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October 16, 2026
#27: Memories of Dust

Stephen King once said, 

"I believe that stories are found things, like fossils in the ground... Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible."

Alone as a concept, it's compelling to imagine that we're not the actual creators of our worlds, but rather the intermediaries through which we allow them to exist and show them to other people. This sounds like a philosophical concept as well, but we can make the argument that it's scientific. But it is mostly philosophical.

How is that even possible?

In theory, the universe had no beginning. Often, that beginning is attributed to the 'Big Bang', but that brings up where the Big Bang came from. There is no right answer to this question, and it's one scientists have debated for a long time, but I think that the cyclical universe idea is the most sound. Think about how a nearly infinitely dense particle can explode into existence and cause cosmic inflation. Even as infinitesimally large and fantastical as our universe seems, it works in systems of finite. Most of the time, anyway. But what about when it doesn't?

Under the cyclical universe model, the Big Bang happens, the universe plays out to its natural conclusion, and eventually, through uncountable eons of time and magnitudes of years in the future, a new Big Bang occurs and thus the universe begins again. While the chances of us even existing are so astronomically small that it's laughable, with as long as the universe is, the chances of your atoms being in the exact same spot in that new universe is completely feasible and possible. Proton decay and entropy are all concepts we must consider as well, but energy can never be destroyed or created. For the sake of argument instead of semantics, let's just say our universe is cyclical: an infinite number of universes existed before ours, and an infinite number will exist after ours is done. For a true eternity, the cycles will repeat.

Because there is a such thing as infinity, that means that in this enormous stretch of time is that anything is possible. We classify fiction as "this didn't actually happen". Well, maybe it did in a universe before ours, and we'd have no way of knowing. Could we consider that a form of archealogy, even if we have literally no way to prove that it existed? Just based on the quantum fluctuations of atoms alone and the theorem?

We don't need to answer all the questions of the universe to understand this concept. Truthfully, the point Stephen King made is that the fictional stories that we write are often just as real as real life. They exist in some way, even if they are imaginary. Still, we have no way of proving or disproving their existence in a universe before, or for the universes to come. If anything happened in an infinite amount of universes before, then every story and more that we could possibly conceive has already been told. Maybe even our own lives that we're living right now!

Even if we ease off the astronomy, we can see that an author's experiences shape their book, even if fictional. I remember when my dad was reading some of my book, and he'd say, "Oh yeah, I know where you got that idea from. We talked about it!" Often the people you are closest to will know your experiences and will see what you write about, how it matters, and why it matters to you. Humanity needs stories for its cultures to prosper, for they are both entertainment and could be warning signs for the future. Everything is written within the allegory of the page and in between the lines. It's up to us to look forward and see what the author is trying to say.

Thanks for reading. Eight days to go until Torn In Two!

Until we meet again,

Dustin