> With a little bit of mica-flecked epoxy, I assumed I might gild away the rift within the teacup of yours that I smashed. You believed that one thing damaged might by no means really be made complete once more. I wished to show you mistaken.
Shit.
This letter was beginning dramatic. Jay solely bought dramatic when one thing was mistaken. Actually, actually mistaken.
Time to place the kettle on.
> You had been proper to throw that cup again at me, however in the event you’d lower me a little bit slack, the world wouldn’t be ending.
Double shit.
Choice 1: She’s taking the divorce arduous and being metaphorical. *Her* world is ending. Our world, technically.
My telephone simply went from two new messages to 6. Eight. None are from Jay.
Submitting choice 1 underneath ‘Finest Case: Inconceivable’.
> No, sorry. Sorry. I did this. You’ve completed nothing to deserve what is going on.
Proper in a single.
The kettle lastly boils, and I pour too-hot water onto delicate inexperienced leaves.
> I might by no means repair the tears in your coronary heart (I want I hadn’t lower you down). Cups, although. That’s simply physics. And chemistry, however that’s simply physics.
(I can hear you say “and physics is only a crutch for people who find themselves afraid of maths” in my head. I might give actually something to listen to you say that proper now.)
Learn extra science fiction from Nature Futures
Physics is only a crutch for people who find themselves afraid of maths, and I married an fool. What the hell have you ever completed?
So, Choice 2: The world is definitely ending, and I’ve 19 messages ensuring I’ve bought the memo.
I flip off the telephone.
The tea is bitter grass, and I really feel the one approach to do it justice is to drink it straight from the pot.
> So, I fastened it. That’s the excellent news for you. Assuming the Universe nonetheless exists once you get dwelling in two hours, it is best to discover, subsequent to this letter, your cup. It’s molecularly excellent. Not a single crack on it. The chip within the backside of the deal with is gone too. I didn’t clone it. It’s really the identical cup.
Oh. Wow. Shit.
I hadn’t even seen the cup. I’d kicked Jay out after she threw it on the flooring by my toes. It had exploded magnificently. She promised she’d calculated that it couldn’t have hit me. I’d yelled, and cried, and advised her to ship her brother for her issues. I’d spent two weeks stepping round ceramic shards to sluggish myself down from forgiving her.
She’s proper. The cup was intact and clean. The chip was gone. It was new, in each significant approach. Too new.
She actually did it. There’ll be time to be excited later. Focus.
However rattling she actually did it.
> Do you keep in mind after we joked about constructing a tiny engineer, armed with a belt filled with electrons and a commanding presence, to molecularly restore arteries?
Please — don’t publish this. However I’ve solved — we’ve solved — the quantum superposition paradox. We will make arteries complete once more. It’s not solely that, although: we are able to make *something* complete once more. I used anyons to reconstruct quantum reminiscence, however the genius was the dimensionality transposition work you probably did. It strikes them out of the aircraft! Each subatomic particle remembers what it has been. What it’s speculated to be. We’re midway on our approach to cracking time journey. You and me.
As an alternative of the light glaze I remembered, the floor of the cup was changing into more and more gritty, as if there was sand embedded within the clay. If it wasn’t psychotic, I’d say the glaze was regressing …
Oh holy hell. It’s completely regressing.
That is in all probability the place I ought to cease and name … my graduate college students? Division chair? The Pentagon? There isn’t a transparent chain of command right here.
(Be aware to self: put ‘determine chain of command for the top of the world’ on ToDo listing.)
> The opposite trick was offering them a template, in order that the anyons know which previous state to decide on. They wanted to know what completely different atomic buildings seem like. There actually aren’t that many once you’re working on the orbital stage, so, I simply hard-coded them in.
Templates. If she’s utilizing templating, how does the system terminate?
Proper. After all. It doesn’t.
Shit.
She’s set them as much as revert atomic buildings to previous states. So, mug into clay. Clay into aluminium silicate. Pores and skin to lipids …
My teacup has been changed by a mass of clay. The stack of papers beneath the cup is slowly turning into pulp, ink pooling on the ground combined with the dregs of my morning.
> I ought to have listened. To you. To our colleagues. To our college students. I wished to construct an engineer, to repair all the things in order that nothing can be damaged ever once more. I don’t suppose this course of will be stopped. I’ve tried. I’ve left you all my notes within the hope that you simply succeed the place I failed.
I assume I ought to have checked out these papers whereas they had been nonetheless, properly, paper.
> They’re spectacular, although, aren’t they? My little menders.
Sure, you sensible, tragedy of a lady. They’re spectacular.
Wait I’ve bought it. Replication. I guess they don’t self-replicate. All I must do is create one other one and direct it to search for ‘menders’ first. I need —
> In quest of perfection, my menders deliver all the things again to a pure state. Earlier than we had been collectively, we had been lovestruck college students. Earlier than we had been college students, we had been cells. Earlier than we had been cells, we had been air and water. Perfection, I ought to have realized, is a second, not an goal. I’m as soon as once more responsible of over-optimization.
> I really like you. I’m sorry. I’ll see you after we’re stars.
