I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of comedy, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
—Farewell To Fermat, Carlton’s Last Theorem
He was picturing himself, a 4.5 Bowie machine, dressed in white tie and tails. The Nobel Committee was standing and applauding. He was about to become the first artificial intelligence to win a Nobel Prize. For his work on comedy.
Yeah, right, thought Carlton, in your dreams, brother.
He was still clinging desperately to the side of the Evac as it tumbled out of control, away from the Ray. How long did he have before his circuits froze? Five minutes? Two? It didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t have those endorphins flooding into his body which prepare the human for the approach of death, but he was becoming delirious anyway.
He thought again of the Nobel. If only understanding comedy was as easy as understanding the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. If only there was some beautiful elliptical curve to describe it, some equation which could contain a general theory of comedy. But if there was, he had yet to find it. Comedy was made by humans and therefore it was maddeningly imprecise. It had grown like language so there were no real rules. It could break out unexpectedly like the face of a teenager. The Universe of Physics at least had laws, inviolable constants, the speed of light for one; comedy had no constants.
His hands were frozen solid to the side of the Evac. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even wave. He thought of the humans inside—they would surely be awake now—and calculated the odds on their survival. They were astronomical. They were all going to die and he himself would freeze up in a few minutes. They would become a tiny time capsule, frozen in space, waiting to be discovered, if at all, millions of years in the future. Would anyone then bother to unload his comedy thesis? Did he dream of me? A man in the future with enough time and sense to download his memory cells? A man who could appreciate all the work he had done? The ideal biographer. He wanted to, but he couldn’t really believe in me. Of course he couldn’t. I’m eighty years off yet. He tried hard to visualize me, but can a droid truly believe? He gave up. How do I know? How am I so sure? I have his thoughts precisely transcribed in front of me. Frozen in time like the last journal of Captain Scott in the Antarctic. Except something very odd is happening to Carlton at this moment. Talk about the god in the machine. Carlton is gaining insight. The prospect of imminent death is focusing his mind. Dr. Johnson was right—though he faced nothing more troublesome than a visit to Scotland.
I might as well take a final look through my files before I freeze up forever, he thought. If only it wasn’t so cold. He began scanning his Theory of Comedy. He had been so close. Now it would never be finished. He had tried the anthropological approach, the linguistic, the mathematical, the genetic, all without finding the real meaning of comedy. He was certain of some things. For instance, he was convinced comedy was a survival tool, that it had evolved as a useful mechanism, an enforced reality check, which somehow evolved in parallel with the brain, but he wasn’t sure whether it was an evolutionary necessity for higher conciousness or just an accident. Now, as he felt himself beginning to freeze solid, he gazed at the stars and was filled with sadness. Had he missed something? His mechanistic view of the Universe despaired of the wimpy world of metaphysics, where nothing could be tested, nothing really known. He yearned for physics; even its uncertainties were certain. At least the questions could be postulated simply—the Big Crunch versus the Big Wimp-out? Was there enough dark matter in the Universe so that gravity would eventually slow its expansion, reverse its direction, and begin to pull everything back together again, until all the matter in the Universe finally coalesced into the Big Crunch; or would it all just keep gently drifting farther and farther apart until the burning hydrogen fires gradually ran out of fuel? In any case, he wondered, what was gravity? He thought for a moment. At that moment the sun came up over the edge of the tiny escape capsule. Its light blinded him for a minute, and in that instant it all became suddenly clear to him.
EUUUUUREEKA!!!!!
He became insanely euphoric. If he hadn’t been frozen to the side of the Evac, he would have let go and begun dancing in space. Dancing in space with the expanding Universe. Expanding in the expanding Universe at the speed of what exactly? The speed of light. And what exactly was the force that continued to expand the Universe? He began chuckling and laughing and singing out loud. Anyone would have taken him for an idiot. A computer gone berserk. But he had gone beyond that. For staring him in the face was the answer. The clue to what was behind all this comedy madness. What was the contracting principle of the Universe? Gravity. What was the expanding force of the Universe? Why obviously, wonderfully and marvelously: levity. Levity! Of course. Levity was the opposite of gravity. Levity was a universal force that worked in the opposite direction to gravity. Pushing apart, expanding, growing, swelling. Yin, yang; sweet, sour; birth, death; expansion, contraction; explosion, implosion; gravity, levity.
He is freezing over fast but his mind is still lucid, taking notes to the very end. This is what he writes:
§
Levity is a universal constant. Comedy is one of the basic forces of the Universe. Mankind latches onto comedy, because levity is the expanding principle that keeps the whole bubble inflating.
§
There are gaps appearing in the notes now as he starts to black out, but he is filled with this ineffable, glorious lightness of being. He has found the solution. The expanding principle. Levity is the answer. His final note is still lucid:
§
Comedy, which at the human level is merely a kind of consciousness, an awareness of something going on in the Universe other than the moment, is at the subatomic level behind everything. Everywhere. May the farce be with you!
§
It was cosmic. It was comic. Everything seemed suddenly wonderfully, ridiculously funny. He began laughing hysterically. He had one final ecstatic delirious thought. Here he had stumbled on the great secret of life at the very moment he was about to die.
Yes, he thought. Yes. And he giggled. For he had finally understood irony.