"Before I explain that, I want to sum up what we've figured out so far. We started at the first principle — 'I think, therefore I am.' From there, we deduced that reality and consciousness are the same thing. If someone wants to claim that reality exists as a separate variable to consciousness, the burden of proof is on them to provide evidence for their claim. And based on the complete lack of evidence supplied by the scientific community, I am thoroughly unconvinced. I'm not buying it. It makes zero logical sense. I'm calling bullshit on the whole thing.

Because when we actually look at all the evidence, it all supports the conclusion that reality and consciousness are the same thing. You'd even expect quantum physics and relativity if reality and consciousness are the same thing. These two areas of physics, which have always been labeled 'weird' and 'mysterious,' are not weird at all. They're only weird if you have assumed things to be true that are not true, and then never bothered to challenge your own assumptions.

But this presents a significant problem for the physics community. They have built their entire body of work on top of Einstein's equations, which assert that spacetime is bending and, therefore, that spacetime is fundamentally real, and it is not. Einstein was wrong. Spacetime is not bending — the observer is!"

Zac grinned. "I love how you're sitting here in a park in the middle of the night with a snail, telling me that one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived was wrong. You sound like a crackpot."

I laughed. "You can call me a crackpot all you like, but I'm just pointing out what should be obvious to anyone who actually bothers to look. Plus, if someone wants to call me a crackpot, they can provide some evidence to back that claim up — because from where I'm standing, all the evidence points to the scientific establishment being the delusional ones. They're the ones making unsubstantiated claims, and I'm just calling bullshit on their redundant postulates.

And don't get me wrong — I have a tremendous amount of respect for the scientific community, and Einstein for that matter. If you, Zachary Borrowdale, turned into a cocky asshole like the scientific establishment has, I'd verbally slap you across the face and tell you to get your shit together because you're better than that. I hold you to a high standard because I love you, and want to see you embody the best version of yourself— not because I hate you, and delight in your failure. I want our scientists to be the best that they can be. They are the custodians of technological progress in this world, and they are currently falling so short of their potential.

Furthermore, this doesn't detract from Einstein's genius at all. The way Einstein's mind worked was magical, and to come up with his theory of relativity that long ago, and all of his other great discoveries — what a magnificent feat! He contributed an insane amount of detailed knowledge to the natural sciences, as have many scientists before and after him.

But even today's physicists suspect that he is missing something because they can't get relativity to marry with quantum mechanics. We know from empirical evidence that the essence of relativity is correct, and is therefore absolutely genius. I'm humbly standing on the shoulders of giants when I point out how he just got the particulars wrong.

So I know people will probably call me a crank or a crackpot and demand I get my physics Ph.D. before I challenge someone like Einstein, but they are missing the point. I don't want Einstein to be wrong, but if reality and consciousness are the same thing, then relativity is just collateral damage. He is wrong, and that's that. The emperor has no clothes. And if I don't tell the truth, who will?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Zac asked.

"Yes."

"Phew." He wiped his brow. "Because I can't think of anyone."

"Exactly! Academic institutions pride themselves on being centers for free thought, but that is a well-intentioned delusion for the most part. If you challenge orthodoxy, you won't get research funding or a promotion, or you get laughed at and labeled a 'pseudoscientist,' which is highly offensive and degrading to someone whose identity, income, and career are tied to the pursuit of scientific truth. And when you ridicule people and deny them funding and call them names for thinking differently and asking different questions, you aren't exactly creating an environment conducive to exploring counter-intuitive ideas, which seems absolutely ludicrous to me!

By definition, the greatest scientific insights are counter-intuitive and non-obvious at the time of their discovery, because if they were intuitive and obvious, we would have found them already. I mean, duh. Am I missing something here? No, seriously — am I missing something here? Isn't this basic? Isn't this obvious? Has history taught these academics nothing? Heliocentrism, evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity: all paradigm shifts, all counter-intuitive at the time of their discovery.

When did the universe ever promise a scientist that its design would be intuitive, huh? When did the universe ever promise a scientist that they could unravel its secrets without stepping outside their comfort zone and rethinking everything they thought they knew? The answer is never. Never, ever. The universe never made that promise.

Hence, rejecting an idea because it is counter-intuitive and 'crazy' is just the epitome of illogical close-minded stupidity. I mean, honestly — how did all of these intellectually brilliant people end up with the cognitive flexibility of a rock? I'm going to take a wild guess here, but perhaps it's got something to do with the restrictive structure of the institutions in which they operate.

Case in point: theoretical physicists are the brightest of the bright, and they explore some pretty far-out ideas. But if they're so clever, why haven't they put consciousness front and center in all their theories? Isn't consciousness the first thing they should question? Why don't they truly go back to first principles?

I just despise the hubris of the whole system. We don't know shit for sure, especially when it comes to consciousness — and yet there is this pervading dogmatic belief in materialism that is stifling progress. They're treating consciousness as an afterthought, when really consciousness is the only thing we know for sure exists. I mean, come on guys. This is just so basic.

You know, Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist who gave a TEDx talk called 'The Science Delusion.' In it, he gently challenged ten dogmatic beliefs of scientific materialism — the same beliefs that I'm challenging right now. His talk was banned because an anonymous scientific panel deemed it 'pseudoscientific.' If that's not a symptom of the delusion and hubris of an authoritarian scientific establishment, I don't know what is. Society's truth-seeking mechanisms are completely fucked, and in need of a serious correction — and I'm not just talking about science. I'm talking about everything: the 'objective' news, which is anything but objective; social media; politics. It's verging on insanity.

Just labeling someone a pseudoscientist for challenging your own belief system is equivalent to labeling someone a 'racist' or 'Nazi' or 'deplorable' if they have political views that disagree with your own. Instead, you should be practicing some empathy, trying to understand why their opinions differ and leveraging their opposing perspectives to challenge your own assumptions and clarify your own thinking and improve your own argument. Maybe there is a reason people have different views to your own. Hmmm… there's an idea. Maybe other people see something you missed while you were busy serving tea and scones to like-minded individuals inside your private echo chamber. Perhaps you can actually learn something from someone else if you take the time to suspend your certainty and listen to their opposing perspective. The whole system just reeks of a kind of intellectual arrogance and laziness and close-mindedness. The great physicist, David Bohm, summed it up perfectly when he said 'a great many people think that they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.'

I mean, that's the thing — people these days just don't think. It drives me nuts! The world has gone mad! And those same people have the audacity to call my views 'crazy' and 'woo woo'? Fuck off. At least I can actually derive and defend my views from first principles. Can they? No, they can't, because they haven't even bothered to try. They're lazy thinkers; intellectual sloths.

Anyone who wants to argue that my worldview is crazy has one straightforward task to do: satisfy the goddamn burden of proof that was placed on them as soon as they claimed that reality exists as a separate variable to consciousness. That's it. Do your job as a scientist and show me the empirical evidence. The burden of proof is not on me because I'm not making any claim that can't already be established by the mere fact that my consciousness exists. And so if there really is a material reality separate to consciousness, then don't ask me to believe it on faith like some flying spaghetti monster or Zeus in the sky — prove it. Carl Sagan once said, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.' So show me the extraordinary evidence in favor of your extraordinarily superfluous postulate, and I will humbly bend the knee like Jon Snow and swear allegiance to your dogma. But until then, everyone should stop over-complicating everything. They should stop telling me what to think when they can't even think straight themselves.

And it's not surprising we're in this situation, either. Our education system teaches kids what to think, not how to think. It trains them to be lazy thinkers. We're all just expected to fall in line and be good little sheep and get good grades and go to university and get a good degree and get a good job and accept the way the world works and don't rock the boat.

Well, screw that. It's a trap. It's a prison for your mind, and I'm not going to lock myself in there. I'm not going to play the silly, nonsensical game that society has constructed. I don't care if that means I end up a poor, unsuccessful dropkick or a failure by society's standards. If it means my mind is free, then I'll do it.

And so if everyone has locked their minds inside a cage, who is free enough to challenge orthodoxy? Who is free enough to challenge the genius and elegance of Einstein's ideas? Doing so is almost blasphemous.

So do I have to be the one to do it? Me? Why would anybody listen to me anyway? I'm just a nobody university dropout who feels like a failure most of the time because I've spent an insane number of hours trying to figure out this damn riddle instead of playing society's game and making money and progressing my career and achieving all the things I thought I should have, and would have, achieved by this age. I'm twenty-seven, and I feel like I have nothing to show for my life except for a bunch of beautiful memories. I have no savings because every cent I earn is just another cent to spend on living expenses while I focus more time on this riddle. I don't have a partner, and quite frankly, I sometimes wonder why anyone takes an interest in me. I'm always scared that they'll see the truth: that I'm supposed to have my shit together, but I don't. That I'm perfectly capable of having my shit together, but I just can't seem to focus on all the things I've been told I should be focusing on. That my mind is wild and undisciplined. That I'm all the things the productivity gurus told me I shouldn't be. And I love my parents, but I know they wonder when I'm going to stop spending thousands of hours on unpaid obsessions, pursuing answers to questions that don't pay the bills.

You know, I was a golden child once upon a time. Accelerated in school, a scholarship magnet, teachers loved me, adults always telling me how talented I was — the burden of all that potential weighing on my shoulders. I was supposed to achieve great things in my life, if only I could play by the rules. But I couldn't. My mind wouldn't let me.

I was supposed to use my privilege to be of service to the world. I've always had this deep, deep craving to be of service to the world. I thought that one day I'd create a great business that helped people, and then I couldn't even concentrate on that. I started a new business, and I'm basically failing to grow that too — not because it's a bad business. No. My customers love what I offer. But over the last year, my mind can't seem to love this business as much as it loves this riddle. I can't focus. I was supposed to do so much with my life. But now here I am, sitting in a park in the middle of the night, talking to a snail and my eccentric best friend.

And I can't tell you the number of times I've felt this overwhelming guilt about it all — like I was squandering my life by following my curiosity. I've just been terrified that the ball is going to drop, and I'm going to spend the next seventy years obsessively searching for answers that I'll never find. And then I'd look back at the end, at all the things I could have achieved in my career and in my life, if only I could force my mind to focus on what I wanted it to. And I'd feel that pang of regret.

I'd regret even trying. I'd regret falling through that damn portal five years ago and never climbing out. I'd regret sticking my nose where it didn't belong. I'd regret always asking 'why?' I'd regret risking it all, because I'd end up poor and miserable and alone — that girl with so much potential who wasted it all on a dead end. That girl who never lived up to her parent's expectations, or her friend's expectations, or society's expectations. A failure.

And no fluffy quotes would save me then. No one saying, 'You didn't fail. You just learned a lot and next time you'll be a success!' because there wouldn't be a next time. Not when I'm one hundred and on my deathbed and my youth is behind me, and I've wasted my whole life on a riddle that everyone told me was impossible to solve in the first place. I'd have no one to blame but myself, and my own miserable curiosity that led me astray.

You know, I only started investigating reality as a side project because it was so incredibly obvious that the scientific community had utterly fucked up their logic at first principles and was never going to deliver me an answer. I needed to know the truth. That's what I care about. In a world gone mad, I just need to know what's real. This splinter in my mind will not give me any peace. I don't think people understand — my mind will not shut up until I get to the bottom of this, and I hate it for that. I hate it. I wish it would shut up, but it won't, and the institutions I relied on to deliver me the truth are busy drowning in their own hubris, so I have no one else to turn to. I'm all alone. I have to rely on myself. I have to figure it out myself. I have to save myself.

So what am I supposed to do? Does it have to be me? Do I have to be the one to challenge orthodoxy, with no credentials or authority to lean on? I don't want to, but something has to change around here. So I'll call a spade a spade and say that Einstein was wrong, and if people want to laugh at me and call me a crackpot because they think I'm a silly little girl talking above her pay grade, then so be it. I'm not even getting paid for this. I have no pay grade. If I were paid for all the time I'd spent on this over the past five years, then maybe my parents wouldn't view me as the child with so much potential who just can't seem to focus on 'the practicalities of life.'

But someone has to tell the truth around here, even if they have no authority to do so. And if not me, then who? You, dear scientist? Sitting behind your keyboard, laughing at me? Mocking me for my lack of credentials? My lack of formal education? My sheer audacity — an outsider, calling out the hubris that's currently permeating your institution? I don't want to do this, but I'm doing it for our benefit. Humanity's benefit. We need to sober up. We can't solve all the problems we are facing with the same level of thinking that created them, so we need to think differently. Please, it's imperative that we think differently.

I just find society's unquestioning respect for authority so incredibly disturbing and dystopian. Is it any surprise that religious wars or the travesties of Nazi Germany played out when we've built a society that loves to fall in line and follow the leader — even when that leader says 'believe this despite evidence to the contrary.' Or when that leader points to a beautiful, innocent Jewish child holding a raggedy teddy-bear and cries 'kill him!' and the mob closes in. Or when the leader tags a person he doesn't agree with and tweets, "Dox him! Cancel him! Fire him!" and the mob obeys without any critical thought of their own or empathy for their fellow man. Call it Nazi Germany or call it 2019 — it's the same thing taking different forms. It's sick, and it's dangerous, and I refuse to be a part of it. It needs to stop."

I took a deep breath.

Zac stared at me for a few silent seconds.

Then we both burst out laughing.

"Well, that was a bit melodramatic," Zac said.

"Oh, did you like it?" I grinned. "Or was it too over the top?"

"It was a beautiful soliloquy, Nikki. So raw. It brought a tear to my eye."

"Thank you, kind sir. And it wasn't even untrue. I just felt like this story needed a bit of a deep-and-meaningful crescendo to add some complexity to my character arc and foreshadow the events in later chapters."

"What later chapters?"

"Oh," I giggled. "You'll see."