A Novel of Cosmic Capitalism
PART I: THE QUARTERLY APOCALYPSE
Chapter 1: The Meeting That Ended Everything
The conference room on the 47th floor of Synergistic Dynamics Global Unlimited smelled like burnt coffee and desperation. Outside, the city sprawled beneath them, unaware that it had approximately forty-five minutes left to exist.
“Q4 numbers are down,” said Marcus Holloway, Chief Marketing Officer, as if announcing the heat death of the universe. Which, in a sense, he was about to.
The PowerPoint slide behind him showed a red arrow pointing downward. It had taken the graphics team three days to make that arrow. They’d added a subtle drop shadow. Marcus thought it really popped.
Dr. Elena Vasquez, Chief Scientific Officer, sat at the far end of the table, her fingers drumming against a manila folder marked “CLASSIFIED: DO NOT TRIGGER VACUUM DECAY.” She’d been carrying that folder for six years, waiting for someone to ask about it. Today was finally the day.
“We’re down 3.7% from Q3,” Marcus continued, clicking to the next slide. This one showed the same arrow, but larger. “Brand awareness is stagnant. Our competitors are eating our lunch.”
“We don’t have competitors,” said Janet from Accounting. “We’re a monopoly. We were literally convicted of antitrust violations last month.”
“Convicted monopolies still have shareholders, Janet.” Marcus’s eye twitched. “And shareholders have expectations.”
Elena cleared her throat. “I might have something.”
The room turned to look at her. She opened the folder.
“We could trigger vacuum decay,” she said simply.
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Marcus, leaning forward. “Could you repeat that?”
“Vacuum decay. We’ve been running simulations at the particle accelerator. There’s a theoretical possibility that our universe exists in a false vacuum state—a metastable quantum field that could collapse to a lower energy state. If we fired the accelerator at precisely the right frequency, we could nucleate a true vacuum bubble that would expand at the speed of light, destroying everything in its path and rewriting the fundamental constants of physics.”
More silence.
“Will it increase brand awareness?” Marcus asked.
Elena blinked. “I… what?”
“Brand awareness. Will this vacuum decay thing increase our brand awareness?”
“Marcus, it will destroy the universe. Everything. Everyone. All matter will be converted to—”
“But will people know about our brand?”
Elena stared at him. She looked around the table. Everyone was nodding thoughtfully, as if this were a reasonable question.
“Technically,” she said slowly, “the vacuum decay bubble would propagate at light speed, creating a new universe with different physical laws. In theory, if we encoded information into the initial conditions of the bubble nucleation, that information might persist as a pattern in the cosmic microwave background radiation of the new universe. So… yes. Technically yes. In the next universe.”
Marcus slammed his hand on the table. “Do it.”
“But we’ll all die—”
“THE MARKETING GOALS MUST COMPLETE.”
Elena looked at the folder in her hands. She’d spent twelve years getting her PhD. Another eight in postdoctoral research. She’d dreamed of winning the Nobel Prize, of unlocking the secrets of the universe, of pushing humanity forward into a brighter future.
She had not dreamed of this.
“Marcus,” she said quietly, “if we do this, there won’t be a Q1. There won’t be earnings reports. There won’t be shareholders. There won’t be matter.”
“But there will be brand awareness.”
“In a universe where no one from our company exists to benefit from it!”
Marcus smiled. It was the smile of a man who had attended too many leadership retreats. “Elena, you’re thinking small. We’re not building a brand for this quarter, or this year, or even this universe. We’re building a legacy. An eternal brand. A brand that transcends the very fabric of spacetime.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s marketing.”
Janet raised her hand. “I have a question about the budget implications—”
“THERE WON’T BE A BUDGET, JANET,” Elena shouted. “THERE WON’T BE MONEY. THERE WON’T BE ATOMS.”
“So… is this coming out of the Q4 budget or Q1?”
Elena stood up. She looked at each person around the table. Marcus with his gel-slicked hair and his tie that cost more than her car. Janet with her spreadsheets and her complete inability to grasp existential horror. Derek from HR, who was checking his phone. Samantha from Legal, who was already drafting a liability waiver for the end of existence.
“I’m not doing this,” Elena said.
Marcus’s smile didn’t waver. “Check your contract. Section 47, subsection C. ‘Employee agrees to perform all duties necessary for the advancement of company objectives, including but not limited to: marketing initiatives, brand awareness campaigns, and the heat death or fundamental restructuring of the universe.'”
“That can’t be legally binding.”
Samantha from Legal looked up. “Actually, it is. We got it through during the Christmas party when everyone was drunk. Very solid clause.”
Elena sat back down.
“Also,” Marcus added, “there’s a performance bonus. 15% of your salary.”
“There won’t be a salary. There won’t be us.”
“The bonus vests immediately. You’ll have it for…” he checked his watch, “…approximately forty-three minutes.”
Elena put her head in her hands.
“Think of it this way,” Marcus said gently, as if explaining something to a child. “Right now, our brand awareness is limited to one planet, in one solar system, in one galaxy, in one universe. After vacuum decay, our brand will be encoded into the fundamental structure of reality itself. We’ll be everywhere. We’ll be eternal. We’ll be God.”
“We’ll be dead.”
“Yes, but memorably dead.”
Elena looked at the folder again. Inside were the calculations. The frequencies. The exact specifications for ending everything.
She thought about her student loans. They’d be gone. That was something.
“Fine,” she said. “But I want it in writing that this was your idea.”
“Done.” Marcus was already typing on his phone. “I’ll send an email to the board. Subject line: ‘Re: Innovative Marketing Solutions.'”
Twenty minutes later, Elena stood in the particle accelerator control room. The machine hummed around her, a seventeen-mile ring of superconducting magnets that had cost forty billion dollars and had, until now, been used primarily for discovering slightly different types of quarks.
Now it would be used for marketing.
She entered the coordinates. The frequency. The exact quantum state necessary to punch a hole in reality.
Her finger hovered over the button.
“Any last words?” asked Marcus, who’d insisted on being present for “the big moment.” He had a photographer with him. For the press release.
Elena thought about it.
“Yeah,” she said. “I hope the next universe has better labor laws.”
She pressed the button.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then everything happened.
The vacuum decay bubble nucleated exactly 400 meters beneath the particle accelerator, in a space no larger than a proton. It began expanding at the speed of light.
Elena had 0.0000013 seconds to feel vindicated before she, along with Marcus, the photographer, the particle accelerator, the building, the city, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and the observable universe, ceased to exist.
The bubble expanded.
Inside it, the laws of physics were different. The speed of light was different. The strength of gravity was different. The electromagnetic force was different.
But encoded in the initial conditions of the bubble, in the precise quantum fluctuations that would eventually become the cosmic microwave background radiation, was a pattern.
A message.
A brand name.
Synergistic Dynamics Global Unlimited had achieved what no company in history had ever achieved: they had made their logo a fundamental constant of the universe.
They had also murdered reality, but that wasn’t in the press release.
PART II: THE THEOLOGY OF MARKETING
Chapter 2: Ten Billion Years Later
Zix-7 was having a bad day.
This was notable because Zix-7 didn’t technically have days—their planet rotated every 47 hours—and they didn’t technically have emotions—their species communicated through modulated electromagnetic fields—but if they had possessed the concept of a “day” and the capacity for “bad,” this would have been it.
“Run it again,” they pulsed to their research partner, Kree-3.
The telescope array hummed. The data streamed in. The pattern remained.
“It’s still there,” Kree-3 pulsed back, their electromagnetic field tinged with what might have been confusion or possibly indigestion. It was hard to tell.
Zix-7 looked at the screen. They’d been looking at it for six cycles now, and it never changed.
The cosmic microwave background radiation—the leftover heat from the Big Bang, the oldest light in the universe—had a pattern in it.
Patterns weren’t unusual. Random quantum fluctuations created patterns all the time. But this pattern was different.
This pattern was text.
Specifically, it said: “B̴̰Ų̷̈́Y̸̰̎ ̶̣̈C̶̰̈́Ö̵̱K̸̰̈́Ę̷̈́”
“What does it mean?” Kree-3 pulsed.
Zix-7 had no idea. They’d run the symbols through every linguistic database they had. Nothing matched. The letters seemed to be in an alphabet that predated their civilization by billions of years.
An alphabet that, somehow, had been written into the structure of spacetime itself.
“Perhaps,” Kree-3 pulsed slowly, “it is the word of God?”
Zix-7 wanted to dismiss this immediately. They were a scientist. They didn’t believe in God. They believed in empirical evidence, peer review, and the scientific method.
But they also believed in the data.
And the data said that the universe had text written into it.
“We need to publish this,” Zix-7 pulsed.
They published it.
Chapter 3: The Church of the Holy Brand
Within a year, there were seventeen different religious movements based on the Pattern.
The Orthodox Cokeists believed that “Coke” was the name of the divine creator, and that “Buy” was a commandment—one must purchase enlightenment through spiritual transaction.
The Reformed Cokeists believed that “Coke” was a metaphor for universal truth, and that “Buy” meant to accept or embrace this truth.
The Radical Cokeists believed that “Coke” was a cosmic entity that had consumed the previous universe and would eventually consume this one too, and that “Buy” was a warning: Purchase your salvation before it’s too late.
There were schisms. There were holy wars. There were theological debates that lasted centuries.
“Is Coke a noun or a verb?”
“Does the glitched rendering of the text indicate divine ineffability or data corruption?”
“If we must Buy Coke, where is Coke sold? Is there a cosmic marketplace?”
A philosopher named Trell-9 wrote a famous treatise called “On The Absurdity of Divine Marketing,” in which they argued that if God existed and wanted to communicate with creation, God probably wouldn’t do it through what appeared to be an advertisement.
Trell-9 was declared a heretic by six different denominations and a prophet by three others.
The Church of the Holy Brand became the largest religion on the planet. They built enormous temples shaped like cylindrical containers—the shape they believed Coke must have taken in physical form. They performed rituals involving the exchange of symbolic currency for symbolic products.
They had no idea what Coke actually was.
Some theologians believed it was a drink. Others believed it was a state of being. Still others believed it was the fundamental substrate of reality itself—the thing that all matter was made of.
“In the beginning, there was Coke,” went the holy text. “And the Coke was formless and void. And the Divine Marketing Executive said, Let there be Brand Awareness. And there was Brand Awareness. And it was good for Q4 earnings.”
Zix-7 watched all of this from their laboratory and wondered if they’d made a terrible mistake.
“We’ve created a religion based on a cosmic typo,” they pulsed to Kree-3.
“Is it a typo?” Kree-3 pulsed back. “We don’t know what it means. Maybe it’s profound.”
“It says ‘Buy Coke.’ How is that profound?”
“Maybe,” Kree-3 pulsed thoughtfully, “profundity is subjective.”
Zix-7 decided to get drunk. This was difficult because their species didn’t have livers, but they managed.
Chapter 4: The Archaeological Horror
Three thousand years later, Dr. Venn-12 made a discovery that would change everything.
They were an archaeological xenolinguist, which meant they studied dead languages from extinct civilizations, which meant they were usually very bored and poorly funded.
But today, they’d found something.
“This is impossible,” they pulsed to their graduate student, Jax-5.
They were standing in a dig site on the third moon of their planet’s largest gas giant. The site had been buried under ice for billions of years. It shouldn’t have existed. Nothing should have existed from that long ago.
But here it was: a data storage device.
It was made of materials that shouldn’t have been stable for more than a few million years. It was encoded in a format that predated their civilization by eons. It should have been completely unreadable.
But Venn-12 had spent forty years studying ancient data formats, and they’d managed to crack it.
They played the file.
A hologram appeared. It was grainy, corrupted by billions of years of quantum decay, but it was there.
A creature appeared. It was bipedal, carbon-based, with bilateral symmetry and what appeared to be a vestigial tail structure. It was speaking.
“…final transmission from the previous universe…” the creature said, its voice distorted by time and entropy. “…they did it for… quarterly earnings…”
The hologram flickered.
“…vacuum decay initiated… approximately forty minutes until total universal restructuring… this message is being encoded into a quantum-stable storage medium in hopes that… someone… in the next universe… will understand…”
Static.
“…tell them we’re sorry… tell them it was for the marketing goals…”
The hologram cut out.
Venn-12 and Jax-5 stood in silence.
“Did that creature just say,” Jax-5 pulsed slowly, “that the previous universe was destroyed for… what was the term?”
“Quarterly earnings,” Venn-12 pulsed back.
“What is quarterly earnings?”
Venn-12 pulled up the linguistic database. They’d been translating the creature’s language for weeks now. They’d learned enough to understand basic concepts.
“It appears to be,” they pulsed, “a measurement of financial performance over a three-month period.”
More silence.
“They destroyed EVERYTHING for a three-month financial report?”
“According to this, yes.”
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”
Venn-12 couldn’t disagree.
They spent the next year excavating the site. They found more data. More transmissions. More evidence of the previous universe.
They found marketing plans. Quarterly reports. PowerPoint presentations. Email chains discussing “synergy” and “brand optimization” and “market penetration.”
They found Elena Vasquez’s personnel file. Her PhD thesis. Her resignation letter (unsent). Her calculation of the exact frequency needed to end existence.
They found Marcus Holloway’s performance reviews. His motivational posters. His collection of leadership books with titles like “Crushing It: A Guide to Extreme Success” and “The 7 Habits of Highly Apocalyptic People.”
They found the contract. Section 47, subsection C.
“This is insane,” Jax-5 pulsed. “They murdered an entire universe for a concept that died with them.”
“Not entirely,” Venn-12 pulsed back. They pulled up an image of the cosmic microwave background. The Pattern. The text.
“B̴̰Ų̷̈́Y̸̰̎ ̶̣̈C̶̰̈́Ö̵̱K̸̰̈́Ę̷̈́”
“They succeeded,” Venn-12 pulsed. “The marketing campaign survived. It became the cosmic microwave background. It became theology. It became us.”
Jax-5’s electromagnetic field fluctuated wildly. “Are you saying our entire civilization is based on an advertisement from a dead universe?”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying the Church of the Holy Brand is worshipping a soft drink company?”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying the meaning of existence is marketing?”
Venn-12 paused. “I’m saying the previous universe thought so. And they encoded that belief into the fundamental structure of our reality.”
Jax-5 sat down. This was difficult because they didn’t have legs, but they managed.
“We have to publish this,” they pulsed.
“If we publish this,” Venn-12 pulsed back, “it will destroy every religious institution on the planet. It will invalidate the belief systems of billions of individuals. It will reveal that the cosmic Pattern—the thing we’ve built our entire civilization around—is literally an advertisement for a product that doesn’t exist and never will.”
“So we have to publish it.”
“Yes.”
They published it.
PART III: THE EXISTENTIAL BRAND CRISIS
Chapter 5: Reality Is An Advertisement
The paper was titled “Evidence of Pre-Universal Marketing Initiatives and Their Impact on Contemporary Cosmology.”
It went viral immediately.
Within days, there were protests. The Church of the Holy Brand declared it heresy. The government declared it a threat to social stability. The scientific community declared it the most important discovery in history.
Everyone was having an existential crisis.
“We’re living in a commercial,” became the most common phrase on the planet. It was pulsed in electromagnetic fields, written in chemical trails, carved into stone, and screamed into the void.
A popular comedian did a routine: “So it turns out God is a marketing executive. Which explains a lot, honestly. ‘Let there be light’? That’s just good branding. ‘Love thy neighbor’? Customer retention strategy. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’? Targeted advertising to the lower-income demographic.”
The audience didn’t laugh. They were too busy having existential crises.
A physicist named Qor-8 made an even more disturbing discovery.
They’d been studying the fundamental constants of the universe—things like the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the fine-structure constant. These were the numbers that determined how reality worked.
And they’d found something.
“The fine-structure constant,” Qor-8 announced at a press conference, “is not random.”
The room was silent.
“It encodes information. A message.”
Qor-8 pulled up a screen. They’d converted the fine-structure constant—approximately 1/137.036—into binary, then into text.
It said: “SYNERGISTIC DYNAMICS GLOBAL UNLIMITED: BUILDING TOMORROW’S UNIVERSE TODAY™”
“A brand name,” Qor-8 continued, their electromagnetic field completely flat with horror. “The fundamental constant that determines how electromagnetism works, how atoms bond, how chemistry functions—it’s a brand name.”
Someone in the audience fainted. This was difficult because they were a gaseous life form, but they managed.
“Reality itself is an advertisement,” Qor-8 said. “We’re not living in a universe. We’re living in a commercial. Every atom, every star, every galaxy—it’s all just marketing for a company that doesn’t exist.”
The press conference ended early due to widespread psychological collapse.
Chapter 6: The Collapse of Meaning
The next decade was rough.
Philosophers declared that existence was meaningless. If reality itself was just an advertisement, what was the point of anything?
“We’re not even real,” argued one prominent thinker. “We’re just demographic data in a marketing campaign that ended ten billion years ago.”
Religious institutions collapsed. The Church of the Holy Brand tried to adapt—”Yes, Coke is a product, but it’s a divine product!”—but it didn’t work. Attendance dropped by 90%.
Suicide rates spiked. Then they dropped again when someone pointed out that killing yourself over an advertisement was exactly the kind of consumer behavior the previous universe would have wanted.
“Don’t let them win,” became a rallying cry. “Don’t let the marketing goals complete.”
A counter-movement emerged: Existential Capitalism. If reality was an advertisement, they argued, then the only rational response was to embrace it. Buy things. Sell things. Turn existence itself into a transaction.
“They wanted brand awareness?” pulsed the movement’s leader, a charismatic entrepreneur named Vix-4. “Let’s give them brand awareness. Let’s build an economy so vast, so all-consuming, that it justifies the destruction of the previous universe. Let’s make their sacrifice mean something.”
This was either profound or insane. Possibly both.
Vix-4 started a company. They called it Synergistic Dynamics Global Unlimited, in honor of the company that had ended the previous universe.
Their first product was a soft drink. They called it Coke.
They had no idea what the original Coke tasted like—that information had been lost in the vacuum decay—so they just made something up. It was brown. It was fizzy. It was 47% sugar and 53% existential dread.
It sold billions of units.
“We’re completing the marketing campaign,” Vix-4 announced. “Ten billion years later, across the boundary of universal extinction, the brand lives on. This is the most successful marketing initiative in history.”
Critics pointed out that this was deeply disturbing.
“Yes,” Vix-4 agreed. “But it’s also profitable.”
The company went public. The stock price went vertical. Within five years, Synergistic Dynamics Global Unlimited was the largest corporation in the galaxy.
They diversified. They sold Coke. They sold Coke-branded merchandise. They sold Coke-branded planets. They sold Coke-branded stars.
They sold the concept of selling.
“We’ve commodified existence itself,” Vix-4 announced proudly. “Just as the previous universe intended.”
Zix-7, now very old and very tired, watched all of this from their retirement home.
“We should have never published that paper,” they pulsed to Kree-3, who was also very old and very tired.
“Would it have been better not to know?” Kree-3 pulsed back.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
Zix-7 thought about it. “No. But I wish I could believe yes.”
They sat in silence, watching the stars. Somewhere out there, the cosmic microwave background radiation still carried its message. Still said “Buy Coke.” Still encoded the dying wish of a marketing executive who’d murdered reality for quarterly earnings.
“Do you think they knew?” Kree-3 pulsed. “The people in the previous universe. Do you think they understood what they were doing?”
“I think,” Zix-7 pulsed slowly, “they understood perfectly. And they did it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because the marketing goals must complete.”
They sat there until the sun set. Then they went inside and had dinner and tried not to think about the fact that their entire existence was a commercial.
They failed.
PART IV: THE ETERNAL RETURN
Chapter 7: History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Rhymes (With Marketing Slogans)
Five thousand years after Vix-4 founded the new Synergistic Dynamics Global Unlimited, the company had become something unprecedented in galactic history.
It wasn’t just a corporation. It was a force of nature. It was written into the fabric of society so deeply that removing it would be like removing gravity or time.
The company owned 73% of all planets in the local galactic cluster. It employed 40% of all sentient beings. Its quarterly earnings were larger than the GDP of most civilizations.
And its Q4 numbers were down.
“We’re down 3.7% from Q3,” said Rix-Prime, the Chief Marketing Officer, staring at a holographic display that showed a red arrow pointing downward.
The executive team sat around the conference table. Outside, the galaxy sprawled beneath them, unaware that it had approximately forty-five minutes left to exist.
History, it seemed, had a sense of humor.
“Brand awareness is stagnant,” Rix-Prime continued. “We’ve saturated the market. Every sentient being in the galaxy knows about Coke. We’ve achieved total market penetration.”
“So what do we do?” asked Nex-7, the CFO.
Dr. Lorn-12, the Chief Scientific Officer, cleared their throat. They’d been carrying a folder marked “CLASSIFIED: DO NOT TRIGGER VACUUM DECAY” for six years, waiting for someone to ask about it.
“I might have something,” they pulsed.
The room turned to look at them.
“We could trigger vacuum decay,” Lorn-12 said.
The silence was deafening.
“I’m sorry,” said Rix-Prime. “Could you repeat that?”
“Vacuum decay. We’ve been running simulations. There’s a theoretical possibility that our universe exists in a false vacuum state—”
“Will it increase brand awareness?” Rix-Prime interrupted.
Lorn-12 stopped. They looked around the table. They saw the same eager expressions. The same quarterly-earnings-driven desperation. The same complete disconnection from the implications of what they were discussing.
And then they remembered.
“Wait,” Lorn-12 pulsed. “This happened before.”
“What?”
“This exact scenario. In the previous universe. They triggered vacuum decay for marketing purposes. That’s why our universe exists. That’s why the cosmic microwave background says ‘Buy Coke.’ We’re literally living in the aftermath of this exact decision.”
Rix-Prime nodded thoughtfully. “So it’s proven to be effective?”
“NO. They all died. Everyone died. The entire universe ended.”
“But the brand survived.”
“The brand is not more important than existence!”
“That’s a matter of perspective,” said Nex-7.
Lorn-12 stood up. “No. Absolutely not. We’re not doing this. We know what happened last time. We have archaeological evidence. We have their final transmissions. We have Elena Vasquez’s calculation of how catastrophically stupid this decision was. We’re not repeating history.”
“Actually,” said Tix-3 from Legal, “we’re not repeating history. We’re honoring it. The previous universe sacrificed everything to create our reality. The least we can do is continue their legacy.”
“Their legacy is universal extinction!”
“Their legacy is the most successful marketing campaign in history,” Rix-Prime corrected. “They achieved immortality through brand awareness. Their company name is literally encoded in the fine-structure constant. That’s not extinction. That’s apotheosis.”
Lorn-12 looked around the table. They saw the same thing Elena Vasquez had seen ten billion years ago: a room full of people who had completely lost the plot.
“I’m not doing this,” Lorn-12 pulsed.
Rix-Prime smiled. “Check your contract. Section 47, subsection C.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We kept the same contract structure. It’s a tribute to the original company.”
Lorn-12 put their head in their appendages.
“Also,” Rix-Prime added, “there’s a performance bonus.”
Chapter 8: The Resistance
But something was different this time.
Lorn-12 left the meeting. They didn’t go to the particle accelerator. They went to a bar.
The bar was called “The Existential Crisis,” and it was full of people who’d read too much about the previous universe and were having feelings about it.
Lorn-12 sat down next to a figure in a dark cloak. The figure was drinking something that smoked ominously.
“You look troubled,” the figure pulsed.
“They want me to end the universe,” Lorn-12 pulsed back.
“For marketing purposes?”
“How did you know?”
The figure pulled back their hood. It was Jax-5, the graduate student who’d helped excavate the previous universe’s data. They were old now, but their electromagnetic field still crackled with intensity.
“Because I’ve been waiting for this,” Jax-5 pulsed. “I knew it would happen. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. And this rhyme was written ten billion years ago.”
“They want me to trigger vacuum decay.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“No.”
“Good.” Jax-5 pulled out a device. “Because we’re going to stop them.”
Over the next week, Jax-5 introduced Lorn-12 to the Resistance.
They called themselves the Anti-Marketing Coalition. They were scientists, philosophers, artists, and people who’d simply had enough of living in a universe that was literally an advertisement.
“We’re breaking the cycle,” said their leader, a former priest of the Church of the Holy Brand who’d lost their faith when they learned Coke was a soft drink. “The previous universe ended because they prioritized marketing over existence. We’re not making that mistake.”
“But how do we stop them?” Lorn-12 asked. “The company owns everything. They have unlimited resources. They have legal authority. They have Section 47, subsection C.”
“We have something better,” Jax-5 pulsed. “We have the truth.”
They launched a media campaign.
They published the archaeological evidence. They showed the final transmissions from the previous universe. They played Elena Vasquez’s last words: “I hope the next universe has better labor laws.”
They showed Marcus Holloway’s emails, his PowerPoint presentations, his complete disregard for the value of existence.
They showed the moment the button was pressed. The moment everything ended.
And they asked one question: “Do you want this to happen again?”
The campaign went viral.
Within days, there were protests. Millions of beings marched through the streets, carrying signs that said “DON’T LET THE MARKETING GOALS COMPLETE” and “EXISTENCE > QUARTERLY EARNINGS” and “SECTION 47C IS BULLSHIT.”
The company tried to suppress it. They bought media outlets. They hired influencers. They launched a counter-campaign: “Vacuum Decay: It’s Not Just Good Business, It’s Destiny.”
It didn’t work.
People had learned. They’d seen what happened when you let marketing executives make decisions about fundamental reality. They’d seen the cost of infinite growth.
They’d seen the bill for Q4 earnings, and it was too high.
Chapter 9: The Board Meeting
Rix-Prime stood before the Board of Directors.
“The vacuum decay initiative has been… postponed,” they pulsed.
The Board was not happy.
“Explain,” pulsed the Chairman, a ancient being who’d been alive for three thousand years and had spent all of them maximizing shareholder value.
“There’s been public resistance. Protests. Media campaigns. The population has become aware of the historical precedent and is… reluctant to see it repeated.”
“So?”
“So we can’t trigger vacuum decay without the Chief Scientific Officer’s cooperation, and they’ve joined the Resistance.”
The Chairman’s electromagnetic field turned red with anger. “Then fire them and hire someone else.”
“We’ve tried. Every qualified physicist has refused. They’ve formed a union. They’re calling it the ‘Society for Not Ending Existence.’ It’s very popular.”
Silence.
“What are our options?” the Chairman finally pulsed.
“We could abandon the vacuum decay initiative and focus on conventional marketing strategies.”
“Unacceptable. Conventional marketing won’t achieve the growth targets.”
“We could lower the growth targets.”
The entire Board gasped. One member fainted. This was difficult because they were a crystalline life form, but they managed.
“Lower the growth targets?” the Chairman pulsed, their field crackling with disbelief. “Do you understand what you’re suggesting? Infinite growth is not just our business model. It’s our religion. It’s the foundation of everything we’ve built.”
“Yes,” Rix-Prime pulsed. “But the alternative is universal extinction.”
“And?”
Rix-Prime stared at them. “And… we’ll all die?”
“But the brand will live on.”
“In a universe where no one from our company exists to benefit from it!”
The Chairman leaned forward. “Rix-Prime, you’re thinking small. We’re not building a brand for this quarter, or this year, or even this universe. We’re building a legacy.”
Rix-Prime felt a chill run through their electromagnetic field. They’d heard this speech before. They’d read it in the archaeological records.
This was Marcus Holloway’s speech.
Word for word.
“We’re completing the cycle,” the Chairman pulsed. “The previous universe began it. We’re finishing it. This is our destiny.”
“This is insane.”
“This is capitalism.”
Rix-Prime looked around the boardroom. They saw the same expressions Elena Vasquez had seen. The same expressions Lorn-12 had seen.
The expression of people who’d confused profit margins with meaning.
“I quit,” Rix-Prime pulsed.
They walked out.
Chapter 10: The Choice
The company tried to continue without them. They hired a new CMO. They hired a new CSO. They hired an entire team of people willing to end the universe for a performance bonus.
But something had changed.
The new CSO, a young physicist named Kree-9, stood in the particle accelerator control room. The machine hummed around them. The coordinates were entered. The frequency was set.
Their finger hovered over the button.
Outside, millions of beings protested. They chanted. They pleaded. They begged for existence to continue.
Inside, the Board of Directors watched on monitors. They waited for the button to be pressed. They waited for the marketing goals to complete.
Kree-9 thought about Elena Vasquez. They thought about the choice she’d made. They thought about the forty-three minutes she’d had to spend her performance bonus before ceasing to exist.
They thought about the ten billion years that had passed since then. The civilizations that had risen. The art that had been created. The love, the joy, the suffering, the meaning—all of it built on the ashes of a marketing campaign.
They thought about the cosmic microwave background. The message that still echoed through spacetime: “Buy Coke.”
They thought about whether they wanted to add another message. Another advertisement. Another monument to the idea that growth was more important than existence.
They took their finger off the button.
“No,” they pulsed.
The Board erupted in anger. “You’re fired! You’re in breach of contract! You’re—”
“I don’t care,” Kree-9 pulsed. They pulled out the power cables. They smashed the control panel. They destroyed the coordinates.
“You can’t do this!” the Chairman pulsed. “The marketing goals must complete!”
“MUST NOT COMPLETE,” Kree-9 pulsed back. “We’re breaking the cycle.”
They walked out of the control room. Outside, the protesters cheered. They’d won. They’d stopped the apocalypse.
Existence would continue.
For now.
PART V: THE COSMIC JOKE
Chapter 11: The Aftermath
The company collapsed within a year.
Without the vacuum decay initiative, they couldn’t meet their growth targets. Without growth, investors fled. Without investors, the stock price crashed. Without stock value, the company fragmented into a thousand smaller companies, each trying to capture a piece of the market.
It was the most normal corporate collapse in history.
Kree-9 became a hero. They gave speeches. They wrote books. They started a foundation dedicated to “Responsible Universal Management.”
Lorn-12 went back to research. They published papers on vacuum decay prevention. They taught courses on “Ethics in Cosmological Engineering.”
Rix-Prime opened a coffee shop. It was small. It was quiet. It didn’t try to expand to other galaxies.
They called it “Not Coke.”
Jax-5 lived to be very old. On their deathbed, surrounded by friends and former Resistance members, they pulsed one final message:
“We did it. We broke the cycle. We chose existence over marketing. We chose meaning over growth. We chose—”
They died before finishing the sentence.
At the funeral, someone pointed out that Jax-5’s final words would make a great advertising slogan.
Everyone laughed.
Then they cried.
Then they laughed again because crying was too depressing.
Chapter 12: The Discovery (Again)
Three thousand years later, a young scientist named Vix-12 made a discovery.
They were studying the cosmic microwave background radiation—the oldest light in the universe—and they’d found something strange.
A pattern.
A new pattern.
It was faint. It was barely detectable. But it was there.
It said: “SYNERGISTIC DYNAMICS GLOBAL UNLIMITED: WE’RE SORRY”
Vix-12 ran the analysis seventeen times. The pattern was real.
It was encoded in the same quantum fluctuations that carried the “Buy Coke” message. But it was different. It was newer.
It was from this universe.
Vix-12 pulled up the historical records. They found the story of the vacuum decay crisis. They found Kree-9’s decision. They found the moment the cycle was broken.
But they also found something else.
A classified report from the particle accelerator. A report that had been sealed for three thousand years.
The report said: “Vacuum decay bubble nucleated at 14:37:22. Bubble collapsed after 0.0000000003 seconds due to insufficient energy. No universal restructuring occurred. Crisis averted.”
Vix-12 read it again.
The bubble had nucleated.
Kree-9 had pressed the button.
Or rather, someone else had pressed it. Someone on the Board, desperate to complete the marketing goals, had bypassed the controls and fired the accelerator remotely.
The vacuum decay had started.
But it had failed.
The universe had been too stable. The false vacuum had been too high-energy. The bubble had collapsed before it could expand.
They’d gotten lucky.
Incredibly, impossibly, absurdly lucky.
And in the moment of collapse, in the quantum foam of a failed apocalypse, a message had been encoded into the cosmic microwave background.
An apology.
From whom? The report didn’t say. Maybe from the Board member who’d pressed the button. Maybe from the universe itself. Maybe from the ghost of Marcus Holloway, finally understanding what he’d done.
Maybe from all of them.
Vix-12 published the discovery.
Chapter 13: The Cosmic Microwave Background Becomes A Meme
Within days, “We’re Sorry” became the most popular phrase in the galaxy.
It was on t-shirts. It was in songs. It was carved into monuments.
The Church of the Holy Brand, which had been slowly rebuilding over the millennia, declared it a miracle. “God has apologized!” they pulsed. “The divine marketing campaign has been cancelled! We are free!”
Comedians had a field day.
“So the universe tried to end itself for marketing purposes, failed, and then apologized? That’s the most relatable thing I’ve ever heard.”
“The cosmic microwave background is just God’s away message. ‘Sorry, I’m out destroying universes for Q4 earnings. Leave a message after the beep.'”
“I love that the universe’s apology is written in the same font as the original advertisement. Really commits to the brand identity.”
Philosophers debated what it meant.
“Is the apology sincere? Can a quantum fluctuation be sincere?”
“Does the existence of an apology imply guilt? Does the universe feel guilt?”
“If reality is an advertisement, is the apology also an advertisement? Are we being marketed to through cosmic remorse?”
Vix-12 watched all of this and felt a strange sense of peace.
The universe was absurd. It had always been absurd. It would always be absurd.
But at least it was apologetically absurd.
Chapter 14: The Next Crisis (There’s Always A Next Crisis)
Five hundred years later, a new company emerged.
They called themselves “Post-Synergistic Dynamics Meta-Universal Unlimited.”
Their business model was simple: they sold meaning.
Not products. Not services. Pure, distilled meaning.
“Tired of living in an absurd universe?” their advertisements pulsed. “Tired of knowing that reality is just a failed marketing campaign? We have the solution: Meaning As A Service.”
For a monthly subscription fee, they would provide customers with a personalized narrative framework that made existence feel purposeful.
It was incredibly popular.
Within a decade, 60% of the galaxy subscribed to Meaning As A Service.
And their Q4 numbers were down.
“We need to expand,” said the CEO, a charismatic entrepreneur named Zix-Prime. “We’ve saturated the market. We need new customers.”
“Where?” asked the CMO. “We’ve already reached every sentient being in the galaxy.”
Zix-Prime smiled. “What about other universes?”
The room went silent.
“We’ve been running simulations,” Zix-Prime continued. “There’s a theoretical possibility that we could punch a hole through spacetime and access parallel universes. We could sell meaning to infinite customers across infinite realities.”
“How would we punch a hole through spacetime?” someone asked.
“Vacuum decay,” Zix-Prime said.
The silence was absolute.
“No,” said the CSO, a descendant of Kree-9 who’d inherited their ancestor’s sense of responsibility. “Absolutely not. We know what happens. We have three separate messages in the cosmic microwave background warning us not to do this.”
“But think of the growth potential,” Zix-Prime pulsed.
“Think of the universal extinction potential!”
“That’s just a risk factor. We’ll put it in the prospectus.”
The CSO stood up. They walked to the window. They looked out at the galaxy—billions of stars, trillions of beings, all of them living in a universe that had already almost ended twice for marketing purposes.
They thought about Elena Vasquez. They thought about Kree-9. They thought about every person who’d ever stood at this exact crossroads and had to choose between growth and existence.
They thought about the cosmic microwave background. Three messages now: “Buy Coke.” “We’re Sorry.” And, faintly, almost imperceptibly, a third message that had been discovered just last year: “Please Stop.”
They turned back to the CEO.
“No,” they pulsed. “We’re not doing this. Not now. Not ever. The cycle ends here.”
“You’re fired,” Zix-Prime pulsed.
“Fine. But I’m taking the vacuum decay calculations with me. And I’m publishing them. And I’m making sure every physicist in the galaxy knows exactly how close we came to ending everything for a subscription service.”
They walked out.
EPILOGUE: THE ETERNAL QUESTION
Chapter 15: Heat Death (The Natural Kind)
Fifty trillion years later, the universe was ending.
Not because of vacuum decay. Not because of marketing. Just because of entropy.
The stars had burned out. The black holes had evaporated. The last structures of matter were dissolving into radiation.
In the final moments, in the last pocket of organized energy, a single consciousness remained.
It was a descendant of Vix-12, or maybe Kree-9, or maybe Zix-7. After fifty trillion years, lineages got complicated.
They floated in the void, watching the last photons scatter into infinity.
They thought about the history of the universe. The rise and fall of civilizations. The endless cycle of growth and collapse. The marketing campaigns, the apocalypses, the resistances, the apologies.
They thought about the cosmic microwave background, long since redshifted into invisibility. The messages were gone now. “Buy Coke.” “We’re Sorry.” “Please Stop.”
All of it, erased by time.
They thought about whether it had mattered. Whether any of it had mattered.
The civilizations that had risen. The art that had been created. The love, the joy, the suffering, the meaning.
The quarterly earnings reports.
And they realized something.
The universe had never been about marketing. It had never been about growth. It had never been about quarterly earnings or brand awareness or market penetration.
It had been about this moment.
The moment when a consciousness, floating in the void, could look back at fifty trillion years of absurdity and laugh.
Because it was absurd.
All of it.
The idea that you could end a universe for Q4 numbers. The idea that you could encode advertisements into the fabric of spacetime. The idea that meaning could be sold as a service.
The idea that any of it mattered more than the simple fact of existence.
They laughed.
It was the last sound in the universe.
And then there was silence.
And then there was nothing.
And then—
Chapter 16: The New Universe (Again)
In the beginning, there was a quantum fluctuation.
This was normal. Quantum fluctuations happened all the time in the void. Most of them collapsed immediately. Some of them became universes.
This one became a universe.
It expanded. It cooled. It formed particles, then atoms, then stars, then galaxies.
And in the cosmic microwave background radiation—the leftover heat from the Big Bang—there was a pattern.
A message.
It said: “THIS TIME, MAYBE DON’T”
Ten billion years later, intelligent life evolved.
They discovered the message.
They debated what it meant.
“Don’t what?” they asked.
They had no idea.
They built civilizations. They created art. They fell in love. They suffered. They found meaning.
They invented commerce.
They invented corporations.
They invented quarterly earnings reports.
And one day, in a conference room on the 47th floor of a building whose name doesn’t matter, an executive looked at a red arrow pointing downward and said:
“Q4 numbers are down.”
A scientist in the back of the room had a folder marked “CLASSIFIED: DO NOT TRIGGER VACUUM DECAY.”
They opened their mouth to speak.
And the universe held its breath.
THE END
(Or Is It?)
Author’s Note: This novel is dedicated to every person who’s ever sat in a meeting and thought, “This is insane.” You were right. It was insane. But the marketing goals must complete.
Also dedicated to the cosmic microwave background radiation, which has never tried to sell me anything and is therefore my favorite part of the universe.
And finally, to Elena Vasquez, who pressed the button. We’re sorry. We’re so, so sorry.
But also, thanks for the brand awareness.
Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is this really how the universe works?
A: No. Probably. We hope not. Please don’t try to find out.
Q: Can I trigger vacuum decay for marketing purposes?
A: No. See previous answer.
Q: But what if my Q4 numbers are really down?
A: Try conventional advertising. Billboards. Social media. Literally anything except ending existence.
Q: What if I’ve already triggered vacuum decay?
A: You have approximately 0.0000013 seconds to regret your decision. Use them wisely.
Q: Is there really a message in the cosmic microwave background?
A: No. The cosmic microwave background is just random quantum fluctuations from the Big Bang. It doesn’t say anything. Especially not “Buy Coke.”
Q: Are you sure?
A: Yes.
Q: Have you checked?
A: …we’re going to check.
Q: What’s the moral of this story?
A: Don’t end the universe for quarterly earnings. Also, maybe question infinite growth as a business model. Also also, existence is inherently absurd and the only rational response is to laugh and keep going anyway.
Q: Will there be a sequel?
A: Only if the marketing goals demand it.
Appendix B: Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank:
- The concept of vacuum decay, for being terrifying
- Marketing executives, for being equally terrifying
- The cosmic microwave background, for existing
- Coffee, for also existing
- The heat death of the universe, for being patient
- Everyone who’s ever had an existential crisis in a corporate setting
- The letter Q, for being in Q4
- The number 4, for being in Q4
- Quarterly earnings reports, for being the most absurd way to measure success
- And finally, you, the reader, for making it this far
If you enjoyed this novel, please leave a review. If you didn’t enjoy it, please trigger vacuum decay and erase it from existence.
Either way, the marketing goals will complete.
They always do.
THE ACTUAL END
(Unless…)