A Brief History of Human Sadness

Part 26（18'）

'In this parallel universe, the cup is broken,' she said, and then she let go of her hand.

Gravity never disappoints, and as expected, the coffee cup hit the ground and shattered into many pieces. She stared at me, just as she had glanced back when we parted three years ago.

I too stared blankly at the ground. Suddenly, like a frame jump in a movie, the scene before my eyes shook, and for a moment, I had the illusion that the shattered coffee cup had returned to being whole. I blinked, but the illusion did not disappear. The coffee cup lay intact on the ground in front of me, pure white and smooth, without a flaw, as if mocking my sanity. So, was the breaking just an illusion? This was the only explanation, but when I looked up, this explanation was immediately overturned: her expression was as surprised as mine.

It seemed like I suddenly thought of something and looked at the laptop screen: a blank space. No X, Y, Number 1; no C1T-017 planet and Z-309 element, no 'History of Human Sadness' - right, because all of this never existed. No, more precisely, the world I constructed with words was a different existence from the start. Like dreams to reality, their difference is not in truth or falsehood, but in inside and outside. The visible, knowable, tangible material world, and the intangible, quality-less, elusive non-material world, are actually two sides of the same coin. The former is composed of M particles, and the latter of M' particles. The material universe is orderly, with rules to follow, entropy only increases; the non-material universe is chaotic, rule-less, entropy only decreases. In other words, they evolve towards a state converging with the other. In this long process of give and take, there will be a moment - a very brief moment - when the entropy values of the two universes align perfectly, the M particle field and M' particle field embed into each other, achieving perfect overlap, overturning the known physical constants of mankind: at a point in space, two objects exist simultaneously.

'Really?' After hearing my explanation, her surprise was not as strong as I had imagined.

'What do you think?' I pointed with my chin to the cup she had picked up and put back on the table.

'But this doesn't explain how the cup was repaired,' she shook her head, her eyes brimming with genuine confusion.

'Besides,' she continued before I could answer, 'what about them? The people in that so-called non-material universe. No matter what, I want to know the ending.'

I understood her curiosity, as I understood my own calmness; people are different - in more than one sense. Brainwaves, the electrical activity of brain neurons generating current in the cerebral cortex, are essentially particle movement like all electromagnetic waves. The human body is an M particle field, making two people - two fields - different, not only in terms of material M ions but also in terms of non-material M' ions - in plain terms, thoughts, emotions. The latter's diversity and complexity far exceed the former's. The chemical reactions observed in people when thinking and experiencing emotional changes are only superficial phenomena. It was not until the proposal of the M particle theory that the essence was first touched. Like opening the glued pages of the book of the universe, mankind saw another aspect of existence, another version of the story.

In this way, the real world and the so-called fictional world are not the parallel universes hypothesized by quantum mechanics, so I should use a different term, a brand-new concept... Perhaps it can be called 'concurrent universes'?

Concurrent universes, like parallel universes, are also like two infinitely extending lines that never intersect - at least usually. However, like any rule known to mankind, there are always exceptions, coincidences, loopholes. In between the two concurrent universes, this loophole is the point of overlap. When an extremely special event occurs at the moment of absolute balance of chaotic energy between universes, the overlap point is formed, and the two universes seamlessly merge into one.

X, engulfed in sadness, experienced a qualitative change in her bio-magnetic field. The spin rate of M' particles coincided with the magnetic field frequency of the Z-309 element, forming a pair of twin M' particle fields, an unprecedented situation in the universe. Without the barrier of a protective suit, the instant the two magnetic fields intersected, chaos accumulated to a critical point. For a brief moment, about one trillionth of a second, entropy neither increased nor decreased, and for the first time since the Big Bang, the forces of order and chaos in the universe achieved a perfect balance. Although this unprecedented situation would last only about one trillionth of a second, it was enough for the two concurrent universes to complete their overlap. In that fleeting instant, the space-time continuum jolted like a record skipping a beat, then continued to play. After this brief pause, the material and non-material worlds - reality and fiction - seamlessly merged into one. All variables that shouldn't exist in space-time were eliminated, the anomalies in the M particle field were filled, the fragments were reassembled back to their original place, the coffee cup was restored as before, and all cracks between reality and dreams were mended.

'M particle theory...' she said, looking at me, but her gaze was uncertain. 'Isn't that something you made up?'

'I've said it before, there is no such thing as fiction. Anything, anyone, as long as they are thought of, they are a real existence.'

'In the non-material universe, composed of M' particles?'

'Yes. God is the first writer; 'Let there be light' is the first sentence, the first line of poetry in this novel - this universe.'

She looked at me with a mix of belief and skepticism, seemingly unable to decide whether I was joking or serious. But the cup had clearly returned to its original state. This she saw with her own eyes, undeniable.

You could see she thought hard for a while, then finally gave up.

'Anyway, I want to know the ending.'

'Which universe?'

'Both.' She raised her hand in resignation, seemingly very reluctant to accept my setting.

'Maybe there's a third concurrent universe, where the cup stays broken, I continue to write the novel, and we...'

'What about us?'