text: At first, nothing happened. Then, nothing happened again. Then, without warning or any indication that anything at all was amiss, nothing happened. It was really quite unexciting. Nobody had been waiting for nothing to happen, and when nothing happened, several times in a row, nobody expected it. In fact, nobody didn't expect it either. It is not often that anyone ever wonders about nothing happening. This particular nothing did happen, however, and technically, nothing shouldn't have happened. The nothing which never should have occurred happened on an unremarkable day in January, but that is not important. Nobody was expecting nothing to happen, least of all an average scientist, who worked in a nondescript building on a street whose name is not a relevant detail. This average scientist, a man of no noteworthy achievements, was researching a project on the nature of the universe. Using some gadget he had created, whose purpose had something to do with the fluidity of time, the average scientist caused absolutely nothing to happen. And it was truly absolutely nothing. For the brief fraction of time that he turned on the device, the world became frozen; for that brief second, or perhaps it was a moment, nothing happened whatsoever. The average scientist, somehow, noticed this nothing after it was over, and, to test his strange device, turned it on again. Again, a brief moment of nothing filled the entire universe. Then without warning, or any indication at all that anything at all was amiss, nothing happened again. This time, the nothing lasted for a little while. Similar to absolute zero in terms of temperature, the average scientist had achieved the same with time: absolute nothing. The nothing that was happening stopped happening after several minutes of nothing, and the average scientist, thrilled with his strange discovery, published an average paper. His paper, being of average quality and written about nothing, was widely disregarded. Later that week, the average scientist, thinking deeply about nothing, decided that perhaps the world would be better off if he made nothing happen. Without considering the ramifications, he closed his eyes and turned on the device. And absolutely nothing happened.