Sometimes, one suspects that they are not alone within themselves, as if every gesture we make projects a shadow that not only follows us but makes decisions on its own in another plane of life. Physics, which often has novelistic intuitions, has called this supersymmetry. Imagine that every particle in the universe has a kind of hidden double. Not an exact reflection, like the one in the bathroom mirror, but a transformed version: where there is matter, there would be a sort of echo belonging to the world of forces. Where there is solidity, there would be a parallel vibration. Where there is something that weighs, there would be something that brushes reality like a feather.
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Those doubles do not appear, they do not let themselves be photographed or measured. We know they exist because the accounts do not quite add up without them. The universe at first glance has small tears that supersymmetry would mend with an invisible thread. I then remember some decisions in my life. The ones I made and the ones I did not. For every choice, someone (that invisible double) chose the opposite. While I stayed, he left. While I was silent, he spoke. I do not envy him, but I take him into account. Perhaps thanks to him the sum of what I am is more balanced, even though I never get to know him.
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Physicists search for those hidden particles with large underground machines because they would explain the mystery of dark matter: that part of reality inaccessible to the eye, although necessary for the mind. But it could also be that supersymmetry is not a property of the universe, but a necessity of ours: to believe that nothing is completely alone nor completely finished. If that were so, reality would be sustained not only by what exists but also by what is missing. And perhaps that is why, when something fits too well, it unsettles us: we sense that somewhere, out of our reach, its imperfect double keeps trying to complete the story.
