Arthur and the Puddle of Almost Everything

January 29th, 2026

It was the end of a particularly rainy winter, and I suppose the beginning of a particularly dry week in the beginning of spring inside of Arthur’s small town in Southern California.

Arthur was a pretty regular guy, he worked in an office, making a regular amount of money while doing something that just didn’t matter, he knew it too, he lived in a regular sized apartment, by himself, and while he never really hated life, he didn’t totally love it either.

Anyways, on his way to the bus stop one morning Arthur walked his usual route, out the door, right onto the sidewalk, he always liked looking at the little flowers that grew in the cracks of the sidewalk that always showed up when it would rain, it was the only time anything ever really bothered to water them.

While looking at these little survivor plants, a pothole in the street caught Arthur’s eye, it was filled with water from the rain just like all the other potholes on the street, but unlike the other potholes, this one had a sort of incandescent glimmer coming from it.

So Arthur walked over in order to get a closer look, and the puddle truly did look like no other puddle he’d ever seen before. At first he assumed something gross was just in it like road debris or whatever, but it didn’t look like any sort of debris he’d seen before. He poked the puddle with a stick and watched the colors swirl around the line that he dragged across the water.

He whispered to himself, “What on earth,” and took out his phone to call his friend who knew a thing or two about science or whatever. “Hello,” he said over the phone, his friend was named Ben, “What’s up?” Arthur explained, “I found this strange looking puddle over on Main, filled with something I’ve never seen before.” Ben laughed, “what the hell are you talking about?” “Just come and see it, alright?” “Yeah, okay,” Ben hung up, and Arthur decided to call off sick from work that day, so he sat on a nearby bench watching the puddle and waiting for Ben.

He thought about what might be inside of the puddle, it was far enough away from the road to avoid being ran through by any cars, it didn’t look like anything organic, so he could assume no animal had put that in there- other than a person, who may have spilt a sugary drink in the thing. That was probably the most likely explanation he thought, right as Ben approached him at the bench, he smirked at Arthur and said “It’s 7 am and you really made me come out here just for a goddamn puddle? Where is it even?”

Arthur stood up, “over here,” and pointed down onto the asphalt. Ben crouched down to look at it, “interesting.” Arthur smiled, he’d at least found something, “have you ever seen anything like it?” “No, never,” Ben replied, using the same stick to draw a similar line through the water, “here wait,” he added, reaching into his pocket to take out a small vial, which he filled with puddle water. Arthur looked at him confused, “What’s that for?” “The microscope,” said Ben.

Arthur and Ben hopped in Ben’s car and drove over to Ben’s, they walked inside and rushed over to his microscope. Ben poured the water onto a glass slide, watching as the iridescent colors swirled around with it, he placed the slide onto the microscope and put his eye up to the lens.

Ben gasped, “Oh my god.” Arthur leaned in, “What? What is it?” “Take a look at it yourself,” Ben said as he stepped away from the microscope, Arthur looked through it and saw something which could best be described as a tiny universe. Small planets, small stars, small asteroids, black holes, you name it, everything you can see with a telescope, you could with this microscope. “It looks like a solar system,” Arthur said, shocked. “I know,” Ben added, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life.”

Ben immediately called his friend who worked for NASA, and within a few hours the street was blocked, the puddle had a massive wall built around it, and hundreds of scientists were performing hundreds of different tests on it just to try to figure out what exactly it was.

The next morning, Arthur called off work again to go check up on his puddle, he walked out his door like he did every morning, and turned right onto the sidewalk only to see a massive crowd of people surrounding the wall. He pushed through the crowd, luckily Ben’s friend recognized him and let him in.

He walked over towards a group of people taking turns looking through a microscope, and after a moment of standing around one of them let him take a look- inside was a very, very small planet, and whatever microscope they had was strong enough to allow you to see absolutely every single detail.

Arthur didn’t believe what he saw at first, but animals could be made out walking around this tiny globe, plants, and a full ecosystem thrived in what once was the puddle. “We haven’t found any civilizations yet,” one of the scientists told him, “but there are without a doubt billions of solar systems in there, and just about every single one of them has life, there’s bound to be a few.”

Another scientist walked over to him, “you discovered this, yeah?” Arthur nodded, and the scientist continued, “Outstanding, can I ask your name?” “Arthur,” he said. “Arthur’s Universe,” the scientist smiled, “got a good ring to it.” Arthur walked over to a window in the wall and began to look at the puddle he found, his universe. He liked the sound of that.

He sat there throughout the day, listening to all the different scientists talk about all of their discoveries, he watched the news trucks come and go, interviewing him and all the scientists, Arthur’s Universe quickly became the name for this puddle, and due to the nature of the discovery the whole world was talking about it.

At one point a large black crow flew down next to the puddle and began to drink, Arthur, sitting in his usual place by the window stood up and starting bashing on the glass in order to scare the bird, but it didn’t work, he kept drinking, with each gulp swallowing hundreds of who knows what’s.

A scientist saw Arthur banging, and asked “What’re you doing?” Arthur looked at the man like he was crazy, “Don’t you see this? That bird is drinking the water!” “We can’t interfere,” the scientist told him, “the crow’s gonna do whatever it wants.” Arthur was outraged, “What do you mean we can’t interfere? He’s drinking up something’s everything!” The scientist shrugged, said “it’s all being evaporated anyways. The crow won’t make a difference,” and walked away.

Arthur hadn’t really thought of that, but it did make sense, and he sat on that bench every day for the next week or so, watching his universe slowly shrink, whether that be from the water turning to vapor, the birds drinking it, or the scientists taking whatever vials they needed to test whatever they wanted, within a week the puddle had turned from a thriving universe to a small brown pile of nothing in a pothole.

The scientists left, the walls were taken down, the news trucks drove off, and the crowd of people eventually dissipated, and within a few weeks people would without a doubt just stop thinking about the little universe stuck in a puddle.

Nobody ever managed to figure out exactly why it happened, or where it came from, and all that was left was Arthur, sitting on the bench, looking at what once was.