Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“This blackout?”

“Yes. I have faith, you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I am twenty-three years old and in those twenty-three years science has never let me down. And it’s not going to let me down now. Two years before I was born was the last time we had one of these, at least on this scale, and you cannot seriously expect me to believe that for the duration of my entire life Father Science has not adequately investigated and prospectively remedied the deficiencies that occasionally cause us to become cloaked in unnatural darkness.”

“Forgive me but isn’t the strongest proof there’s been no prospective remedy what you currently see when you look out the window?”

“But I have faith, faith in science.”

“Okay.”

“Faith.”

“You still going to school? I mean figuratively, of course, from your computer and everything.”

“School?”

“Yeah Columbia, Psychology, that school?”

“Oh.”

“So?”

“Columbia yes, Psychology no.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ve seen the light and now realize that terms like social science are devoid of meaning. Psychology is no more a science than astrology and here I was studying it like some hairy caveman magically transported centuries forward in time and oblivious to the news; the news being that in Science man has found his long-sought panacea to all that ails us. Really, how did you keep from laughing when I would tell you I was a psych major?”

“So what’s your new major?”

“Physics, what else?”

“I see. So at this rate you should be getting your bachelors around the time you hit, what, thirty-five?”

“See now you’re talking about time and I have a lot to say about that but I’m not really prepared at this moment to take a hard position on it, not at this time.”

“Why not finish Psychology, which you’ve spent years on, then pursue Physics? That way you have something .”

“Finish Psychology? What do you think I’ve done? Finish it is exactly what I did to it. I finished Psychology the way no one before had ever finished a discipline.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I created a malady and as if that weren’t enough I created a human being Casi! That’s what I’m talking about.”

“What? Who?”

“Kramden that’s who.”

“Ah man you still on that?”

“Of course I’m on it.”

“What are you doing to yourself Angus?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I’m serious man you weren’t always like this, you’re losing it. I thought I was in bad shape until I came in here. It’s that fucking carousel, you need to stop with that thing. This blackout might be the best thing ever happened to you. Come with, let’s go outside. We’ll look for those guys, get something to eat.”

“I’m going to forget you said that about the carousel because we’re friends, you and me I mean. Although the carousel and I are friends as well.”

“Fine, I’m sorry then, but let’s go find those guys. Let’s go outside , it’ll be good. Besides it’s just as cold in here maybe colder if that’s possible.”

“Everything’s going to come back on any minute.”

“I think you should go outside. I think you should develop a stronger relationship with reality and going outside would assist you in that.”

“Funny you should mention reality because that’s exactly what I’m trying to get to the bottom of. The problem with Psychology was it was too nebulous, there was no certitude, it was like trying to predict what the weather was going to be in two months with all those damn butterflies constantly getting in the way. Like with Kramden—”

“Please Angus no more Kramden.”

“Okay I won’t mention him again but that doesn’t change what I’m after though. I want answers; answers to the deepest questions and when I get them I want them to be indisputable and to constitute true knowledge not probabilities or conjecture. This is what Physics, a true science, is going to give me and now that I’ve aligned myself with the true king I can take my place at the right hand of the throne armed with a perfect understanding of the ultimate reality, what it precisely is and what it means. That’s the reality I’m going to be developing a relationship with.”

“Okay.”

“Proof! Indisputable proof without qualifications or gradations of any kind. Proof of the kind that simply doesn’t exist in Psychology. Physics can be verified, Psychology can’t, therefore one is a science while the other was an extreme waste of my time.”

“I understand.”

“So what’s with the face?”

“No face.”

“Yes face. What is it? What are you thinking?”

“No just that, well I hate to say it but you know there’s no real proof in science either right?”

“What? Have you lost the little remaining sanity you possessed? Have you not heard of a little guy named Einstein? Well he proved that Newton was full of it when that apple fell on his head and shit. E = MC 2and all that other crap was proof, simple as that.”

“Well what he did was propose a theory and all subsequent experiments and observations have conformed to the results one would expect to get if that theory was true.”

“Sounds suspiciously like proof to me.”

“Except the same was true of Newton’s work for many years and under your criteria he was allegedly proven wrong.”

“No you’re looking at it the wrong way.”

“More importantly we can never really verify any of science’s claims in the sense of proving them to be indubitably true. They just aren’t susceptible to that kind of an operation. Hume showed this, ask Alyona he can explain it. As for what makes something a science it’s not the fact that its statements can be verified, it’s that, unlike in Psychology, they can be falsified, that is, found to be untrue. Read your Popper on that.”

“My popper ? The only Physics my dad cares about is the shortest possible path his beer can travel to his lips.”

“Not your popper, Karl Popper.”

“As for this Hume character, what does he know? When did he write? The fucking thirteen-hundreds? What did he write on? Fucking papyrus? Fuck him, he’s just bitter that science has completely co-opted his cheesy field. Let him keep speaking ill of science and I’ll shove my new terabyte iPod up his ass, see how he likes that.”

“All right, I’m going to get some food, you coming?”

No thanks, he said, and I left.

Outside there was a slight but palpable energy in the air. It was one of those moments when strangers talk to each other and speak principally of when they discovered the situation and its resemblance to entertainment. People, many of them wearing foreheads stained with dirt, were reduced to long-obsolete forms of communication. Those with battery operated radios would use them to intercept radio waves carrying a stray datum here or there and then relay it to others using their mouths. They did this with such force that even non-participants like me could, through mere presence, become informed. In this manner, I learned that because of the darkened traffic lights no cars would be allowed on the roads until power had been restored. I would not be going home. People were stuck on elevators, people in subway cars, in buildings with electronic doors. Police were everywhere. The diner wasn’t open but a person, probably the owner, was standing outside the door with a baseball bat looking everyone in the eye. A woman handed me a leaflet. It said that if the blackout affected my thermal status there was a place I could stay and it identified that place and it listed the symptoms of hypothermia and I wondered how they, the organization, managed to get the leaflet printed. I wandered about. Nothing was open. I had no idea where Alyona and Louie could have gone. A couple of blocks away I found an open store lit only by the sun. A lot of people gathered near the open door of this place as if cheered by the proprietor’s defiance. They spoke and planned and in general behaved like a community. I said nothing. I bought some things to eat then left.