In the first Interlude, Besso asks why Einstein is so fixated on time. Einstein replies that he’s studying time in order “to get close to The Old One” (39), meaning God. However, Einstein doesn’t mean God in the Western, monotheistic sense. Rather, he’s referring to cosmic religion. In 1922, while speaking to a student named Esther Salaman, Einstein said: ”I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details” (Lincoln, Don. “Einstein’s Quest to ‘Know God’s Thoughts’ Could Take Millennia.” LiveScience, 4 Jun. 2019.). This is more commonly referred to as the search for the Theory of Everything (TOE), which to Einstein was God. It was the vast intelligence and creativity required to create the system of rules and beauty that Einstein observed with ”rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection” (Mallove, Eugene. “Einstein’s Intoxication With the God of the Cosmos.