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doesn’t happen for him, he figures he may as well resign himself to a rather unsatisfying final twenty years of research on what will likely be increasingly arcane and minor subtopics within the hierarchy of String Theory treasure hunts.
    Theodore nimbly dodges the table lodged within the aisle that holds the projector and his laptop. Would it be better to simply turn around and leave now, rather than risk the chance of embarrassing himself by speaking without his notes? A section man in one of his undergrad courses, perhaps one of the humanities requirements he resented having to take, once told him that ninety percent of life is showing up. And he has found this to be true, for the most part, ever since. Show up for all the proper meetings, sign up for all the right grant opportunities, fill out the paperwork, check all the boxes, cite all your sources, and the rest is left to fate.
    The front of the room opens before him. There is a gap between the first rank of chairs with their esteemed occupants and the jerryrigged stage, a platform three feet off the floor that he must mount via stairs to the left. He turns towards these and the vision of the universe as nothing more than a thought, the dream of a madman, invades his head again. If this is nothing but a dream, the conception of a giant singular presence, then he can make it do whatever he wants, can he not? For isn’t he, with his own tiny glimmer of consciousness, part and parcel of this creation? He can envision himself rising to the occasion, his words lifting with confidence in such a way that his audience will not only be impressed, they will be moved. Perhaps he hasindeed been looking at everything the wrong way, carving things apart, dismantling the universe into smaller and smaller pieces as if it were merely a giant machine. The way physics has worked for the past three hundred years, the idea has been that if we could only find our way to the smallest moving parts, we could decipher how the machine works. But that’s analogous to trying to figure out what a laptop computer is and what it was made to do by sawing the smallest silicon chip inside it in half, naming it, and declaring that electrical energy flows through it. It’s a bit like slicing a horse in two and trying to understand what it is and what it does by picking apart a cross-section of its belly.
    These thoughts are distracting him. He must focus. He climbs the three steps, careful now—mustn’t trip—and shakes the hand of the moderator for the session, an adjunct prof at the local college, who seems genuinely enthusiastic and excited that Theodore has finally arrived and can now be introduced.
    Theodore turns his eyes to the audience, sees only a blurred mass of faces, a carpet of flesh color and earth-toned clothing. His head swims as if the room is in an ocean liner rolling to one side, the sensation of a pool of oily liquid shifting inside his head. He places his hand on the podium for balance.
    â€œAnd now, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for your patience.” The moderator is a stocky young fellow, Theodore knows the type. Finishing up his thesis for two or three years now, living on cheap food in campus housing, probably with a wife and a kid or two in the cramped apartment with him. Looking forward to rubbing elbows with this crowd for weeks. Lurching towards a desultory future as a prof at a community collegesomewhere. “It is my great pleasure to introduce to you one of the leading lights in the advancement of String Theory today, a true visionary in our field.” Theodore does not begrudge the young man casting himself together with him through the use of the word “our.” “Theodore Reveil is the John Stockbridge Fellow at the Institute for Cosmological Physics and one of the founding members of the Assembly of Particle Theorists. He is widely noted for his leadership work with the National Science Foundation and the American Physical