Nothingness is impossible (Step 2). Therefore, there is no “outside” to the whole from which energy or causation could be drawn. The whole is all that exists. If its total energy were non‑zero, it would possess an unexplained magnitude – a net positive or negative balance with no external referent. A net positive energy would imply a debt to something not contained within the whole. But nothing exists outside the whole.
The only value that requires no external explanation, no outside creditor or source, is zero. The total energy of the whole must be exactly zero. Positive mass‑energy and negative gravitational potential energy must cancel perfectly – not as a contingent coincidence, but as a geometric identity of the self‑contained manifold.
To reject Step 5 is to assert that the whole can be indebted to something that does not exist – a contradiction. The processor crashes.