‘In the event of no events occurring the Event-Matrix will automatically shut itself down’, the recorded message tells us ominously. In the event, in the event. The Event-Matrix, the matrix of all possible events, the big ones and the small ones. ‘But suppose no event did occur’, you want to ask, ‘not ever, not even once, what would happen then?’ I can understand you wanting to ask this question, of course. Naturally you want to ask this question. What would happen to the Continuum of All Possible Events in the event of there never being any events, not even one? That’s the question that perturbs us all. All of us cognoscenti, at any rate. It perturbs us a lot. We’re worried sick, in fact. And we could stretch this scenario (or non-scenario) even further if we wanted to – we could ask what would happen if it happened to be the case that there simply wasn’t such a thing as ‘an event’ in the first place? What would happen if it happened to be the case that the notion of ‘an event’ was an unfounded presumption, a lurid or garish hallucination, and so on. The most lurid hallucination of them all, in fact. The most horrifically lurid hallucination there could ever possibly be. What would happen then – in the event that the notion of an event turns out not to be even a thing in the first place? What would happen to the Continuum of all Possible Happenings then? This is an extremely torturous question, as I’m sure you realize. And it’s not only torturous, it is also profoundly worrying. ‘Don’t worry,’ they say, ‘it may never happen… They don’t realise though, do they? They fail to grasp the point when they say this. As they always do. They fail to see that rather than assuaging our fears, this cheap and nasty comment of theirs makes them a thousand times worse! They might as well have come right out with it and said ‘Don’t worry, the Continuum of all Possible Happenings may never happen…’ People are awfully crude, aren’t they? Awfully crude and awfully stupid. In the events of no events ever occurring – and especially in the event of there not actually being any such thing as ‘an event’ – the Matrix of All Possible Events will immediately shut itself down and – what’s more – it will shut itself down before it ever gets to come into existence in the first place. The pre-emptive failsafe mechanism will cut in to ensure that the failsafe mechanism never needs to cut in. The forbidden event of ‘no event happening’ never gets to happen therefore and so that’s that. There’s no way around that you see – no way at all…
