The Perceptions Square

Just imagine: you belong to only five percent of the universe. Atoms, molecules, carbon, oxygen, and everything you have ever touched, seen, or felt come from this tiny fraction.

The remaining ninety-five percent is made of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is the skeleton—the scaffolding—of the universe, while dark energy drives its expansion and is responsible for the forward flow of time.

Dark matter doesn’t interact with ordinary matter or even with light. It neither emits nor reflects light, which is why we cannot see it. We only perceive five percent of the universe; the rest remains invisible to us.

Dark matter communicates only through gravity, because it has mass. In regions where its density is high, it bends light—since light is affected by gravity. Dark matter is the very reason stars and planets don’t fly apart from their spiraling galaxies; it holds them together with its gravitational pull.

Dark matter doesn’t decay, it doesn’t age, and it has existed since the beginning of the universe. It has no internal clock of its own, yet it affects time through its mass. So if it were ever to take human form, it would carry no memories; the past, present, and future would feel like a single continuous moment, all existing in a kind of stillness.

Where dark matter interacts through gravity, dark energy acts as an anti-gravity force, causing the universe to expand. Together they are the true building blocks—the hidden architecture—of the cosmos. The absence of either would create a profound imbalance, threatening the existence of normal matter itself.

A perfect recipe for science fiction…