The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

a thought which causes him to wheel about the rooftop like a bat undone, thinking—I can even go one further—for there exists a formal paradox here, a proof of sorts, with regards to consciousness, something touched by Gödel, but also by someone more ancient, eldritch . . . Euclid! Because the basic structure of formal systems, defined as a set of axioms and subsequent theorems, inherently means that one cannot derive the axioms of a formal system or formal method from within the system or method . . . axioms must always stand outside of it . . . And if one wished to ground all of science in a well-founded and formalized manner, that is, to construct hierarchically the great tree of knowledge Yggdrasil itself, one must build it on some implicit, long-unacknowledged set of axioms. And the ultimate of those, the basest, most fundamental, the very root system, would have to be consciousness, holding up the entire tree with its unjustifiable nature. Giving everything else its definitive form. And if the existence of consciousness, of observers, is one of the axioms of science then a science of consciousness would be the ultimate begging of the question, petitio principii, a victim of the Münchhausen trilemma, because consciousness can’t be justified using consciousness . . . just as if man is the measure of all things, then how to measure man? . . . For even great Yggdrasil cannot hold the weight of its roots upon its boughs—and at that moment Kierk is so overcome with this vision and so sure in his ability to formalize this paradox that he feels powerful enough to break the tree of knowledge over his knee like a mere stick; in doing so he would sunder science itself, show it to rest on untenable foundations and paradox just as Gödel did to mathematics, and he sees all of this theory, the line of argument he’s uncovered, laid out before him, a thing of terrible beauty and utter destruction, a completely alien form of wreckage—and then he is human-size again and standing next to the sundered Yggdrasil, science itself, which is smote, a great tree cracked in half, lying on its side riven with breakages, its insides visible now, and it stretches before him like the giant body of a tortured saint, and to this vision Kierk nearly weeps, struck, for if it is true that science is fundamentally paradoxical then the universe is fundamentally alien and unknowable, a great white entity approaching in the ocean, a swimming beast, a grand hooded phantom, a snow hill drifting in the air, a mountain coming on with incomprehensible purpose, all of us Jonah and the universe the whale.

Just like that the vision vanishes. He is alone on the roof, and a mere failed scientist once more. This winding culmination is impossible, far-fetched, and even if it were true he is no longer the man for the job, and he, delusional with lack of sleep and stress, is suddenly sure he is merely indulging a runaway train of thought. He stumbles away from the ledge.

The blue rose is still in his hand. Examining its cosmic shade, a near-blooming star of night, Kierk has his second realization of the night, more significant, faster, simpler, more overbearing, time slowing down when he thinks—really, this has been a love story all along. He hadn’t been expecting that, even in all this authoring.

The door to the roof, which has been kept open by a cinderblock Kierk dragged over, opens, and the darkness is pierced by the light from Carmen’s phone.

“Don’t close the door!” Kierk says. “It locks from the inside. Leave the cinderblock.”

Carmen carefully closes the heavy door on the cinderblock, then walks over to join Kierk at the edge.

“What are you doing up here?”

“Just thinking about stuff.”

Standing beside him she looks out over the expanse of the lightless city. They are silent for minutes on end, taking it all in. His eyes have adjusted and now he can see the finest details of the barren streets, which are inky and silent up to the wall of light that is Midtown.

After a while Carmen finally says—“Sorry for getting you dragged into all this. I really thought there was something . . . to solve. And I’m sorry if it impacted, you know . . .”

Kierk’s hand finds hers and she trails off.

“It may have been inevitable. Which means,” he says, both facing out to the dark streets, “that I’m going to be leaving.”

Carmen’s hand squeezes his as he continues. “There is a choice to be made on your end. Because the Francis Crick Scholarship Program? It’s a failure. One Crick Scholar is literally dead. Another, me, is being kicked out. And another’s monkey self-lobotomized. Next week is going to be a political circus. Bad press. Bad rumors. They won’t get the funding renewed for next year. Certainly there’s not going to be those prestigious NYU tenure-track positions for any of us anymore. You can stay here and inevitably have all your funding dropped. Or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Have you ever been to Paris?”

Carmen laughs. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“The Sorbonne has a burgeoning consciousness science program. For you, I mean. I’m through. It’s over for me. I’ll do something else. I’ll show up to the after-work parties and make everyone mad but that’s it. They’d take you in a heartbeat and no one will blame you for leaving a failing mess of a program.”

“But what will you do?”

“I don’t know. Something else. And I think I’m finally okay with that.”

He hands her the blue rose, which she hadn’t noticed in the shadows of the roof, and she, perplexed, takes it from his hand delicately. One hand goes up to her mouth when she sees what it is.

“So you are serious . . . How serious? Because—”

He kisses her and feels the great tremulous activity in him mirrored in her. Faces together, unwilling to part, his cheek is touched by the small wet of a