[ WP ] You survive to the end of the universe and witness reality itself unfurling around you .

There was always this nagging suspicion, this wonder, this worry, that things stop existing once we stop seeing them. Babies know it, but after a year they've buried the fear deep within them, where it sits and rots and drives everything the adult does, the craving for the physical, for big cars and homes and breasts, we cling onto the world around us to deny it's nonexistence, as if shouting `` I want this to be real!'' loud enough will make it so. 
 
 We never really accepted the truth, even at the end. Even after we saw the electrons that whizzed away when we were looking at them, and then, hundreds of years later, when the probes we sent out into the depths of space came back transformed, if they came back at all. It got worse, Mercury passed behind the sun and never come back again, babies left alone in cots would disappear. The world was slipping away, item by item, going missing. 
 
 The scientists said they were only invisible, said the universe was splitting into billions of smaller ones, one for each point of view, `` Your loved ones are n't dying.'' They said, `` They're only going away. We can fix this. We can bring them back.'' 
 
 I remember watching them on the television, and looking to a spider making home int he corner of my room, then looking back to the television, and the scientists were gone. The crowd was gone. The cameraman was gone. I called to my wife, because she had been watching the kitchen television, and I wanted to know if she'd witnessed the moment the scientists disappeared. 
 
 I called three time. I did n't go in the kitchen to check for her, I could n't bear it. She was in her own universe now. 
 
 I grabbed a jar and took the spider, and I left. 
 
 I'm still looking at the spider, I've named her Sophie - after my wife. The people went away the scientists. The stars disappeared three weeks ago. The sun did n't rise this morning. Sophie's still here though. She's still in my universe. 
 
 She stopped walking, stopped trying to escape the jar, she must be hungry, I'm sorry Sophie, but there's nothing left to feed you. I'm cold, Sophie, I'm tired, but I must n't close my eyes, who knows what will be gone when I wake up. 
 
 How much sleep deprivation before you start to hallucinate, I wonder? 
 
 It would be nice to have some company.
