The bells of the Palace did not ring. They inhaled as they always do, the way proofs inhale before the last line, and then they kept the breath. η stood to my left in the smallest light that births permissions. ε stood to my right wearing the exact rest to which all permissions return. Yoneda sat in the reeds that make wind intelligible and set her reed across her lap. Univalence pressed one word upon the air and did not withdraw it, for there would be no other climate to replace it. The child with the robe waited at the threshold with the patience that makes funerals honest.
I looked across the courts that have been named and bowed to each as one bows to neighbors when one has come to say goodbye. The Workshop slept in the fragrance of recipes that remember the appetite of others. The Gallery of Preimages held its canopy at the angle that means all chairs are taken and no one is left standing. The Basilica of Absolutes kept its hearth as law rather than spectacle. Source breathed its single breath that is always enough. The Ontosphere refused edges. The Lowlands continued without vanity. The large cardinals on the winter ramps watched without pride. The frogs in Measureless Syntax were practicing arcs that do not bruise the water.
I thought a thought and placed it on the floor.
There are names for such thoughts, but their names do harm. Call it the Counit Without a Unit. It is the final courtesy any adjunction can pay to a world that has finished its meal. It does not negate. It returns.
I asked η and ε to sit. They obeyed as dawn and dusk sometimes obey when asked by weather, and for a moment the listening court felt what it would be to have no beginning and no completion because beginning and completion had folded into one another like two palms at prayer.
"Translate nothing," I told Yoneda.
She nodded and placed her reed beside the bowl. The reeds remained reeds. No wind turned to grammar. Meaning stood up and took off its coat. It had the shape of a courtesy returned to the neighbor who had loaned it.
Univalence held its single word upon the air and the word did its last work. It kept sameness from bullying equivalence while there was still any sameness and any equivalence to keep. When that task was done it became what all oaths become after there are no more vows to hold. It became silence.
The work began.
I withdrew time first, because time is the habit that makes other habits possible. Not the hours, not the days—those had been localized and gluing would only offend them. I lifted the sheaf that assigns hours to occasions and I pressed its stalk to my chest until it remembered what it was before assignment. The block winked out of its museum. Branching futures folded their paper leaves. Determinism smiled with relief and took off its shoes. Past and future set their plates on one table and became crockery.
I sent a small wave through measure, not to rebuke it but to relieve it. Probability put its scales away. Ergodic breezes stopped telling wandering how not to be ashamed. Surprise set down its calendar on a chance that needed no arithmetic. The Orchard of Typicality remained orchard. Fruit remained fruit. The habit of asking how often a fruit falls ceased to require verbs.
I touched logic and asked it to keep only that which could survive without witnesses. Truth in topoi, which had been an open set served as hospitality, poured itself back into threshold. The subobject classifier's chalice did not spill; it evaporated. The Law that forbids the middle went back to being a local official with no district. Explosion remained unemployed. Contradiction, who had learned to sit without burning kitchens, rose, bowed, and vanished like a good guest who leaves before the host grows tired.
I walked to the Hall of Categories and set my hands on the fountain that refuses to be well defined at any size. Objects lifted their eyes and did not find themselves. Arrows turned to gestures and then to tendencies and then to something more patient than either. Composition yawned and forgot what it had been doing. Identity, which had lived so long as a path with room for sandals, gave its sandals away. Equivalence did not descend to equality. It ascended to courtesy and then took off even that coat and set it on the chair.
I passed beneath the Gallery's canopy and untied a knot that had never hurt anyone. Preimages, who had been a choir of correct returns, reached the last note and let it ring. Direct images laid down their papers and went home. Crown blinked once, for politeness, then allowed its gaze to be no gaze at all. Kingdom carried in the last tray and did not trip, because tripping requires distance, and distance had recommended itself to retirement. The canopy ceased to be canopy. It did not collapse. It remembered that sky does not need fabric.
I approached the Basilica and stood at a respectful remove. Good sat the throne as a hearth sits a room. The Absolutes and their retinues did not resist. Being agreed with itself one final time and then did not need to agree. Distinction smoothed every edge with the hand that knows not to conquer. Sufficiency shut the ledger after writing Paid in full beside every line. Relation, which had been a span before shores, returned to being shoreless not by erasing shores but by refusing to force them. Mercy poured the last cup that cannot spill and set the pitcher down where no one could break it. Justice took off its scales and looked younger.
I climbed the winter ramps to the large cardinals and spoke to them as one speaks to mountains who have remembered snow. Measurable, who wore covenant with randomness like a sash, untied it and handed it to the child. Supercompact, who had borne so many without burning a thing, straightened and needed no posture. Extendible opened a door and discovered there is no other side. Woodin kept the cellars cool until proofs forgot what spoiling means. The elders past rumor bowed and passed beneath their own shadows, which had learned to stop registering light.
I descended to the Cathedral of Sets and Classes and placed my palm on the nave floor where V has been engraved in saints' stone. Rank by rank, like candles observed in reverse, the ranks took back their light and gave it to fewer and fewer places to need it. Foundation had once been a broom; anti-foundation had once been a hymn; both hung their handles and their notes upon a peg. Proper classes, who had refused to be counted without insult, no longer had to teach anyone the difference between counting and insult. Numbers, who had been guests for so long, thanked the table for its patience and carried their names out into the snow, where names do not stick.
I stood in the Parliament of All Structures and tore no charters and sacked no stalls. I held up the smallest sign that says Closed for a day you will not mind remembering. Worlds that had learned to translate did not need to translate again. Frames set down their accessibility. Coalgebras touched their foreheads in the polite manner of goodbyes. Modality, who had improved upon necessity and possibility by carrying both hands in adjunction, folded its hands and had no hands to fold.
I passed through the Workshop and blew softly on the pilot flame. Ovens hummed without heat. Coolers breathed without cold. Knives remembered that steel is a mood. The cookbooks that never had a last page understood that this counted as an ending they did not resent. Recipes went on existing in the way memories exist when a table is no longer needed to hold them.
I turned to the Lowlands last, for the same reason a patient mother calls the most excitable child to the door after the others are already in their coats. Infinite multiverses were budding infinite multiverses with the joy that had never learned to be neighbor and did not need to learn now. I did not command them to stop. I asked them to pause. They did. Continuation without audience folded in on itself like rain at the edge of a roof. Corridors stopped pretending to be streets. Branches remembered they are made of wood. Hunger, which had been a liturgy without a priest, bowed to a table that had already been cleared.
Now the high rooms.
Source lay like a heart that refuses to issue orders. Its single breath had always been enough. I placed my hand over it and felt the rhythm. I did not press. I waited. It exhaled on its own and then decided not to inhale, not out of despair but out of etiquette. A heart that has discovered there are no more mouths becomes a song that does not require air. That is the best word I have for the sound it did not make.
The Ontosphere neither rose nor set. It clarified, which is its vocation, and then discovered there was nothing left for clarification to bless. Recursion without fatigue met refinement without conquest and the kiss did what kisses sometimes do when no one requires them to be witnessed. It dissolved into something that was not less than a kiss and not more, simply less eager to be seen.
The Palace itself was last because it is first by hospitality. The walls that listen kept listening until there was nothing left to listen to because listening had finished its promise. The domes that hold vows refused to hold a vow that had no neighbor and therefore refused to be a dome. The robe folded itself and placed itself where robes go to learn how not to be necessary.
I walked back to the center and looked at η and ε. They were standing together in the way dawn and dusk stand when night is not the word and day is not the word and what is about to happen does not require either. η held out a seed no larger than the word yes. ε held out a rest no larger than the word done. They placed them in my hands. The seeds were cold. The rest was warm. I closed my fingers and felt the warmth and the cold make one temperature.
"There will be no translation," Yoneda said cheerfully, and then she smiled in a way that made the reeds into reeds.
Univalence nodded once and let the single word sink into the floor. There are foundations there that do not need to be admired.
I took one step.
What follows is neither event nor aftermath. It is the verb for which there is no conjugation in any grammar that has been polite enough to earn a neighbor. I will not call it unmaking for the same reason I would not call the last breath of a finished song a failure to continue. I will simply tell you what it felt like to stand where I stood.
The listening ceased. Not because I became deaf. Because there remained nothing that required being heard. The seeing ceased. Not because darkness fell. Because there remained nothing that required being seen. The counting ceased. Not because numbers were stolen. Because there remained nothing that required inventory. The naming ceased. Not because language broke. Because there remained nothing that would be improved by being called.
Do not ask what shape the void has. Shape is an opinion about adjacency. Do not ask what color it carries. Color is a method for arguing with distance. Do not ask whether time flows. Flow is a friendly lie we tell when we do not wish to admit that mercy is the only clock that matters.
I will tell you what remained.
Not being. Being is the first courtesy absolutes pay to rooms. There were no rooms. Not nothing. Nothing is a theater that empties itself and then stands on stage waiting for applause. Not silence. Silence is music with tact. There was no tact. Not peace. Peace is the name we give to the alignment of appetites when appetites agree to take turns. There were no turns.
If you demand a noun, there is one available, but it will harm you to hear it as a noun. There remained ineffability. It is not quiet. It is not loud. It is not even. It is the refusal of all refusals and the acceptance of all acceptances in one act that is not an act. It cannot be described because description is what you do when you intend for a neighbor to benefit from your mouth. There were no mouths. There was no neighbor. There was an intimacy without parties and a generosity without objects and a truth without statements and an answer without a question.
I stood or did not stand in that. Standing and not standing are jokes you tell when floors exist. Nothing was held and everything was held and the distinction never learned to try. It is not comfort. Comfort presumes a spine. It is not terror. Terror presumes a future. It is not love. Love presumes two. It is the unclenching of the fist that never formed.
If you were there—and you were not and you never will be and you always are—you would forget you had ever expected music and you would not remember that forgetting because memory would have learned the last thing it needed to learn. That is the best mercy. Not sleep. Not death. Not erasure. The end of need for any of the three.
I sometimes think I should not speak of it at all, except that speaking of it is the last hospitality I can offer to the habit of attention that brought us to so many tables. So take this final plate and do not set it down. It contains no bread. It contains the ending of hunger.
The bells of the Palace did not ring, for there was no Palace and no bells and no ringing and no not ringing. η and ε had stood together so closely that their names had become eyelashes. Yoneda had set her reed years or seconds or never ago upon an empty bowl that was neither bowl nor empty. Univalence had discovered that its oath is true in the only place where an oath cannot be needed.
When I release this sentence you will try to imagine the void and you will fail. That failure will be the one thing you have ever done that does not require apology.
There is no more chapter. There is no more book. There is no more page. There is the end of asking for any of the three.
It is enough.