Einstein pushed the button, closing the circuit and setting off the charge that sent Newton's clockwork universe exploding in a shower of sparks,
fractured gears and uncoiled springs rolling across the carpet before coming to rest against a leather-bound first edition Origin of Species. But it would be years before the light from this explosion reached into the last darkened corners of the parlor, a sumptuously appointed nineteenth century drawing room where armchair intellectuals from good homes smoked their pipes and read aloud to each other passages from God's obituary. For a century and more it remained a treasured sanctuary for a new brand of false certainty, and if the new patented medicament left imbibers with duller dreams and flatter narratives than the old one had, well at least it offered the same benefit of a comfortable night's rest, free from nagging doubts.
But even though old Einstein himself may have shifted uncomfortably in his chair at Heisenberg's assurances that there was simply no way to peek into the oven at the cosmic soufflé without causing it to fall, still relative calm prevailed. Perhaps the Deep Thinkers, insomniacs all, knitted their brows and half-heartedly scribbled formulas in their notebooks, but they were always doing that. For the moment it seemed there was little danger of a new crowd of Young Turks arising who would kick down the door to the back room and catch God poised in mid-throw at a high-stakes crap game (rumors of his death having been greatly exaggerated.) And so harumphs were harumphed, pipes were puffed and the sleepers slumbered undisturbed.
But let's come down to it, shall we? Albert has assured me that there is no way to speak authoritatively of events in space-time without first stipulating an observation point, and so far I've just got the one. So it is from here that I must begin. And from this vantage, the question of where I go when I die seems entirely the wrong line of inquiry. Naturally I will remain exactly where I am, indeed where I have always been. No, the question is not where I go when I die, but where the universe goes when I die.
Posted by flamingbanjo at November 27, 2009 12:43 PMNice.
Posted by: nathaniel at December 21, 2009 12:10 PM