My Net Worth Is Nothing

In the beginning there was nothing, but nothing is unstable. A true vacuum is mythological and has about as much to do with the Universe as a unicorn. Unicorns are make-believe, but equaling zero is alchemy realized—real magic—when you consider the pluses and minuses that even out, the zero-sum-gain dynamic that invents infinite beauty in vacillating and fleeting apparitions.

I am one such vacillation in space-time, an ephemeral sentience destined to be reassigned to the vacuum one day. All things that are, are transacted like commerce. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. The bank is time, when what “is” may be now, may have been, or may be whenever; is means all of that. There are records, kept in universal storage. Is is always.

Once the cascade catches fire, metaphorically, the reality is that hydrogen bequeaths us helium. Helium to iron—all is strewn only to collect elsewhere, and the citizens of elsewhere mingle, collide, and make us, eventually, with the spare change that falls from the pockets of creation. Once again, the Universe breaks even.

One Peter Hemming, as a forgettable vacillation of mediocrity that was present for 83 revolutions around the Sun, in his thin slices of cross-section in space-time, has the hidden legacy of other more complicated stars in his innards: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and others. What he thought and did are recorded in the bank vaults, as are my own goings-on, currently in progress.

Thomas Edison, another vacillation, considered—as a farce—noteworthy, has a legacy told and retold in many of the libraries of his planet, merely to combine into the Universe’s transaction sheet that records rankings between him and Hemming that are arbitrary. Between Hemming and Edison, the volume of information isn’t much different when all comes crashing down, when the hydrogen’s exhausted in the Sun, when the information for these and me and everyone else becomes part of the Universe.

I can walk along the beach at dusk and I can regard my moment there—my cross-section in space and in time that is combined in some strange transmogrification into a spaceless-timeless piece of space-time; it is already etched into the stone of existence for storage. I can appreciate the sunset as part of my story. The irony of uncut jewels is that no stones are left unturned. I am a collection of different atoms, walking on a collection of yet different atoms, perceiving my place here with all these atoms and the electric and chemical machinations of sound waves, the visible spectrum, and the warmth of being.

All of the atoms of my tombstone, temporary atoms in sidereal time, destined to be consumed in time’s next chapter and stored in the vault, will have etched upon them—in stone, mind you—the following:

I loved; the rest was an elaborate hoax.

Perspective is everything. I can encircle the entire Sun with my thumb and finger. Paradox or parallax? Although the horizon is moving up, I am a romantic and see it as the sun going down. I am at peace with the world. All the obligations of the day are satisfied, all the worries are put to rest, all the quotidian physiologic processes slow toward a respite invited by nightfall; soon sleep will be the result and I will join the Universe. All debts paid and all investments distributed. Energy neither created nor destroyed—only rearranged.

While I leave with no change left on me, the final reconciliation of the vacuum doesn’t add up. There's trouble in the books. Something is leftover that is difficult to categorize, count, or store in the vault that must balance its sheets at the end of the day. It is something unexpected in the vacillations, something extra. Uneven. Upsetting to the pluses and minuses that engender the zero-sum-gain. I loved, so everything else—the world, the stars, the Universe—was bullshit. Love—I can’t think of anything lovelier to thwart the perfect collapse of the perfect vacuum. It always escapes, defying the laws of the Universe, imperfectly.

What is the real me? Is it my net worth after all is said and done? When my net worth is tallied in the timeless archives of universal informatics, the real me will be valued at nothing, which is misleading on two levels:

1. It is nothing within a vacuum whose nothing is unstable.

2. An alien intangible that is as irrational as an imaginary number—love—is entangled with me in the æther and, in the eyes of the divine, qualifies me as noteworthy.