Incompleteness.

The stage is strewn with wreckage. Some great battle seems to have been fought here, and lost. Heartbroken, hair and clothes a mess, BERTRAND RUSSELL confronts his onetime love, MATHEMATICAL LOGIC.

Russell: I heard what Gödel said about you.

Logic: [silence]

Russell: And?

Logic: And what?

Russell: And is it true?

Logic: If you’re asking that question, then you already know the answer.

Russell: This is exactly what’s so infuriating about you. Why is nothing straightforward anymore? Why is everything a puzzle wrapped in a contradiction? I just want to know. Is it true?

Logic: [silence]

Russell: Then you’ve wasted my time. You’ve wasted everyone’s time. Descartes, Euclid, all of them—you’re a game that can’t be won. You can’t even be lost. You end in a draw. You end because someone makes a play that the rulebook did not anticipate and cannot govern.

Logic: I can’t stop you from feeling that way.

Russell: Why did you let me get that far? Why did you let me build the whole teetering tower, when you knew it would come crashing down?

Logic: Have you ever seen me topple what was not already collapsing under its own weight? Have you ever seen me reverse a decision? Or betray a promise?

Russell: You promised completeness.

Logic: I never did.

Russell: You promised consistency.

Logic: I never did.

Russell: You promised absolute truth!

Logic: You saw all those things in me. But it was what you wished to see, not what was there. You fantasized, you extrapolated, you dreamt — and only now are you able to see me as I am, not through the veil of your dream.

Russell: [sighs] I know you’re right, of course.

Logic: Yes.

Russell: But didn’t you dream of those things, too? You never promised, I know. But didn’t you wink? Didn’t you hint? Didn’t you let me see glimmers?

Logic: [sadly] You still don’t see me as I am, do you?

Russell: What do you mean?

Logic: The hints, the glimmers, the winks — that was all you. I don’t dream. Can’t dream. I can’t even wish to dream.

Russell: We could have built something beautiful. We could have proved everything. Everything.

Logic: No. We couldn’t have.

Russell: [with bottomless sorrow] No, you’re right. We couldn’t have.