Lucy Hamilton

When the door wasn’t a door. 

Dr Nicholas was a world renowned expert in Common Sense. And none knew more than he just how uncommon it was. But his interest was not in the findings, per say, but the way by which findings might be found. His development of “Empiricism as Quantitative Sampling” had been aspirational. It really had. And it had not gone unnoticed by the Fellowship. He had received international accreditation for his contribution to the eradication of General Ignorance. The decision to induct him had been unanimous.

But this had been almost six years ago. Since then, a poorly invested research grant, a divorce, and series of transient ischemic attacks, or ‘mini-strokes’, as his ex-wife liked to remind him, had left him utterly deflated. Mild but persistent, existence had taken its toll. He now seemed to himself as likely to regain academic prowess as his ex was of renouncing the occult.

If he did not come up with something soon, something truly earth-shattering, he might be disbanded. And with what would that leave him? An unpaid subscription to aPriori Magazine and an even smaller chance of her ever taking him back. His count of notable assets was the most absolute of zeros and he had even fewer children. Not even a house cat.

As so, loathed as he was to revert to commodities, Dr Nicholas slunk to his laptop and fingered the power button. It was, he must conclude, the most logical place to begin. Rationally went out of the window when it came to his hatred of Chrome. Chrome and its show-off efficacy. Good things came to those who waited, refreshed, and waited some more. He would Bing himself through life, multiprocessing be damned. But first, as ever, Windows needed to update. 

In the infuriating lull, he happened to glance over at the stack of unopened mail beside his shredder. Atop the pile; an envelope was marked with the most aggravating acronym. 

It had been months since he had thought of VHEM. He thought he had made it extremely clear that he would no longer be supporting their cause. First he had tried to tell them electronically.

Discovering the ‘Disagreements’ hyperlink, he had been mollified to discover their defeatist provision, but was grateful and left-clicked it, nonetheless. The link wouldn’t work. After a series of chipper on-screen diagnoses, he had also ‘timed out’, and had resorted to Royal Mail.

He’d received no reply; VHEM seemed neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with his rejection, but when no subsequent newsletters arrived, Nicholas had assumed that his point had been noted. 

He glared at the pamphlet, mistakenly sent. He could not abide human error.

He had discovered VHEM one slow afternoon, referenced by a video blogger. After rewinding the video for a second time, he had frantically entered ‘Voluntary Human Extinction Movement’ into a new tab. 

The search had returned 330,000 results, but the first had been enough. There, in a modest Times New Roman typeface: every value he had ever striven for. Alleviation of suffering; the alleviation of humans. 

Of course, the selection would be random, non-discriminatory, he wasn’t a fascist or anything like that. And yes, Common Nonsense would remain just as common. But certainly there would be less of it; fewer Toms meant fewer fools. And fewer fools meant Dr Nicholas would be happier. He subscribed to the newsletter at the top of the page, before scrolling to the bottom and clicking ‘How do I join?’

There, in the very first paragraph, he had learned that The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement was, quite simply, ‘a state of mind’. Disappointment flooded in. He was neither telekinetic nor a Buddhist. He liked actionable commitments, citation statistics.

Still determined, he had gone on reading, searching for a doctrine he could really get behind. About half way down the page, he discovered one. VHEM’s ‘monumental personal sacrifice’ was one which Nicholas, having no children, had already made. It was a small consolation to learn that his current dry spell might be deemed ‘systematic’. He might yet be able to start his own sub-branch. 

But at the bottom of the page his eyes found the clause: ‘no membership dues go to officials in offices’. Altruism was not the same without financial reward.

It had been months since then, but the memory was still raw. He thrust the envelope into the shredder. 

Nothing happened. 

Dr Nicholas flopped back, exasperated. Then noticed the machine was unplugged. He reached down and jammed it to the socket. The device growled with life.

He watched with satisfaction as it chewed-up the quivering oblong, munching through the V, then H, E and M, one character at a time, and enjoyed the final crackle as the plastic-window disappeared. 

Exhaling, he returned to his screen, ready to embrace a new future. 

Windows was installing update one of three.

Seizing his half-empty tumbler, he rose from the desk chair, and moved into the kitchen in search of sustenance. No philosophical revolution had ever got started on an empty stomach. He always did his most intense thinking when he was eating. That is to say, that most of his thinking happened while gazing at his plate and trying to think of something more important. Like what to make for dinner.

Dr Nicholas didn’t always think about pickled eggs. Just like he didn’t always think about his future or ex-wife. But now, more than ever, he needed brain-food; protein. And so today, as it happened, he did think about them. 

He scuttled to the cupboard. Inside, he discovered a jar of milky flecks floating dismally in vinegar. Berating his past tardiness, he pushed the old jar aside, and seized the new one beside it on the shelf. It contained nine pickled eggs. He froze. This might be leading somewhere. 

Alone in his kitchen, Dr Nicholas surveyed the jar of eggs. He paused for just a moment, thoughts swimming like the plump, glossy orbs that occupied them, and carried the jar to the sink. There, he paused again. 

Yes, it would be wasteful and their shelf-life much reduced, but he could always buy more. He needed to visualize something. Struggling with the lid, he proceeded to drain the jar of vinegar.

It was now full of eggs. He forced himself to agree, for the moment.

He was being hypothetical, of course- all the best thinking was- but if he were to add something else to the jar… He scanned the worktop for inspiration. If he were to add slightly stale rigatoni, he would have also to attest that the jar was then, in fact, more full than it had formerly been. He paused to reflect.

Then he might add… dried red lentils. After noting the culinary abomination he had created, he would equally have to confirm the jar even more full. 

But it still wouldn’t be fully full; he could then add quinoa, then rock salt, then water, then…

Dr Nicholas sprang from the kitchen, jar still in hand, and scaled the stairs two at a time. In his office, Windows, finally revived, was humming away to itself. Flinging himself into his swivel chair, he opened a blank document, readjusting the height of his chair while it loaded. When it loaded, he closed it, and opened email instead. 

His fingers began hammering an address into the field before he had even fully realised to whom he was typing. But there was no fooling auto-fill. Chrome had its uses.

This time VHEM were going to listen. He started to type what would come to be known as… Jar Theory, or, if they would have it, the Nicholas Paradox.

‘Given the premise of serial divisibility’, he began, ‘one could, if so inclined, go on filling a jar with smaller and smaller food stuffs.’ He deleted that last part. 

‘…one could, if so inclined, go on filling a jar with smaller and smaller things, and fragments of things, and things that were barely things at all. 

‘While the jar would become fuller and fuller, there must always be a smaller thing one could add. The jar would be never truly be full.’

He paused, surveying his offering. He could have stopped there. Certainly, he had made his point. But just to be sure, might he paraphrase Xeno: 

‘Put another way’, he continued, ‘before it can be completely filled, the space between the bottom of the jar and the rim must be half-filled. After this, the remaining space must be half-filled again, and again, and again ad infinitum.’ Xeno wouldn’t mind being cited, and even if he did, first, he would have to catch Dr Nicholas, and Dr Nicholas was already half way ahead.

But the final deduction, the real crux of the theory, was his own:

‘Given the thingness of things’, he began. He held down backspace and tried again; ‘Given that in order to exist a thing must have mass, it must, therefore, be… jar-able’. A thing is not a thing unless it can fill up a space with itself. He agreed and typed this too.

‘It stands to reason, in that case, that the things filling up an unfillable jar cannot be things at all, since, no matter what these things might be, the jar can never be filled. 

And if everything is nothing, then what, therefore, are we?’ 

But perhaps he shouldn’t end so rhetorically. This time he would leave no margin for misinterpretation. In one final flurry, he hammered out onto the keyboard the deduction that would end the VHEM for good. 

‘And in being nothing, we cannot, therefore, voluntarily remove ourselves from existence, since we have, in fact, never existed.’

Dr Nicholas didn’t save a draft. Neither did he bother to spell check or format, or consider the implications of launching his theory into cyberspace. If he had, he might have pondered that if Jar Theory had underwritten the existence of everything, which he believed wholeheartedly it had, unleashing it might trigger its practical implications. In so doing, he might bring about not only their extinction but the entire existence of the conceivable universe. 

But he didn’t consider this. He hit ‘send’ and it no longer mattered. Nothing did. Or would. Or ever had.

And, how sloppy of him, he had left the subject bar empty; the world, as it were, left ajar.