Order and Chaos

Unfortunately, you think Nothing.

"I don't really think about that sort of thing," I say to him. "But if you really pressed me about it, I guess I'd say..."

Chime in that, an absence can certainly be defined as a concept, which makes it at least some manner of thing, doesn't it?

But in order to explore the nature of nothing in greater detail, it could help to set up a point of comparison to measure it against. Take, for example, our reality. The present we sense and interact with. Something we can certainly conceptualize and experience. And we can compare that to something else... the past. Something we can no longer experience or influence, but which we can identify as a concept. Isn't that some manner of Thing made of Nothing? That is to say, if our only access to the past is via a series of memories of supposed events, isn't the past just a series of things that no longer are? A sum of our non-existences? As far as our present and real selves can tell, the present is all that is. It's possible that you merely have some illusory memory of past, fabricated by a lying mind. Mere moments ago, it's possible that nothing actually existed! That existence was null and void!

And yet, you'd still claim it existed, no?

"...but that's just off the top of my head," I continue. "Haven't really given it that much thought."

Whatever the fuck

"To be perfectly honest," I go on, "the whole thing doesn't really make a difference to me. I'm more concerned with keeping this cab running, not answering grand questions about the nature of reality."

That's when I hear sirens and panic.

"Are the cops after you?" I ask.

"Could be. A lot of people have taken a sudden interest in my work," Plok II replies calmly. "It wouldn't surprise me if the police were among them."

hard left. left. now.

Well. I'm not getting mixed up with the cops. I make a hard left turn in hopes of shaking them off.

---

My name is Officer Lauren Order. Except I keep thinking it's Officer Turbo Toaster when the cat starts getting sleepy.

The cat's my partner. His name is Officer Milton Felus, and he's God. He tells me the universe isn't the way it's supposed to be, that it's tilted really far over to the left. Almost vertical. I'm not sure what that means, but he assures me it's bad. Keeps muttering about how it's supposed to be past tense. I don't know what that means either. Maybe it's just a side effect of all the coffee he drinks.

I'm worried about that, but apparently the stability of the universe depends on him staying awake. So until we can fix this mess, that's the way things are going to be.

And apparently, the cab we're chasing - not the cab, the cab in the cab - is the only one who can help us. But first we've got to catch him.

Unfortunately, the cab we're chasing - no, not the cab, the cab the cab is in - just took a real hard turn down an alleyway. I'm following, obviously, but I'm real worried about what else we might find there.