I Am Become Death

World's most basic short story title, but I promise the payoff is there

“It’s all ready, James.”

James. Like I’m their schoolyard friend. I’ll never get used to this generation’s insistence on first names. I would never have,

Anyways it’s ready. My life’s work. The experiment.

And we tested all the equipment? One run of this experiment is expensive. I’m not well-funded, you know. I can’t afford another.

“Yessir. State of the art equipment, Brand new and thoroughly tested. When it happens, we will be there to capture it, in detail.”

Good. Good. That’s good.

When I released my paper, I was dismissed as a fringe lunatic. Energy cannot be truly destroyed. It’s right there in the First Law of Thermodynamics.

But I proved I can do it. I can destroy an electron.

I had the math. I’d checked it, over and over. It was freely available. I’d been directing people towards it for years. But I wasn’t believed. All the respect I’d amassed after years as a top physicist, dashed against the rocks the moment I went against the established orthodoxy.

Ah well.

We are here now.

I’ve cut no corners. Everything is perfect. It took every penny I have, but I’ll be able to prove it.

Once.

As long as the measurement equipment is fine.

“Sir, we checked it, over and over. This equipment cannot fail.”

The unsinkable ship! But, all they can do is all they can do. He says they’ve tested thoroughly; I believe him.

Okay. I’ll leave you alone to your remaining preparations.

“Thank you, sir. We will let you know when it’s time.”

I walk back to my chair, and then past it. And then towards it again. I pace. What, I’m supposed to read a book? Daydream? Take a nap?

Not today.

Eons pass. A timeless epoch. Finally,

“Sir… It’s ready for you.”

I didn’t have to set it up this way, of course. The whole thing could have happened without me. But I wanted to press the button. This is my life’s work. I won’t sit passively while someone else pulls the trigger.

I guess it didn’t have to be so… Gaudy. A big red button. But what can I say? I like the theatrics.

I approach the button with an ostensible solemnity, but on the inside I am shaking. This is it. This is the moment.

I walk up to the button and, with two hands, push down.

BRRRRR

The machine whirs to life.

And that’s it. What, you think there’d be more sounds? Most of those sounds were cooldown. Physics doesn’t happen on our timeline.

“Sir…”

The moment of truth.

“Sir… You were right. The electron, it’s gone. No wave. No positron. Gone.”

The world stopped.

It felt like I’d entered some kind of.. Superreality. Gazing down at myself. A snapshot in time.

I was right.

I was right!

I WAS RIGHT!!

I jump, I make a noise that has no descriptive verb, my elation expanding faster than my body can contain it.

Show me. Show me. SHOW ME

And he did.

The equipment succeeded, of course. Never doubted it for a moment. And right there, in the data, clear as day.

We destroyed matter.

----

The media went nuts. My detractors were skeptical, but the data was clear. Some larger labs began setting up to replicate my results. Science was slow to reject the First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy was supposed to stay net-zero - That was The Law.

I tried not to let “the haters get me down”, as they say. At the time I told myself I’d be validated in the end. Let them struggle against reality.

Did the talk show circuit, the crowd loved me, of course. I was on a popular late-night talk show when the news broke - Couldn’t be replicated.

Shock. Camera zoom in. But I knew I was right. There must be some mistake, I said. Check again, I said.

A few days later I found out they had tried again. Once again, no dice.

But I hadn’t lied! The data was real!

Investigative journalists had gotten into my equipment, gotten to my team, but they said the same thing. There was no mistake. It had worked for us, and now it wasn’t working for them.

The internet was hell.

Some people thought I was just a liar. Or incompetent. Or they fell into absurd conspiracy theorizing, like that damn Feynman thing.

That was the next bomb. I was on CNN, advocating for my view, hammering the testimonies that came out, when they asked,

“Have you heard the theories that the reason it can’t be replicated is because there’s only one electron?”

Like… Like what, the joke?

“Well, yes. Feynman’s professor once joked that the reason all electrons are exactly the same is because they’re the same electron, moving back in time as positrons and forward again as electrons, making up every atom in the universe”

Yes, I know the joke, I just, I,

“A growing community online is saying the reason no one can destroy another electron is because you already destroyed it.”

That’s an old physics joke. Next you’ll be cracking Uranus puns. Spare me. I’m a serious scientist.

“Well, Doctor, I didn’t mean any offense, but our viewers want to understand-“

This interview is over.

I stormed off the set, stopping outside to collect myself. Insult upon insult. What next, I’m a reptilian monster in a human-skin-suit? When did CNN become a sci-fi conspiracy distributor??

I’m a serious scientist. I appear on serious outlets. So long, CNN.

----

Incompetents. Fools. Interns in lab coats.

I’ll show them. I’ll do it again.

This time the money pours in. Everyone wants to see me do it again. Or see me fail to do it again. Either way, I won’t be on a budget this time.

I get the measuring equipment in triplicate, including the original tools, new tools, and a set of tools from one of the labs that failed. All data will be streamed live online. Everyone will know what happened as we do.

I have all my original math posted online, but I’m doing it again live as the equipment is set up. The numbers will be based on the latest measurements, with the -ometers and -oscopes, reading the atomic data of the universe and sending it to me. The software would show the side-by-side of my work vs the previous work to see any discrepancies or mistakes, and the AI is scanning as we go for inaccuracies, having already scanned the original document and found it clean.

I hear my team working diligently around me as I grind painstakingly through the math I already knew by heart, allowing the machine to replace my variables with up-to-date numbers for display to the audience, with running totals displayable to me so I can follow as we hone in on my final proof.

The hours pass, but I barely notice. I’m immersed. Everything falls away but the math, the beautiful math, divining reality through human symbols, creating real knowledge out of hard proof.

I’m not yet at the end when I realize something’s wrong.

The math, it’s the same. The AI would have beeped if it wasn’t, so I could check the diff live.

But the result is going to be different.

My audience won’t all notice. I’ll… I… There must have been a mistake. An AI hallucination skipped it. The first math was right, I SAW it work. And so… So..

I finish and try to look natural, like everything was as expected. Without further explanation, I turn from the whiteboard to check progress.

They’re ready for me.

I walk up to the button. Trying to summon an, I don’t know, gravitas. My stomach clenches. I press the button and hope for the best.

BRRRRR

And it’s done.

I look to my team. One by one they jerk up from their monitors and look back at me, a hollow look.

Okay.

So.

The reporters who had been watching in silence suddenly all erupted. What had happened? Had it worked? Doctor Conray, any comment? We’re getting calls from other labs saying there’s a discrepancy in the math results. Doctor?

No comment.

I make it out, somehow. Back home. Back to my apartment.

On the floor.

Screaming into the ground.

Something had changed.

The math was right. Checked.

The math was the same. Checked.

In both cases, I’d been pulling the latest data.

The.. The numbers themselves. The actual measurements must have changed. There was no other answer.

But… But… Why?

I turn on the TV. Other labs are talking. Questioning if I’d faked the initial math.

But I hadn’t.

Was it stored? It was archived, but not indexed. It would take decades to validate. Do you know how much data these tools generate? The perfect crime, they said. A crackpot who wanted fame, they said.

Absurd. Outrageous.

The data said that I could destroy an electron.

Now it says I can’t.

Since I did my first experiment, and perhaps because of it, the universe had become one in which I could not do it again.

I hopped online, to the dark, conspiracy parts of the internet.

I knew already what they’d say.

The only possible answer.

Top thread: “Doctor James Conray has destroyed the universe”

I skimmed through it, but didn’t respond. There was nothing to say.

I thought I’d been disproving the First Law of Thermodynamics, unmooring us from the net-zero energy ledger of the universe, but that wasn’t right at all.

I could destroy an electron because the universe was exactly one-electron above-net-zero.

An electron had been created at the beginning of the universe, creating a deficit. A deficit one-electron, and one-universe, thick.

A deficit I’d filled when I destroyed that one, single electron. When I balanced the books.

When I destroyed the universe.

----

I see it everywhere.

Literally.

The telltale heart if, in fact, the man’s house was packed with actual living beating hearts. Taunting him.

Haunting me.

Sure. The Electron always was going to end at that time, and always will have ended at that time.

And it doesn’t seem to be causing any problems.

The universe will continue as it always has. We won’t live to run out of The Electron. It will zip forward and backward across time, weaving reality as we know it, before finally meeting its inevitable death.

At my hands.

What do I even DO with that? I will always have been the person who was chiseled into time as the universe’s murderer. Could Judas have chosen differently? Does any answer absolve him?

Electrons don’t age. Electrons don’t die a natural death. Perhaps the universe would have gone on twice as long if I didn’t exist. Maybe it would have gone on forever. Who knows how much more ground would have been tread by the most important particle in history? When time reaches its cliff, will it look like natural causes, or an abrupt stop from a timeline that didn’t expect to run out of Electron?

I go to the bar and drink The Electron until I vomit The Electron. The Electron takes my keys and calls The Electron, The Electron going out of its way, keeping me safe, not knowing I was The Electron’s killer. I get in The Electron, hand it The Electron, and it takes me to The Electron, where I collapse into The Electron and fall asleep.

I wake up in the morning, crushing the bodies of my victim beneath my feet, gnashing It with my teeth, shoveling It down my throat. My victim demands answers, it forms people, cameras, screens, words, and accusations. It hurls itself at me accusingly, and It isn’t mad enough. In a few decades, maybe It will review the data and realize what I’ve done. For now, it just thinks me a liar, and not a mass murderer.

I don’t contest It. I’ll plead guilty to the reduced charge, I take the lighter sentence.

Back home again, all alone, being tormented by the only person in the world who knows what I did.

I should have known, should have checked, should have something.

Soaked in cosmic blood.

In countless aeons, the universe will have always ended in the 21st century, by negligent homicide.

The world needed to know. I had a duty as a scientist to inform the world of my results. And as long as I am in the universe, as long as I have interests and goals, It will doubt my intentions. It already does. It ALWAYS does.

I made preparations for my departure before penning my confession.

I’m sorry. I knew not what I did.