It’s just one of those days. I can’t quite remember the last time I slept properly. These past few days have blurred into one another, and I’ve been drifting through them like a zombie, kept upright only by the sugar rush of milkshakes. Each morning I wake with eyes heavy as boulders and a body aching in every conceivable place, and every step I take becomes an involuntary struggle for energy. All I dream of is a milkshake to send sugar coursing through my veins. My body is a colossal wreck of failing health, suspended in time. I can’t quite remember the last time I slept properly.

I have been imagining worlds inside my head — far, far away worlds. Did you know that no one knows how big the universe is? What we do know is that it began with the Big Bang, a giant explosion, as they say. But that description isn’t quite right for what actually happened. Rather than the Big Bang, it would be more apt to call it the Big Stretch. It isn’t that our universe came into being at that moment; it’s that time itself began then. It was not a point from which we emerged. At that very first instant — the first tick — the universe was already there, however paradoxical that may sound, and at that first tick it began to stretch. It is an expansion that continues to this day, and that will go on with no end in sight.

Now, distance in space is measured in time. The term “light-year,” therefore, is a measurement of distance rather than time: it is the distance light travels in a single year. What’s fascinating is that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, and that figure also marks how far we can see into it — because light can only have travelled for as long as the universe has existed. So imagine taking a torch and pointing it in every direction from Earth, sweeping out a sphere; that sphere is what we call “the observable universe.” It is as far as our sight can reach, and we cannot see beyond it.

What I find most fascinating in all of this — and the thought I keep returning to — is that if we cannot see beyond a certain point, then we cannot know how big the universe truly is. It is entirely possible that the universe is infinite: an endless expanse stretching in every direction from where we stand. And that is only the beginning. It is so plausible that we can say, with a kind of unproven certainty, that other life forms exist somewhere in the universe. So out there, right now, other species are living their lives on some strange planet of their own — and neither we nor they have the faintest knowledge of each other.

And even that is only the beginning — for we have been speaking of just one place in the universe, other than our own, where life exists. If the universe is truly infinite, then there could be infinite worlds out there: whole other worlds that look nothing like ours, perhaps governed by physics entirely unlike our own. Maybe some of them know of one another. Most of them do not.

I mean, could you imagine it — whole worlds out there right now, at this very moment in time. Whole worlds, whole lives. And we simply don’t know about them. This is not science fiction; it is a genuine possibility. Indeed, the existence of at least one such place is very nearly a certainty.

Coming back to the here and now, as I drift in and out of sleep, I can’t help but wonder. I can’t help but stare into the emptiness of the night sky and think of those worlds out there. What if they truly exist, and we simply don’t know that they do? I feel such a deep and intense longing to go to them — the deepest longing I have ever felt in my entire life. A profound, aching longing at the very centre of my heart, which I can feel thumping away. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to go there. What I wouldn’t give to glide away into space, into the deep black darkness, hoping to wash up in a world utterly unlike my own.

And then I can’t help but realise that I am in one of those worlds. Perhaps there is someone else out there, longing to be in this world, just as I long to be in theirs. But this world — this world does not seem as magical as the ones inside my head. It lacks the light I see in those. The politics of this world has ruined what God intended to create. Maybe there is a world out there where people are kind and merciful and welcoming. Maybe there is a world out there where I could belong — where faces are happy and intentions are kind, where people laugh and sing and dance, and make me laugh and sing and dance with them. Where no one lies or cheats or wounds. Where music swells through the air alongside the ripe fragrance of fresh fruit. Where every moment is a giggle and every stride a foolish attempt at walking. Where nothing is ever too serious, and people gather in the evenings around a bonfire. Where each moment is true and sacred. Where the black is as pure as the white, and the white as heartening as the black. Where the nights and days alike are brimming with joy.

Joy. Maybe there is a world out there. If the universe is infinite, then there are infinite worlds like these out there. But I want only one — one filled with joy and giggles.

I wish I could see it, just once. Feel it. Spend a day and a night there. Meet these wonderful people — laugh and sing and dance with them, and cry my heart out in their kind presence. I wish I could be there, just once. Just once. Even if only in a dream.

I can’t quite remember the last time I slept properly.