“Professor Hawking, do you believe in God?”

Hawking sits onstage, painstakingly composing his answer. An expectant hush fills Zellerbach Auditorium.

Three minutes pass. Four.

At last his synthesizer speaks: “No.”

Time hovers motionless; then a roar of laughter erupts from nine hundred people.

Mirth drowns the remainder of Hawking’s reply.

Andrew D. Hwang is the author of his own fate.