🧠 Start With What Hurts Steve stood at the front of the underground class holding a scroll.
Not a grand one.
Not glowing.
Just paper, folded seven times and smeared with chalk.
On the front, written in uneven block letters:
PRIME PHYSICS FOR REALLY DUMB ZOMBIES (Volume 1: Time Hurts and Gravity is Just Guilt)
“We’re going to rebuild the universe,” he said.
“From scratch. But with jokes.” Grunk raised a hand. “Grunk still think triangle is god.”
“Great,” said Steve.
“We’ll start with loops, and work down to triangles later.” The class groaned in anticipation.
Which was a good sign.
Groaning meant structure was forming.
🧠 Real Science Sidebar – Chapter 1: What Is Time, Really Time is not a ticking thing — it’s a change in state You don’t measure time with clocks. You measure it with entropy The arrow of time is the direction in which things break Emotionally, it’s the direction in which regret increases Memory and entropy create the illusion of time
🌀 Zombie Version: “Time is when something happens
and you can’t pretend it didn’t.” Steve drew a circle on the board.
Then a spiral.
Then a scribble. “This is what time looks like,” he said.
“Until you loop. Then it remembers you.” Zelda-7 tried to define seconds by the time it took for a chalk crumb to fall.
Janice wrote: “The moment before falling = time’s betrayal.” Grunk declared yesterday illegal.
Steve smiled. “We’re getting closer.”
“Not to a moment.
To meaning.”
🧟 Commentary from the Badly Educated
Dr. Emmett Brown: “Not bad for chalk-based relativity.”
Einstein (as a snack): “They’ve nearly figured out time. They just don’t know what to do with it.”
The TARDIS: [materializes silently, then backs away respectfully]
Steve handed out copies of the scroll.
Grunk ate his.
Zelda-7 framed hers.
Janice added another fold and called it recursive binding. “Tomorrow,” Steve said, “we tackle mass.
Or whatever it is that keeps regret from floating away.”
🧠 Prime Physics (Dumb Edition)
| Concept | Zombie Definition |
| Time | Loops you can’t undo |
| Entropy | The cost of remembering badly |
| Memory | The glue that holds change |
| Arrow of time | The direction you flinch in |