When we’re stars

> With a bit of mica-flecked epoxy, I thought I could gild away the rift in the teacup of yours that I smashed. You believed that something broken could never truly be made whole again. I wanted to prove you wrong.

Shit.

This letter was starting dramatic. Jay only got dramatic when something was wrong. Really, really wrong.

Time to put the kettle on.

> You were right to throw that cup back at me, but if you’d cut me a little slack, the world wouldn’t be ending.

Double shit.

Option 1: She’s taking the divorce hard and being metaphorical. *Her* world is ending. Our world, technically.

My phone just went from two new messages to six. Eight. None are from Jay.

Filing option 1 under ‘Best Case: Improbable’.

> No, sorry. Sorry. I did this. You’ve done nothing to deserve what is happening.

Right in one.

The kettle finally boils, and I pour too-hot water onto delicate green leaves.

> I could never fix the tears in your heart (I wish I hadn’t cut you down). Cups, though. That’s just physics. And chemistry, but that’s just physics.

(I can hear you say “and physics is just a crutch for people who are afraid of maths” in my head. I would give literally anything to hear you say that right now.)

Read more science fiction from Nature Futures

Physics is just a crutch for people who are afraid of maths, and I married an idiot. What the hell have you done?

So, Option 2: The world is actually ending, and I have 19 messages making certain I’ve got the memo.

I turn off the phone.

The tea is bitter grass, and I feel the only way to do it justice is to drink it straight from the pot.

> So, I fixed it. That’s the good news for you. Assuming the Universe still exists when you get home in two hours, you should find, next to this letter, your cup. It’s molecularly perfect. Not a single crack on it. The chip in the bottom of the handle is gone too. I didn’t clone it. It is actually the same cup.

Oh. Wow. Shit.

I hadn’t even noticed the cup. I’d kicked Jay out after she threw it at the floor by my feet. It had exploded magnificently. She promised she’d calculated that it couldn’t have hit me. I’d yelled, and cried, and told her to send her brother for her things. I’d spent two weeks stepping around ceramic shards to slow myself down from forgiving her.

She’s right. The cup was intact and smooth. The chip was gone. It was new, in every meaningful way. Too new.

She really did it. There’ll be time to be excited later. Focus.

But damn she really did it.

> Do you remember when we joked about building a tiny engineer, armed with a belt full of electrons and a commanding presence, to molecularly repair arteries?

Please — don’t post this. But I’ve solved — we’ve solved — the quantum superposition paradox. We can make arteries whole again. It’s not only that, though: we can make *anything* whole again. I used anyons to reconstruct quantum memory, but the genius was the dimensionality transposition work you did. It moves them out of the plane! Every subatomic particle remembers what it has been. What it’s supposed to be. We’re halfway on our way to cracking time travel. You and me.

Instead of the faded glaze I remembered, the surface of the cup was becoming increasingly gritty, as if there was sand embedded in the clay. If it wasn’t psychotic, I’d say the glaze was regressing …

Oh holy hell. It’s absolutely regressing.

This is probably where I should stop and call … my graduate students? Department chair? The Pentagon? There isn’t a clear chain of command here.

(Note to self: put ‘figure out chain of command for the end of the world’ on ToDo list.)

> The other trick was providing them a template, so that the anyons know which past state to choose. They needed to know what different atomic structures look like. There really aren’t that many when you’re working at the orbital level, so, I just hard-coded them in.

Templates. If she’s using templating, how does the system terminate?

Right. Of course. It doesn’t.

Shit.

She’s set them up to revert atomic structures to past states. So, mug into clay. Clay into aluminium silicate. Skin to lipids …

My teacup has been replaced by a mass of clay. The stack of papers underneath the cup is slowly turning into pulp, ink pooling on the floor mixed with the dregs of my morning.

> I should have listened. To you. To our colleagues. To our students. I wanted to build an engineer, to fix everything so that nothing would be broken ever again. I don’t think this process can be stopped. I’ve tried. I’ve left you all my notes in the hope that you succeed where I failed.

I guess I should have looked at those papers while they were still, well, paper.

> They are impressive, though, aren’t they? My little menders.

Yes, you brilliant, tragedy of a woman. They are impressive.

Wait I’ve got it. Replication. I bet they don’t self-replicate. All I need to do is create another one and direct it to look for ‘menders’ first. I want —

> In search of perfection, my menders bring everything back to a natural state. Before we were together, we were lovestruck students. Before we were students, we were cells. Before we were cells, we were air and water. Perfection, I should have realized, is a moment, not an objective. I am once again guilty of over-optimization.

> I love you. I’m sorry. I’ll see you when we’re stars.