The Omega Calculation.

 

Last night I dreamt about the end of the universe being discovered by Caltech physicist Leonard Hofstadter from The Big Bang Theory - how ironic that my subconscious mind would want a show named after the start of the universe to answer the question of when it was going to end.

I have no idea where my dream came from. We did watch an episode last night, and there's been a lot of speculation as to how the show, now in its last season, is going to wrap things up, but I can't imagine that they'll take the extreme route that I created during REM sleep.

The elevator pitch for my dream is simple: Leonard is working on his own project out of envy for Sheldon and Amy's super asymmetry theory and accidentally discovers the calculus that maintains the universe, the actual math that drives the wheel of time.  However, it's not good news: he also determines that the solution to his Time Equation is finite - the wheel will cease to turn, and very soon.*

He's unable to convince anyone that he's right, and in the final moments before Time literally runs out, Leonard throws his arms around Sheldon in a final hug, and says, "Oh well, goodbye." and the screen goes black.

In the murky logic of the dreamworld, at first it was just the end of the show, then it became the real end of the world, with everything going black.  The two scientists left the university and wandered the streets, and Leonard ran around the end of a dumpster and jumped out into the rising darkness that was replacing reality.

However, Sheldon refused to accept that the world has come to an end, and thrust his consciousness back against the arrow of time in hopes of somehow finding help to change things, but the end of the world followed him back through history, erasing everything as it went.

At that point, I awoke, bleary-eyed and disconcerted in the winter morning darkness, and, to be honest, a little pleased to be able to hear the splatter of rain against the window - it was a very realistic dream considering its subject matter, although probably not a plot that Chuck Lorre is going to steal for the show's finale.

Karli, lucky woman, dreams mostly about her relatives - that must be nice.

- Sid

* I feel that some of the credit for this dream should go to James Blish, who used a similar plot concept about the end of the universe in The Triumph of Time, the fourth book in his Cities in Flight series.