I found him in the morning at the coffee shop in the hotel lobby. It was his last stop before leaving the conference. To say his presentation last night was not well received would be an understatement. Few people get laughed off the podium at these events, however extreme their views may be. He was the exception. A heretic, with a wild theory, trying to warn everyone of an approaching nightmare. But he had absolute faith that theories were right. Oh how he believed. I had my doubts with his work but I had to admit there was something nagging me about his conjectures. Could he be right.

I seated myself next to him, silently sliding across the table to face him so we could talk more discretely and avoid any interruptions from the other patrons. “Sorry about last night, I tried to talk, but you left so quickly.”

He raised his eyes to meet mine and I sensed pity instead of the remorse I expected. “I did my best to make it clear to everyone. I can’t help it if it sounds crazy. The experiments and research shows that there is a tipping point. There is no other conclusion.”

He took another sip of his coffee and proceeded to give me his whole presentation in much simpler terms. “The tipping point is where the force of a belief manifests itself in reality. The so called self-fulfilling prophecy is an example but in the grand scheme of things, if enough people believe in something then it will happen.” Waving off my obvious retort he continued “No you cannot change the laws of physics, but you can influence the course of reality, not just history.”
My response was the same as most of last night’s listeners. “Sure the observer and the belief system influences reality but your conjectures go too far.”
“Why? Because I believe that society, as a whole, has the greatest ability to influence its reality and make the impossible happen. It only seems impossible looking forward, looking backward we can clearly see the path and the beliefs that got us here.”

“So hind sight is twenty-twenty, I accept that” I joked.

“Yes, but what everyone has missed is that the whole of society has never been aligned to one belief system or focused on one reality. That’s the tipping point. Once the majority of our society adopts a belief system or a focus, that belief will become the dominant effect on our reality. Before the age of the internet, instant communications and worldwide distribution of beliefs nothing could take a dominant hold and truly affect our reality. All these observations and beliefs tended to normalize and keep our society on an even keel. That’s not true anymore. In today’s world we are bombarded with information, news, books, movies and television. All of this influences our beliefs on a massive scale.”
While his eyes pleaded with mine to accept his viewpoint, I stumbled for words. “Ok, let me get this straight, If, we really believe it, then it will happen, whatever that is. Isn’t that just wishful thinking?”
“No. Millions of people play the lottery all believing they will win. But only one ticket wins so there cannot be a dominant belief system that creates a specific outcome. All my research shows a clear correlation of observance, belief and consequences. The larger the observance and the belief force, the more pronounced the consequences. The belief system of an individual does not have the force to affect any great consequence in reality. It’s too small to measure. But if you take the majority of our society and create in them a new belief system, then that can influence reality.”

This is where I thought I had him. “This sounds like science fiction to me. We live in a very causal universe where we can directly attribute any physical occurrence to a physical influence. What you’re asking me to believe is that these physical occurrences’ can be the result of some nonphysical occurrence”

He sighed and shook his head and with seemingly great patience restated his argument. “No you’re getting it wrong again. You’re looking at only the physical occurrence and not the shift in reality. As I said earlier, you can’t change the laws of physics but you can bend reality. Right now our reality is all around us and we believe it to be as it is, thus it continues as it is. But if the overall mass of belief in our reality shifts, reality will shift as well. The key is the amount of force in any dominant belief. Once we reach a tipping point, reality will bend.”

Giving up with arguing, I raised my hands. “So you really believe we’ve reached this tipping point as you say we have, then did you create the tipping point or did you push us over it? I mean you’re the only one that believes in this tipping point effect after all.”

For the first time I saw him stop to consider the implications. His eyes seemed to dart back and forth as though considering my words, then met mine again for the last time. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, this could all be my fault. The more I push people to believe in a tipping point, the more that tipping point becomes a reality and we create the very thing I’m trying to stop. It’s like telling people not to think of pink elephants and then all they do is exactly what you told them not to do. I’ve got to stop this somehow.”

That was the last time I saw him or heard from him again. The more he tried to stop the cataclysm, the more he made it’s inevitability. The world’s belief system was set on a collision course with a destiny we now believed in. A belief he had tried to extinguish and in the end ignited.

The first zombies appeared just outside Washington.