Last God

Professor Jessi Vitta paced the room wringing her hands. Her eyes were wide and but did not have the madness that everyone claimed her brown displayed. She stopped behind the desk where she had placed a neat stack of papers. Placing a single hand atop the papers she looked straight into my eyes. My pen hovered above the paper of my notebook, my audio recorder had been recording silence for fifteen minutes.

“Let me start you off simple,” Jessi finally said, her voice cracked and dry. She brushed long strands of hair away from her face, tucking them behind her ears. “Mathematics as we know it is a construct. We have used to help explain the phenomena of real life in a concise way. However, it is not perfect.”

Jessi paused to think, her fingers tapping the top of the papers. “I have spent the last fifty-two years sifting through data from colliders, measuring the observable universe, and conducting some of my own experiments. Now, I have found a solution. The problem we faced was that we were not speaking the same language as the universe.”

My pen scratched notes about what she was saying, but I did not respond. She paused again, her brow furrowing in thought.

The professor continued speaking slowly, “I have fixed it, creating a system of mathematics that .”

Another long pause. “In the collisions at the LHC and other colliders, and in the stars I found the primordial language. The language that can explain everything. I was a necessary find, allowing my to develop my now famous theory of quantum gravity; solving the problem that has plagued generations of physicists.”

Jessi sat down in the chair, her eyes moving to focus on the paper in front of her. Carefully lifting the top page, she set it aside. Then, delicately, she lifted the second page, and held it up to show me. On it were a series of symbols that I could not recognize, I nodded at it and she set it down.

“This is the language of the gods and I have learned to speak it,” her voice was soft, it drew me forward, my eyes now focused on her intensely.

Silence again, another pause. “When the universe began there was no sound, they call it the big bang but there was no noise, no bang, just silence. About three-hundred fifty thousand years after the big bang, the universe learned to speak. The first sound was like the bells of angels ringing across the infant universe. As the universe expanded, the plasma lost too much density to pass the waves any longer. The waves stopped suddenly. In their place, at the crest of their waves, galaxies sprang into existence. You see, the waves created pockets of high density and low density, this inevitably lead to galaxies. Without sound the universe as we know it would not exist at all.”

I nodded, not sure if I should say something to fill the time between pauses. I pursed my lips, resolving to let her speak on her own time. It had been twenty years since her last interview, I would not ruin this opportunity.

Jessi began again, her eyes distant, “It tracked these sounds, as did other astronomers and astrophysicists. But I saw the pattern in the noise. The noises were not random, they were the voice of the gods. I have read it, I had translated it. I know this sounds crazy, I hardly believe myself even after all I’ve seen.”

I lost control for a moment, my mind refusing to not ask the obvious question. “What have you seen?”

She looked at me, a wry smile on her face as if seeing me for the first time. “I have spoken to them and they have shown me things.”

“Spoken to who?” I asked, edging forward on my seat.

“The last god, our sole protector,” she said. “And he has shown me what lies beyond the veil of our understanding. I have only glimpsed it, and I dare not speak of it.”

I found myself unable to speak, I wanted to believe she was crazy, that she had lost her mind in her search for answers. That is not what I saw. Her hair was disheveled, but not dirty, her room was chaotic but in the way of someone who had not had enough time to clean. Here sat a woman that had devoted her life to answering the most difficult questions, not a mad hermit as so many had claimed.

“How do you communicate with them?” I asked after it seemed clear she was not going to begin again.

“I can show you,” she said eagerly before standing. She motioned for me to follow her out of the room. My camera operator followed silently as she was trained to do, and we walked through the small house that the professor had built years ago. As the daughter of a major tech company’s CEO she had inherited a fortune, but she lived in apparent modesty. Her simple two story house was surrounded by ten acres but was near enough to town to have high speed internet and electricity.

She led us to the basement where a steel door blocked the way. Typing a code into the keypad the door unlocked and swung open. I expected the room inside to look like the bridge of the starship Enterprise, but instead it was far less impressive. Behind the heavy steel door was a series of desktop computers and server racks. The room had a single massive glass pane, tinted dark enough that I could not see through it.

She motioned us into the room and told the camera operator where to point the camera to prevent accidentally revealing any secrets. She had me sit next to her at one of the computer terminals. The professors hands danced across the keyboard, typing quickly as she swapped between software windows. Finally she brought up a camera and from the camera’s view I could see the tinted pane of glass at the end of the room. The room was simple, a circular room with a pedestal at the center that was topped with a glass sphere.

A siren rang for a few moments before sound filled the air, like the roar of a jet engine through thick glass. The view from the camera showed the sphere at the center of the room begin to light up.

“Right now, the sphere is being filled with superhot plasma, I’m emulating the state when the first sound waves were created,” Jessi explained calmly, unaffected by the sound.

The tinted pane at the end of the room began to glow as the orb began to emit bright light.

“To speak with the god, I must enter a message into the plasma,” she explained. She typed a message into a box. This is Jessi, I am telling the world of your presence. Tapping enter, I watched the orb flicker sporadically.

There was a pause where the light remained constant, it lasted only a minute. Then the light began to flicker again. She waited, then a series of symbols I did not recognize appeared on the screen. She read through them carefully her eyes growing wide.

“What does it say?” I asked anxiously.

She swallowed and bit her lip. Slowly she began, “I am dying.”

The orb flickered again, more symbols appeared on the screen.

“Please help me,” she spoke the words carefully. “Please help me. I am not ready to die.”

More flickering, more symbols.

“They are coming, I cannot stop them.”

A pause. The light remained steady for a few moments, then the flickering began followed once more by the steady glow. Jessi stared at it, eyes wide and panicked.

“What does it say?” I asked my voice quivering slightly.

“The gate is open, look to,” she paused trying to read a symbol. “I believe this symbol is the name of a star,” she said pointing to one of the strange symbols then continued. “It is coming, I only hope we have given you enough time.”

“Can you ask what star that is?” I asked her.

She nodded and typed out the message. Where should we look? I don’t know that symbol. The sphere blinked the message for a moment before going still. There was a long pause before the flickering began again. The pulsing seemed slower this time, deeper. Finally the message appeared on the screen.

Jessi read the words slowly, “I see you.”