hollow and yet leaden at my sides. I had forgotten my gloves in English class earlier that day and now I made a mental note to collect them before I went home. In the meantime I fidgeted clumsily, trying to restore some life to the white flesh.

"Do you ever just stop, Anne-Marie? Well, do you?" Miss Lecter's words were crisp, like the precise strokes of my mother's needle as she had sewn up the hem of my tunic.

Miss Lecter was my Grade Eight science teacher. She was nice in the way that young teachers sometimes are. Her writing on the board was rounded and slightly skew. And she seemed at home in her classroom, among the tall wooden desks that were somehow damp and soft to the touch, as if putrefied by age and wear. That was all that I knew of my Grade Eight science teacher, and all I really cared to know.

She knew that I had no interest in the periodic table. She also knew my name, it seemed.

"Anne-Marie?" she called again.

The school day had ended with the bell ten minutes before. We were alone in the classroom, staring at each other over piles of loose paper that rustle in my mind though they did not make a sound at the time. Stray girls passing by looked curiously in through the window and a scattering of dusty oak leaves, propelled by a sudden gust of wind, peered around the door frame.

Miss Lecter removed her glasses, balancing the frames on her knee, and looked at me. She sat and talked, I stood and listened.
"Have you ever just stopped, Anne-Marie, and looked around you? Have you? Well then, what might you notice if you did?"
I assumed this was rhetorical and so I kept my mouth tightly shut.

"You would see that true beauty is really only the ordinary cast in a better light. That the faint gleam of the origins of everything is that of sheer randomness. That everything - everything! - is a mere lottery.

"Random," she repeated, tasting the word, and leant back in her chair with her hands clasped in her lap and the rim of her glasses clenched between thumb and forefinger.

"I've heard people say that it is inevitable that there is intelligent life out there," she said, waving her hand loosely at the ceiling, "in the cold, dark lottery that is space. The universe is huge, potentially infinite, and so reason dictates that there is someone else out there to talk to - to listen - just as it insists that everything that is possible will eventually be, in the cold, dark well that is time. I understand that these are the hypotheses of most of your classmates. I have ears, Anne-Marie, even if I am back there in that musty storeroom. It seems that our impressionable minds, although unable to grasp the basics of chemistry, can grasp the mechanics of the functioning of the universe.

"It is, I agree, rather egotistical to assume that we are 'It', the pinnacle of creation. But, it seems to me that all of this inane questioning is not the glorious pursuit of knowledge, but the need to map out our insecurities on a large, tangible scale. We either suffer from serial egoism or from a mass inferiority complex. Either way, I think we can conclude that this philosophising isn't getting us very far.

"Ah, of course. I can see the greasy cogs wheeling in your head. They squeak nonetheless... There is always science. The home of truth, knowledge and all other things of inherent beauty.

"Science is only the accumulation of theories, my dear. It mustn't be taken too seriously. If there is any conspiracy here, I think this is it. The foundations of science, that beautiful religion of the enlightened."

Stepping away from her desk, Miss Lecter began to pace the first row of desks, replacing the haphazard chairs in their preferred position. She was so intent on her task that I thought for an instant she had forgotten about me.

"Do you know how scientists postulated the Big Bang, Anne-Marie? It is an important question. Never ever forget to question, my dear. It is something you seem to be good at.

"So, do you know the answer?"
"No, ma'am."

I hesitated for a moment before answering, convinced that this question must have had a predecessor - a seemingly irrelevant comment during class or a page of recommended reading.

"A scientist named Hubble found that the universe was expanding, and that perhaps it was once packed into a single dense point in space. That point is the Big Bang and the origins of everything. It is a very neat theory, don't you think? Very neat." As she positioned the final stool in the first row and moved on to the second.

Miss Lecter did not have a loud voice. As she moved further back into the classroom, it was picked up in a petite echo and offered to me. Sweeping a scattering of pencil and eraser shavings into her hand, she said:

"In the Imagine, it is possible that This, all of this," looking at me poignantly, "is just God's attempt to get a word in edgewise. A transcendental linguistic experiment." Her direct stare burnt with enthusiasm. I stood stock still and tried not to breath.

"So, imagine it, Anne-Marie. The universe is expanding, with stretch marks the shade of red light, and this expansion of galaxies, which contain stars and planets and life and amazing, unbelievable things, is just the enormous jaws of God Almighty opening up to emit a word. Just one word; profound and miraculous, or bland and ordinary. Or maybe even two while He's at it.

"But we would never be able to withstand it, you know. We would be destroyed by the sheer force of nothingness that spews from knowledge - or at least that's my theory. So 'poof' we will go, and it will be as if we had never existed at all. And that will be all right. It won't matter much, in the larger scheme of things, as that single word reverberates and breaks into pieces every one of our pathetic theories.

"The sublime will have spoken, made itself manifest. I imagine it might be glad that we had all finally shut the hell up.

"Then (and here I am just freewheeling, you know), thrilled with this ordinary and fascinating means of expression, He might open up his jaws once more, slowly and intentionally, spawning another species to aid him in his articulation. Like noisy, senseless, arrogant slaves. To die with a single sound from his lips, murdered by truth. Once again."

Miss Lecter stood, one hand stroking the smooth wood of the stool, a smile contorting her academic expression. She looked coyly at me as I stood breathless and intimidated, and giggled like a schoolgirl. With one cursory look around the dishevelled classroom, my science teacher put a hand to the left side of her head and patted down a few loose strands of hair.

Walking quickly to her desk to collect her bag, Miss Lecter seemed to forget all that she had confided to the depths of my immature little brain. "That's all, Anne-Marie. You may go."

As I swung my schoolbag on to my shoulder, I must have looked disconcerted. Thoughts ricocheted across my mind, colliding with uncertain emotions and the glare of reason.

"The moral of the story is that, although reason is the best compass, it is ideally balanced with the imagination. Do not be afraid of the Imagine, but do not ignore the advice of Reason," she implored self-consciously. And smiled.

"Afternoon, Miss Lecter," I threw out and ran for the door. My mother was going to be furious. It was three o'clock and she had a business meeting in half an hour. I ran faster.