This is how it ends

A short flash fiction for you to enjoy:

McCain was a precocious student and as he stood before the assembled great and good of theoretical astrophysics, he knew precociousness would not be enough. He had to give them proof.

“In quantum mechanics, a wave form can exist in different states,” he began, “until it is observed.”
He looked around the room, they were courteous enough to give him a hearing, but he could sense their scepticism. He smiled inwardly and inscribed a dozen marks on the board behind him, his quantum waveform describing the origin and expansion of the universe.

“This is how the universe began,” he said. There was silence as the assembled throng of minds absorbed the short, but elegant equation. Before they could speak, he wrote a slightly longer, but no less elegant equation on the board.

“And this,” he said, “is how it continues.”
There were a few gasps this time. What young McCain described in his casual manner was the sought after “Theory of everything” linking relativity to the quantum world.

Again before anyone could raise any objections he started writing a third equation on the board, but paused before he completed it.

Turning to his rapt audience, he said, “This is is the final equation, which demonstrates how the universe ends.”

He stood there drinking in the moment, then turned back to board and wrote in the final characters of the equation, then covered them with his clipboard.

“You will recall, I mentioned earlier the uncertainty of quantum states until they are observed,” then, as he removed the clipboard to reveal the final equation, said, “it is uncertain until it is observed. Now you know how the universe ends, which by my watch is in about 5 seconds or so.”

They looked. Some tried to look away, but it was too late. And everything started to fade.