British SF author Michael Moorcock, whose "multivers" and "eternal champion" are two of the most plagiarized literary devices of the genre, has expounded in no less than a dozen novels the ideal of a fulcrum upon which rests what he calls a "cosmic balance" - with the metaphysical forces of order and entropy ever vying to outweigh one another. While quite clever as a literary device, one need not possess the wisdom of Solomon to accept the existence of such a scale with the proverbial grain of salt. On the other hand, Stephen Hawking - holder of Sir Isaac Newton's chair at Cambridge University and premier contender for the distinction of penning a viable unified field theory - has proposed that the universe as we know it exists as the result of four dimensions "unravelling" in the same vicinity of space/time. The good professor has represented dimensions, by way of oversimplification, as tightly coiled springs or balls of yarn which have an unpredictable propensity to unravel singly or in groups. I accept this as gospel - or at least as jazz or the blues.

Our universe is commonly accepted to have three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. According to theoretical physicists and astronomers, at least ten (possibly as many as twenty-three) dimensions exist beyond our ability to detect. Any area of space/time in which any four or more of these dimensions might happen to "unravel" simultaneously should, as far as we can determine, produce a new universe as strange and beautiful as our own. I can only hazard a guess at a formula for predicting the possible number of universes which might exist according to these theories; it might be something like "infinity divided by ¼."