Alice finished it in the year of my forty-seventh birthday—the year I was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for my global patronage. With all of the chutzpah of a genius, Alice barged into my room before dawn, grabbed me, and smooched me on the cheek, and said just two words: “It’s done.”
I held my breath as she carried in a large canvas. I beheld the abstract image displayed in front of me.
“This is a picture of a theory of everything…”
It was what I had been pursuing all along as I crossed countless worlds and funded so many geniuses. One of the final goals of physics was to describe all four of the fundamental forces of the universe—the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity—in one system.
Of course, achieving this wouldn’t mean we were at the finish line. Completing a theory of everything wouldn’t mean that tomorrow we’d suddenly be able to predict the future, live forever, or travel between the stars. Nonetheless, it would be an indication that humans’ efforts in science hadn’t been in vain, that the things we could only hypothesize about due to limited observation—such as the beginning of the universe and the behavior of quanta—were valid.
It would be a perspective for certain observation. A fundamental index.
“Well, I still have to translate this into mathematical notation, though. But at this point, it’s pretty much done. Manabu, I should have it ready by the time you accept your prize. Look forward to—”
I shook my head and interrupted her. “Don’t worry about it, Alice. This is enough. I see it. I see it. This is it. This is what I was looking for.”
Yes, I saw it.
I couldn’t interpret equations in terms of pictures. I wasn’t even gifted with equations in the first place. But somehow through this picture alone, I understood. Intuitively, it made sense to me. I saw that I’d learned what I wanted to know.
“Manabu…?”
“I understand now. This is where the story begins.”
Numbers glowed faintly on my left hand. It was the screen of my cell phone, long unused, now glowing despite Alice’s presence. Seeing that, it hit me: Oh, our world has just been observed. Now the universe is going to collapse. And I came at last to understand that which I had long known but had never really understood.
The universe still hadn’t been determined.
Until now, the universe had not undergone wave function collapse (or loss of interference with the many worlds). Like a cat in a box inside a box inside a box inside a box, we’d never realized we were in the middle of that system, while all along the world was still just a cloud of probability. We didn’t know it, but all along our existence was probabilistic.
Because humans didn’t know what to observe.
But now I knew. Through the index of the theory of everything, I knew what we had to observe.
Henceforth the past would be determined and the future created. The beginning which was only a probability would now collapse into reality. All the time until now would turn into imaginary time and would tunnel. The universe would collapse into a single point, turn into infinite points, and all at once abruptly expand…
Of course, this wasn’t the “ultimate answer.” Someday, further features would be integrated into the theory of everything. The next theory would likely unravel the mystery of consciousness. And when that happened, the universe would collapse yet again.
A repetition of the Big Bang, though it wouldn’t be the last time. Again and again and again and again—the trial and error would never end. An eternal game of cat and mouse. The Ouroboros devouring its tail.
It was enough for me, though.
“What? What is that? That light in your left hand… Manabu?”
I softly placed my left hand over my ear and my right hand on Alice’s cheek. In that position I drew Alice to me and kissed the eyelid over her honey-colored eye.
Thank you, Alice. I’m grateful. Let’s meet in the world back the way it was when the universe completes its cycle. Though I suppose you won’t be able to find me anywhere in the universe by then…
“Manabu…?”
“Goodbye.”
✦ ✦ ✦
And so my aim was accomplished. “My” objective of erasing my existence.
Yes. At last, I disappeared from the world and ceased to exist.