This sketch tries to give an impression of what the Cosmic Egg (which we call “the universe”) looks like from the outside.

1. Before Sam and Michael arrived, the Egg was surrounded by an outer shell, formed from a complex network of interconnected blue crystal pipes.
2. This shell was supported by thick blue legs.
3. “Event particles” (shown here as pink dots) used to rise up the legs, radiate out through the network of pipes, spray out of fine holes in the pipes and rain down onto the surface of the “pink planet”. Every particle was an event in history, so the Cosmic Egg consisted of a permanent record of history, like sedimentary layers on Earth today with the oldest parts in the centre.
4. When Michael Zhang arrived, he burrowed down through the Cosmic Egg, swallowing the event record as he went, until he arrived at the very centre. In this way he acquired total knowledge of the history of the universe.
5. When he realized the consequences of other humans following him, he deliberately broke one of the crystal pipes. The result was that the flow of events stopped throughout the shell, and therefore time stopped in the universe.
6. Fragments of the crystal pipe which Michael had broken fell into the hole he had created in the Egg. Once they arrived inside the universe, they floated upwards towards the surface, forming a green tunnel of time.
7. This tunnel was broken in several places because some of the crystals emerged from the tunnel and became frozen in time at different horizons.
8. A few of the crystals arrived at the surface, emerged from the time tunnel into the ATLAS cavern, and one of them hit Marianne.

Note that the crystals which arrived in ATLAS (8) were connected together via negative energy strings, allowing those who possessed them to talk to and see each other. The negative energy strings were broken when the crystals left the breaks in the Time Tunnel (7), which is why they were frozen in time.