She had been talking about something, but, he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was.
“I just really like their energy, you know?” She said, glancing his way and gesturing with both hands. The plastic bangles populating her wrists clicked and clacked, punctuating her questing statement in a vain attempt for acknowledgment for whatever her point was. He knew she was looking for something, anything to confirm that he had actually been paying attention.
He knew he was doomed.
“I’m so sorry Linda, what were we talking about? I must have drifted off.”
She smiled, shaking her hands to dissuade his worry. The bangles rattled away again like so many cheap, children's figurines.
“I was just talking about the new hire at work I met today. He was lovely.”
She drew in a deep breath and exhaled, shaking out her strawberry blonde curls, shaking off the previous conversation.
She squeezed his hands, concern shining in her eyes. “So, what was it again you wanted to talk about? You sounded so worried on the phone when you asked to meet me at the coffee shop today.”
“I just…” He pulled his hands away and trailed off, eyes drifting into the middle distance as he fidgeted, trying to find the right words to shape the concern growing in his mind.
“I watched a documentary last night. It was about this physicist named Boltzmann, and all the crazy stuff he was up to. He had a pretty tumultuous professional life but still made all kinds of contributions to the science of his time.” He paused for a second to take a sip of his coffee. “There was one thing that really stuck out to me though.”
He could tell he was losing her. In the time it had taken him to say just that little bit, she had checked her phone twice, yawned, then folded her arms in her lap and fixed her eyes politely forward but unfocused. She was staring slightly off from center, as though looking past his head, paying attention to something benign that still managed to be more interesting than what he was realizing was a boring story about a subject about which she couldn’t care less. And who could blame her?
The bangles were quiet.
He barreled ahead anyway.
“So Boltzmann dealt a lot with classical statistical mechanics.” Even he cringed at that one. “But basically his ideas lead people to an uncomfortable conclusion. If the universe is infinite then all possible permutations of matter will be expressed. Your brain, with all its memories as it exists in your head, is a possible permutation of matter. So, there will be an infinite number of chances that you exist as a brain floating freely in space, with just the right neural connections to create the illusion of a life when really you’re just a brain floating in space for a few minutes before you suffocate and die.”
She cringed and wrinkled her nose, definitely not agreeing with the scent of the idea he was presenting.
“That sounds unsettling. Why would anyone want to think about something so uncomfortable?’ She asked.
“Well, I just-”
“Wait a minute!” She interrupted, arms flying to her hips, setting the plastic bracelets to chattering. “You didn’t just watch this, freak out, then call me about something so dumb did you?!”
She had puffed up throughout her question, slowly gaining frustrated steam. She was ready to open up on him with a justifiable barrage of criticisms when he put his hands up in defeat.
“Alright, alright, you win,” he said, “I’ll admit it was what started me thinking about things, but that’s not it entirely.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, folded her arms across her chest and leaned back, waiting for his flailing attempts at justification.
“I didn’t think much of it until I saw an interview with another physicist who talked about how it’s unlikely anyone is a Boltzmann brain. This physicist said we’re unlikely to be one because the set of all Boltzmann brains that were infinitely close to but not exactly like real brains existing in the real world was infinitely larger than the set of all Boltzmann brains exactly identical to brains existing in the real world.”
She raised her eyebrow at him, looking quizzically, mouth parting as though about to interject with a dismissive comment. He beat her to the punch, finishing his explanation before she could get a word in.
“Therefore, if you were a Boltzmann brain you would see signs of your reality being false almost immediately. The signs would be things like errors in your sense perceptions, or memories that didn’t make any sense, like remembering events other people don’t, or not knowing skills you think you’re supposed to have. So, according to this physicist we should be safe.”
She lowered her eyebrow, her look shifting from quizzical to curious.
“If that’s the case, why are you so worried?” Her eyes suddenly lit up and she leaned forward, excitement showing as she closed in on a flaw in his argument. “Also, what’s up with all the infinities you keep talking about? If everything is just as infinitely likely, how is anything any more or less likely than anything else?”
She sat back, and took a sip of her drink, clearly satisfied with her observations of what was to her a clear flaw in his logic. She waved her hands dismissively, setting the plastic bracelets to cackling, almost menacingly. “If this whole brain thing is a serious issue, why hasn’t anyone made a big deal out of it yet?”
He sighed, collecting his thoughts before responding. “I know the infinities thing is complicated, but they touched a bit on the difference between different kinds of infinities. Something about countable and uncountable sets…” He trailed off, smiling to himself at the irony of having trouble remembering facts about all of these brain and memory related issues. “I’m not sure, but that’s not the important part,” he waved his hands, it being his turn to be dismissive. “That’s not why I called you.”
He couldn’t help his voice from quavering on his last statement, his worry beginning to overtake him. He was starting to sweat. He couldn’t hold her eye contact, instead looking down at his hands. They had begun to fidget nervously again, this time with his napkin, while his knee shook furiously under the table.
Her posture softened.
“Look, I’m sorry to have jumped at you so hard but, you have to admit this all sounds pretty silly and--”
“Where are we?” He interrupted.
“What?” She asked, taken aback by his sudden question
Where are we? Right now, we’re sitting at a table right? Where is the table?”
“In… a coffee shop.” She postulated slowly, looking around to help confirm her observation.
“Are we really? What’s the shop’s name? Where are the other tables?”
She started, eyes widening, looking again at her surroundings, actually seeing now. They were in an empty room, no tables, or chairs occupying the space around them.
“Even the walls are blank. Where are the windows?” She asked, frantically searching for any kind of fluctuation in the nondescript surface of the walls and ceiling around them.
“Where are the doors?” He asked, calmly now, staring hard at her as the worry he had settled on her as well.
Her bangles took up their noise making again. Staccato beats drumming out the tension building in her frantic motions. A desperate attempt to resolve her growing fear and confusion.
“Linda,” it was his turn to reach across the table and squeeze her hand, trying to calm her nerves. He knew it wasn’t much, but it was all he could do in the moment. It was only going to get worse. “I know this is hard, but I need you to listen to me. Just breathe with me for a minute.”
He began breathing deeply, looking at her expectantly. After a few moments, she locked eyes with him and began to slowly synchronize her breathing with his.
“Linda, how did you get here?”
“I drove,” she responded immediately, the words coming to mind so quickly as to be more of an automatic response than a thought through observation or memory.
“What did you drive? No, wait,” he rethought his line of questioning, “how do you drive at all? Do you remember what it’s like to drive?”
She scoffed, pulling her hand back and crossing them over her chest. “Of course I know how to drive. I’ve been driving since I was 16. You just…” She trailed off. He watched her face move through a cacophony of expressions as she tried and failed to remember anything about driving.
“Linda,” he snapped, breaking through her worried ponderings. “How long have you been driving?” He put both hands down on the table, not slamming, but placing firmly to punctuate his next question. “How old are you now?”
She recoiled, jumping to her feet, chair clattering to the floor behind her.
“What are you saying?” She demanded furiously. “I know who I am! I have a life!” She yelled, almost more to herself than to him.
As she did she looked around, eyes coming to rest on the chair she had just knocked over. She stared in horror as it slowly began to dissolve, losing cohesion, fracturing and fading into an array of more and more incorporeal chairs, until even the idea of the chair faded from her mind leaving only the memory of a disturbing experience in its wake.
She was very still, afraid any more movements would cause more of her reality to crumble. Her voice was quiet, muted, the shock stealing even her horror away. “What’s going on?” She finally choked out.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to get at,” he said calmly, “I think we’re Boltzmann brains. I don’t think anything here is real.
“But, you have a body! I can see it. You have eyes and ears and can see and hear and feel!” Her eyes frantically jumped around their setting, trying to orient her increasingly disoriented mind.
“No, we just think we have those senses because our brain receives just the right kind of stimulus to make us think we’re experiencing them.” He said, voice cracking, hands white from gripping the napkin he had been playing with in an attempt to hold on to something in the slowly dissolving world. “Linda, I can’t even be certain that you’re not just an element of the delusion as well.”
“No!” She yelled, slamming her hands on the table, “I refuse to accept this!”
He looked her in the eyes, suddenly calm, emotions draining from his face so completely that it caught her off guard. She blinked, momentarily distracted.
“Linda, what is my name?”
She looked at him, eyes widening, searching, silently pleading with him as her mouth worked blankly, no words coming forward to assist her.
He smiled, holding up his hand, examining it as it began to fall apart kaleidoscopically. Acceptance washed over him as though forced into his mind by the reality around him, unbidden but welcome. “I think I get it, this is all part of some chain of reprisals.” He let what was left of his hand drop, falling through the tables that were fractal shades of the table they had been sitting at.
“I think,” he paused, head tilting to the side as he examined her form as it too began losing coherence. “This loop will happen again and be just different enough next time to let us progress a bit further.”
“A bit further towards what?” Her question, just the idea of words against the backdrop of static rising up to meet them. He smiled to himself, thoughts folding in on themselves. Linda looked at him, fear and confusion giving way to reluctant resolution as she broke apart into the concept of a person, then a simple idea, then nothing.
“I’ll try better next time Linda,” words moving through space like drifting hints of paint in the mind of a floundering artist grasping at the trails of inspiration lost to time. “Maybe next time I’ll have a name.”
He smiled, leaning back into the chair as oblivion stole over him. Echoing plastic clicks and clacks the accompaniment to his fading out into the void.
