Neurocapsule

Autumn is arriving all around. It strips the apple trees in the garden bare. It gilds the rowan trees in the clearings. It paints the aspens on the marshy bank with crimson hues. And even from the lake itself, a chill begins to creep out more and more frequently in the mornings. There’s no pleasure left in boating or leisurely fishing. Even the catch doesn’t bring joy anymore. Petrovich feels cold and lies at home. He tosses and turns, wraps himself in a warmer blanket, tucks his foot into a woolen sock. But sleep is gone. He just lies there, lost in thought. He has many thoughts—so many thoughts. For example: why is he here? Surely he must be needed for something, since he exists. But if that’s the case, then what exactly is he needed for—specifically or abstractly? And if specifically, then of course it would be better. That’s how Petrovich thinks. But mostly he thinks about science.
Petrovich turns over on his old couch. His mind races, his eyes dart around the room. Things are scattered in corners. Disorder. Chaos. He can’t seem to tidy up. He’s too lazy. He came inside from outside this morning. He wanted to hang his jacket on a nail, but missed and it’s still lying there. His hat, again, he threw onto a wobbly stool. It slipped off and now lies in the corner on the floor. He also kicked a bucket in the dark the other day. It’s lying on its side. Only his injured toe on his foot hurts.
Yes… We can’t bring order to our own home, yet we keep trying to manage the universe. Petrovich feels sad. He sighs, shifts position, gets up and goes to pick up the bucket. Or maybe that’s exactly what it needs? Chaos. Disorder. This is the most natural state of things. The thermodynamic arrow of time, carrying everything toward increasing entropy.
The bucket is almost rusted through. Soon it will completely break down. But that’s fine. What good is it anyway? It’s empty anyway.
Should I peel some potatoes? Petrovich gathers potatoes. He rinses them in a bowl under cold running water. He moves the stool closer to the light. He sits down by the bucket. He peels, dropping the peels into the empty bucket. He thinks.
Take, for example, a particle. Well, let’s say an atom. To us, it seems quite material. Like a potato, really. Dense inside. A skin on the outside—denser still. With eyes—electrons—scattered across it. Of course, it’s a rough model. The scale isn’t accurate. But when you look closer, there are neither eyes nor skin. Instead, only electron clouds gather around the nucleus. And what’s in between? Nothing. Just emptiness.
The peels clang loudly into the bucket. They hit the enamel bottom, chipped and pitted, covered with orange rust. The knife scrapes against the crunchy starchy pulp. Let’s go further. The nucleus. Right in the middle. Try to feel it. Conduct an experiment involving scattering charged particles. And there it is. Quite tangible. A solid little sphere. You could take it in your hand right now, like this potato, and shoot it with a magnetic field wherever you want. And then comes the Large Hadron Collider. LHC… And discoveries. And new families of particles. And the Standard Model.
A white, peeled round potato slice flies into an aluminum pot of water. Not a reactor, of course. But still big. It splashes onto the cold surface. It sinks. Splashes fly upward, and only ripples spread across the water. And everything seems clear enough. Cut and cut. Neutrons. Protons. Quarks… No. They don’t cut anymore. Confinement. And they seem to be the same spheres again. But not the same ones. Building blocks of the universe. But not building blocks. Cubes—not cubes. Pieces—not pieces. So. Droplets. Foam. Fluctuations of the quantum field. Echoes of the Big Bang. And quarks. And atoms. And stars. And us. Everything. Everything around! Ripples on the water. Boiling vacuum.
Petrovich puts a pot of potatoes on the stove. He pauses, lost in thought. Something went wrong. Water spills noisily from the bucket into the sink. There you have it—vacuum. It’s simple only in words. Emptiness is emptiness. But in reality, it’s just like any liquid. Who knows what energy level it’s at? It seems calm enough, everything visible, everything transparent. Yet there’s still so much left to go before reaching the bottom—it’s deep. And once you start feeding it energy, it will boil over and spill out… That’s stability for you—metastability.
“What about the stove?” Petrovich suddenly realizes. He rummages through his pockets, pulls out a box of matches. He’d light it now, but he hesitates. People always have this habit of changing their minds on the go. He looks at the frying pan. He could fry some potatoes, but with what? It’s sad to cook with nothing… Should he gather mushrooms? That would be something.
Petrovich lifts his jacket. Checks his pocketknife. It’s still there. He pulls his hat down over his head. Scratches his beard. Should he put a bag in his pocket? Otherwise, there might not even be any mushrooms. Or maybe take a basket? Too big. No, a basket would be more convenient. He grabs the basket and steps outside. He slams the door shut without locking it. Why bother? Who would break in? There’s no one here.
Once upon a time, he had a wife and a daughter. So long ago that he can’t even remember if they really existed. Maybe he invented them himself and then forgot that he did? Constructed his own reality and lives within it. No. It seems they were real.
Petrovich feels sad. He walks through the forest, collecting mushrooms. He passes by aspens along the marshy shore. He searches through the grass behind bushes. He climbs up the hill after the pines. He glances around the clearing. He has memorized every mushroom, knows each one by name. Little butterboletes. Thick white boletes. He reaches for a bright cap and kicks it out of annoyance… “Damn it!” A fly agaric. But there’s no one to blame. All around are only pines stretching upward with their trunks, pointing their pointed crowns toward the sky, reaching for the stars. They have no time for mushrooms.
Petrovich sighs and continues walking, down the path from the hill, past the bushes again. There’s the lake with its marshy shore once more. He tries to go straight, but keeps circling around. His legs seem to turn him back, refusing to let him leave home. Petrovich has grown attached to his land. But maybe that’s good? You won’t get lost.
Petrovich circles around the lake. When he gets tired, he comes back to the pines on the hilltop. There, on the clearing, he sits down on a fallen log. The sun warms him. It’s warm. Petrovich squints against the bright light, unused to it. He absentmindedly smooths the grass with his hand. It barely seems to touch it. Yet the grass bends under his palm, as if obeying him.
It’s quiet, peaceful, wonderful. So wonderful that it almost feels unreal…
And your vacuum is false, definitely false! How could you check that? Take some black hole. Not just any black hole, but a supermassive one, where all your Hawking radiation at the event horizon and all your quantum effects come bursting forth in full force. Then attach another one. Somehow manage to slam the second one into the first one properly. Only then will this metastable state collapse. It must collapse. At least locally. And who knows, maybe a chain reaction will follow, dragging everything along with it—matter, space-time, the entire universe!
Petrovich is cheerful. He smiles. He comes alive. His eyes shine. He’s inspired by the idea. He contemplates it. Theory is one thing, but experimentation is another… He translates science into engineering problems. But on our sinful Earth, you can’t pull off or verify all this. There’s simply not enough energy. You’d have to fly into space—straight there, where the pines stretch their tops upward. To a black hole. To the center of the galaxy. Or even beyond ours. It’s far away—thousands of light-years. Tens of thousands. A whole human life might not be enough for such a journey. Not to mention just one person. One little human being…
Petrovich takes a closer look. He adjusts his glasses. Beside him, ants crawl along the bark of the tree trunk. Tiny ones, yet they’re bustling about too. Doing something. Building their own world. Petrovich picks up one ant onto his fingernail. Captures it. Raises it up. Brings it closer to his glasses. The ant wriggles around. Confused. Its head is silly. Small. Smaller than a matchstick. Smaller than a pinhead. If you put such a creature in a box—or even in a smaller space—it would seem like a whole world to it. Strangely enough, what matters isn’t what actually exists, but rather what appears to exist. Unlike the ants, we humans don’t primarily need to breathe, drink, or eat. We don’t need forests, lakes, potatoes with mushrooms. What matters most to us is perceiving, imagining, and thinking. Everything else is merely a necessary condition for these things. Take away those conditions from a human being, and place him in a box no more than thirty centimeters high. Let him go wherever the pines point their tops. He’ll create his own world. He’ll arrange it himself. And tens of thousands of light-years won’t scare him at all.
Someone might say that it’s all illusions. Deception and fiction. That such a person is trapped in their captivity, sitting inside their own capsule like an ant in a matchbox. And is this person even human anymore? Just a digital simulation of consciousness. Let’s assume that’s true. But perhaps such a simulation could reach the stars. But a little human being certainly cannot… Definitely not! There’s no way. So it turns out that inside, we are much freer than outside. Do whatever you want. Invent. Create. Think. And let the capsule continue flying through outer darkness, where it should go. Isn’t it always been the same on our Earth, if you think about it? We sit on a sphere. We walk on a closed surface. We immerse ourselves in thought. We admire nature. But what’s outside? How does it spin? Where is it rushing to? Why? For what purpose? Hardly anyone even wonders.
Petrovich blows on the ant. It flies somewhere downward into the neatly trimmed grass. Into the darkness between the green blades. So dark that it’s invisible. Black as night. What is this blackness? Something’s wrong. Petrovich lifts his head. Wipes his glasses again, just to be sure. Squints. Pushes aside the greenery with his hands. Clears away the leaves. But it’s not moss. Not soil. Not earth. Instead, there’s a hole. An emptiness. Nothing. Exactly. Not Earth.
What a rip! Petrovich gets angry. He grabs the edges of the hole. Pulls them apart and starts throwing everything inside. His basket. Mushrooms. Pines. The lake with the boat. The house with the garden. A pot of potatoes. A leaky bucket. Only one will remain. He exhales. Calms down a bit. That’s it. There’s nowhere left for him to fall. But there’s still a long way to go before reaching the destination. Why linger in emptiness for nothing? There’s nothing to do. He’ll have to gather everything back. He’ll enclose the space. He’ll restore the light. The sky with clouds. The land with hills. The lake with water. In the garden, apple trees are shedding their leaves. Rowan trees are turning golden in the meadows. On the marshy bank, aspens are painted crimson.
Petrovich looks around. He smiles. It turned out well! He likes everything. The pines, the house, the lake with the boat. Even the bucket. New. Enamelled. Smooth, sturdy bottom. When you tap it, it rings. Maybe he should invent another human being? He thinks about it. No. Better not. It would only get in the way. There’s still so much work to do… Metastable vacuum is not potatoes and mushrooms. You need to think carefully. It’s autumn now. It’s getting cold. You just feel like sleeping. Maybe I should lie down…