The Universe Factory

The universe did not start today. Nor yesterday. Nor any day before that. If the universe has a beginning at all, it wasn’t on a day.

By definition, a day is a full rotation of the Earth on its axis. Assuming the universe has in fact been around longer than that little blue orb, there was some period where there was no Earth. When Earth didn’t exist it certainly couldn’t rotate so these rotations most definitely could not be used to mark time passing. Generalizing the definition a tad, a day can be specified to any planet at all and therefore could be described as a full rotation of said abstract planet. Now we’ve reached back even farther, all the way to the first planet. Assuming again that this planet was formed at some point, there was time before planets. Therefore there was time before days, therefore there was the universe before days.

All of this to say, the universe could not possibly have had a birthday. No one who worked in The Universe Factory had a birthday either.

Tucked among a bundle of dimensions that are curled up in a bubble between our four, the factory itself exists outside of time and therefore cannot have a birthday either.

Most things do, but we only know them because it’s what we’re told. After all, humans can’t remember being born. When you’re old enough someone gives you a number and tells you that’s when you started. It could be a complete lie and you’d never know.

That being said, one could argue truth is relative. All that we know is a probable possibility. No matter how much supporting evidence we collect, as long as time marches on, there is no such thing as absolute certainty. Ask any respectable scientist: a theory can never be proven, only disproven.

Despite the inability to prove themselves right, these respectable scientists came up with a way to never be wrong. At some point and some time, someone built the first probability machine. It was rather rudimentary, as most prototypes are. This initial model answered only the question “what is the probability of…”, offering a single answer. The first question they asked it, of course, was the probability of the machine being a reliable translator for the universe. 95% seemed high enough. Several revisions were made and after some time the machines were able to produce a range of answers from least probable to most probable for any situation. The scientists redid their previous calculations and were met with the same 95%. However 3% allowed for the possibility that the machine was in fact a trapped god, and 2% said it was the mechanized brain of a ninth grader getting their wisdom teeth removed. Considering the scientists were not from earth and therefore had no idea what ninth grade was (lucky them) nor wisdom teeth, they thought very little of it. Either way, they justified in their marketing pitch to the universe factory, none of these possibilities directly expressed that the machines were incorrect.

To whoever it was in the largest office with the shiniest spinning chair, that logic seemed sound. The universe factory began producing astronomical quantities of the machines. They implemented them in each department: from quasars and black holes, to solar systems and tachyons.

As Noor worked her way through the final questions for solar system 458LFP42FNKK, she shamelessly reduced her probability machine to a glorified calculator by determining the 0.274% chance that today was, in fact, her birthday.

Those odds seemed good enough. Today was decidedly this year’s birthday. Yesterday was last year’s so admittedly she wasn’t doing a good job of rationing them, but by the earthen standard clock she was owed yearly celebrations just for existing. Noor wasn’t particularly semantic about the supposed stagnant nature of the dates for these celebrations: as long as it was annual she could rationalize her inconsistency.

One would think back-to-back birthdays signal a fantastic start to a week. However, no one chases the shallows of a bottle with the last bites of a family sized ice cream cake for the second day in a row and continues interpreting positive signs. No one should need frequent birthdays.

Still, most people live their lives collecting them. There’s an excess of those who get far too many, and an even greater number of those who don’t get enough.

Noor could calculate both values if she wanted to, and she probably would one day. She could calculate that probability as well, but the numbers wouldn’t mean anything. To store digits without purpose or pass them in and out without gaining something from them would reduce her to a computer, and then who would operate her?

The last sip of gin splashed at her in response and she emptied the bottle in retaliation.

Glancing at the clock by the door of her cubicle, she learned that her self-directed break was ticking to an end as her daily quota remained far from complete. She pulled up her calendar tab and diluted the majority of the work across the following week, shortening lunch breaks and deleting several showers, until she could comfort herself with only thirty minutes left to complete that night.

Noor opened the file for solar system 458FP42FNKL and began plugging the start conditions into her machine. The elements and their quantities, their locations and velocities. When she’d completed the inputs, zeroes flooded the screen. Eighty-seven after the decimal and before the first non-zero integer determining the probability of planets forming that could support life. Two-hundred and twenty-one following the decimal point delivering the probability that life forms before the star dies.

Zeroes bet that nothing would love or breathe or be remembered in that pocket of space at that time. No thoughts would grow, no bodies would struggle to make sense of them, and no being would ever observe the universe from those four-dimensional coordinates.

It would seem stark if Noor hadn’t gotten as close as one could to seeing infinite zeroes in her work, she’d long since become desensitized to their meaning. Afterall, the vast majority of things had near zeroes probabilities, and what a silly thing it would be to allow the vast majority of things to make one despair. Suns, planets, and life were not inherently positive nor negative to the universe, they just were.

Those zeroes were not a tragedy, but the ones symbolizing the gin left in her bottle and the cake left on her plate certainly were. As were the ones marking the time when she finished a half dozen more calculations and finally succumbed to her unproductivity for the night.

Two sets of galaxies were likely to collide within the next ninety-two thousand years, (a fairly high rate she made note of given their proximities), three hundred planets within them would fall into tidal lock by the end of the century, and sixty-five-million-four-thousand-and-eight moons would be hit by sizeable asteroids within the next month.

Noor dragged her hands down her face with a sigh as she signed out of her computer. There would always be more numbers to log without feeling tomorrow, but no birthdays left in the foreseeable future.