Author: Majoki

This is going to feel like a set up, and it’s hard to deny that feeling when everything that caused the Last First is based on set theory. I’m hardly the person to adequately explain how Georg Cantor upended mathematics long ago when he proved that real numbers are more numerous than natural numbers. Essentially, Cantor’s set theory implies the existence of an infinity of infinities.

That concept may not seem so earth-shaking to recent generations whiplashed by an ever-growing number of multi/meta/omni/exa-verses out there in novels, films, and games that toy with an infinity of infinities. But when you really dig into what transfinite numbers represent, like my little sister did at age twelve, then you can start to get a sense of what beyond limits really means.

For starters, it means a twelve-year-old calculated the Last First. It wasn’t called that to begin with. BeeGee called it Wham Bam, and, though that designation did get to the heart of the matter, it felt a little cold-blooded. Especially for a twelve-year-old. Though my little sister was never a typical twelve-year-old (or typical at any age). She’s twenty-nine now and prefers I call her Beatrice Gaia. And she’s in hiding.

I don’t know where she is. No one does. When you’re the person who calculated the Last First at age twelve, there’s a lot of competition for your talents. And by talents, I mean your mind. In an age of neural mimicry, so many entities wanted to buy the rights to map and upload BeeGee’s mind that a speculative bubble burst the world economy.

The government then tried to use the doctrine of eminent domain to take control of her mind for the public good. Intellectual property falls under that, so why not BeeGee’s vast intellect. It was a classic power grab, but BeeGee wasn’t up for grabs.

When you can conceptualize and then calculate the Last First, disappearing isn’t that hard. Let me tell you why. Infinity is sexy. Zero is not. But you can’t have infinity without zero, so zero knows it’s still quite a player. And when you know how to play zero, then you can disappear into any of the infinity of infinities.

I know that sounds whimsical, and simultaneously sinister, but that’s how BeeGee described it to me. I’m sure in BeeGee’s mind it’s an elegant algorithm, which is why her mind is so sought after: every world power wants that equation to calculate the Last First.

That’s the real reason, BeeGee disappeared herself. She told me, sister to sister, that the Last First isn’t what everyone thinks it is. Everyone thinks it’s the way into the infinity of infinities. A portal into other dimensions, other realities.

It’s not. It’s a dead end. Infinitely so.

Before she vanished, BeeGee wouldn’t tell me what the Last First would really mean for humanity, but she did leave me two clues. The first was Wham Bam, her pet name for the Last First. By the age of four, BeeGee loved setting up crazy complicated patterns of dominoes on our kitchen floor that she’d then send clattering over with the push of a pudgy finger.

When the last domino clacked down, she’d shout, “Wham! Bam!” And I’d finish, “Thank You, Ma’am!” Mom would giggle for reasons that only became clear to us later.

BeeGee knew that when the Last First was set in motion, it was turtles all the way down, falling down, down, down, as in Wham! Bam!

As in “Hasta la vista, baby!” Which was the second clue. That’s the last thing BeeGee said to me before she disappeared. I’d like to think she meant it as a supremely hopeful see you later, but I got a very uneasy impression she meant it as a fateful so long.

I think BeeGee was trying to tell me that most minds (hers excluded) weren’t built for infinite possibilities. We didn’t need pathways into other universes, other realities, when we couldn’t even handle our own very provincial planet. The only place we really belong. I’m pretty sure that’s why she disappeared.

I miss BeeGee so much, especially when I watch my little daughter starting to count on her pudgy fingers. Another tallying of infinite possibility. Another Last First. In those moments I like to imagine BeeGee playing dominoes with a whole lot of content turtles, calculating her next move, and hoping we wisely do the same.