by Dan Simmons
“A superconducting quantum interference device,” recites Jacob Goldmann in his raspy old-man’s voice. “A squid. A way to let the quantum genie out of the microbottle, into the macroworld we think we know. But they still find magic. The curtain cannot be drawn. Look behind it … and the universe changes. Instantly. Totally. One side or the other. We cannot see the workings of things. Either particle or wave … never both, Gail, my young friend. One or the other, never both.”
Jeremy rubs his face and remains bent forward, palms over his eyes. The room seems to move around him as if he has been drinking. He rarely drinks. “You know, Jacob, that this way may lie madness … pure solipsism … the ultimate catatonia.”
Dr. Goldmann nods. “Yes. And also … perhaps … the ultimate truth.”
Gail sits up. Since her childhood when her parents became born-again Christians and born-again hypocrites, she has hated the sound of a phrase like “the ultimate truth.”
“When do we eat?” she says.
The two men make a sound somewhere between a laugh and an embarrassed cough.
“Now,” cries Jacob Goldmann, glancing at his watch and rising to his feet. He bows toward her. “By all means, discussions of reality can never match the indisputable reality of a good meal.”
“Amen,” says Jeremy.
Gail crosses her arms. “Are you two making fun of me?”
“Oh, no,” says Jacob Goldmann. There are tears in his eyes.
No, kiddo, affirms Jeremy. No.
The three of them leave together, Jacob locking the door behind him as they go.
This Is Cactus Land
The Two-M Ranch was not in the desert proper but set several miles up a shallow canyon that rose toward wooded foothills. Beyond the foothills snowcapped peaks were visible through the haze of heat and distance.
“Ranch” was hardly an adequate word for Miz Fayette Morgan’s spread. The main house was a modern Spanish hacienda perched between two boulders the size of low apartment buildings. The sprawling hacienda was set on a shelf of land that looked out over the grassy fields and cottonwoods of the stream-fed canyon toward the desert beyond. Half a dozen large dogs came baying at the Toyota; they ceased their growls and howls only when Miz Morgan stepped out and shouted at them. She patted each in turn as it groveled its way to her legs. “Come on into the main house for a beer,” she said. “It’s the only time you’ll be invited up here.”
The house was furnished with expensive southwestern antiques, decor, and art in a finished, interior-designed way that would have looked at home in a spread from Architectural Digest. It was air-conditioned and Bremen stifled an urge to lie down on the thick Stark carpet and go to sleep. Miz Morgan led the way through a gourmet cook’s kitchen into a breakfast nook that looked out through bay windows at the south-facing boulder and the barns and fields beyond. She twisted the caps off two cold Coors, handed one to Bremen, and nodded toward the bench across the table as she sprawled out in a sturdy captain’s chair. Her denim-covered legs were very long and ended in snakeskin cowboy boots. “To answer your unasked questions,” she said, “the answer is yes, I do live alone except for the dogs.” She took a swig of beer. “And no, I don’t use my hired men as stud service.” Her eyes were such a light gray that they gave her a strangely blind appearance. Blind, but in no way vulnerable.
Bremen nodded and tasted the beer. His stomach growled.
As if in response to the growl Miz Morgan said, “You do your own cooking. There’s adequate supplies in the bunkhouse and a full kitchen there. If we run out of something you want … basic stuff, not booze … you can put it on the list when you go in to shop each Thursday.”
Bremen took another swallow, feeling the beer hit him hard on his empty stomach. That and the fatigue made everything seem to have a faint, hazy halo of light around it. Miz Morgan’s dyed-red hair seemed to burn and flicker in the midday sun through the yellow curtains. “How long do you need a hired hand?” he asked, taking care to enunciate each word.
“How long you intend to stay in these parts?”
Bremen shrugged. The white-noise mindroar surrounded the woman like a constant crackle of some wild electrical apparatus—a Van de Graaff generator perhaps. Bremen found the effect soothing, like a constant wind that drowns out lesser sounds. The release from the whisper and burble of neurobabble made him want to weep with gratitude.
“Well,” said Miz Morgan, finishing her beer, “until Deputy Dawg gets some wanted poster on you, we’ll see if you can do any useful work around here.”
“Deputy Dawg?”
“Howard Collins,” she said, rising. “Deputy Dawg’s what most folks around here call him when he ain’t within range. Thinks he’s a tough character, but he hasn’t got the brains of Lettie … that’s the dumbest of my dogs out there.”
“About the dogs …” began Bremen. He got to his feet, his beer only half-finished.
“Oh, they’ll tear your arm or leg off, all right.” Miz Morgan smiled. “But only on a command from me or if you’re someplace where you shouldn’t be. I’ll introduce you to them on the way down to the bunkhouse so they can start gettin’ to know you.”
“Where is someplace I shouldn’t be?” asked Bremen, holding his beer bottle tightly as if it could steady him. The glow around things had turned into a pulsing now and he felt the liquid in his stomach slosh and shift somewhat alarmingly.
“Stay away from the main house,” she said, not smiling. “Especially at night. The dogs’ll go for anything that comes up here at night. But I’d stay away during the day, too.”
Bremen nodded.
“There are a few other places that’re out of bounds. I’ll point them out when I show you around the spread.”
Bremen nodded again, not wanting to set the beer bottle on the table but uncomfortable holding it. He was not sure if he could get through an afternoon of ranch work the way he felt now. He was not completely sure that he could stay on his feet the way he felt now.
Miz Morgan paused in the doorway as he followed her back outside. “You look like shit, Jeremy Goldmann.”
Bremen nodded.
“I’ll show you the bunkhouse and you can make yourself something to eat and settle in. We’ll start work at seven tomorrow mornin’. Wouldn’t do to break in the hired man by killin’ him.”
Bremen shook his head. He followed her out into the heat and light, into a world made luminous and almost transparent by exhaustion and relief.
EYES
Gail and Jeremy take the train home from Boston on Sunday, not talking about the experience of the weekend with Jacob Goldmann, but communicating about it almost all the way home.
Did you mindtouch the part about his family dying in the Holocaust?
Holocaust? Jeremy had felt the power of Jacob Goldmann’s intellect, and had occasionally lowered his mindshield to glimpse a concept or experimental protocol for clarification during their long talks, but mostly he had respected the older man’s privacy. No.
Ahhh, Jerry … Gail’s sadness is like a maroon shadow stealing over a sunny landscape. She looks out the window at the urban wasteland flickering by. I didn’t mean to pry, but every time I tried to understand what you two were saying by peeking, I’d get more images, more memories.
What images, kiddo?
The gray sky, gray buildings, gray earth, gray watchtowers … the black barbed wire against the gray sky. The striped uniforms, shaved heads, skeletal figures lost in rough and baggy wool. The morning lineup in the milky light of dawn, the breaths of the prisoners rising like a fog above them all. German SS guards in their thick, wool overcoats, leather belts, and leather boots looking rich and oily in the wan light. Shouts. Cries. The marching bare feet of the forest work detail.
His wife and son died there, Jerry.
Is it Auschwitz?
No, a place called Ravensbruck. A small camp. They survived five winters there. Separated, but in touch by notes sent through an underground mail network. His wife a
nd son were shot two weeks before the camp was liberated.
Bremen blinks. The clacking of metal wheels on metal rails is vaguely hypnotic. He closes his eyes. I didn’t know. But what about his daughter … Rebecca?… The one who was in London this weekend?
Jacob remarried in 1954. His second wife was British … she had been in the medical unit that liberated the camps.
Where is she now?
She died of cancer in 1963.
Jesus.
Jerry, he is so sad! Didn’t you feel it? There is a sadness there deeper than anything I’ve ever felt.
Bremen opens his eyes and rubs his cheeks. He had not shaved that morning and the stubble is beginning to itch. Yeah … I mean I got a sort of sense of general sadness. But his excitement is real, too, Gail. He’s really excited about the research.
As are you.
Well, yeah … He sent an image of Jacob and himself in Stockholm, accepting their shared Nobel Prizes. The humor did not quite click.
Jerry, I didn’t understand all of the stuff about quantum physics. I mean, I understood how some of the relativity stuff related to your dissertation … a lot of that was probability and uncertainty theory, too … but what does it have to do with Jacob’s work with charting the brain?
Bremen turns to look at her. I could take you through the simpler math again.
I’d prefer you to take me through the words.
Bremen sighs and closes his eyes. Okay … you understand about how Jacob’s work translates through my math? How the neurological wave actions he’s recording end up as sort of superholograms? Complex, interacting fields?
Yeah.
Well, there’s another step. And I’m not quite sure where it’s going to take us. To even work with the data properly I’m going to have to learn a lot about the new nonlinear math they call chaos mathematics. That and fractal geometry. I don’t know why fractals are important in this, but the data suggests they are.…
Stick to the point, Jerry.
Okay. The point is that Jacob’s snapshots of the human mind … the human personality … in action bring up the classic “two-slit experiment” in quantum mechanics. Do you remember that from college? It led to the so-called Copenhagen interpretation.
Tell me again.
Well, quantum mechanics says that energy and matter—in their smallest chunks—sometimes behave like waves, sometimes like particles. It depends on how you observe them. But the scary part of quantum mechanics … the voodoo part that Einstein never really accepted … is that the very act of observation is what makes the observed object one thing or the other.
Where do the two slits come in?
For the last half a century experimenters have been replicating an experiment where particles … electrons, maybe … are shot at a barrier with two parallel slits in it. On a screen beyond the barrier you can see where the electrons or photons or whatever get through.…
Gail sits up and frowns at Jerry. He sees his face, eyes closed, frowning slightly, through her gaze. Jerry, are you sure this is going to have something to do with Jacob Goldmann’s MRIs or whatever of people’s heads?
Bremen opens his eyes. Yep. Bear with me. He opens two bottles of orange juice that they had packed that morning and hands one to Gail. The two-slit experiment is sort of the ultimate test of the secrecy if not downright perversity of the universe.
Go ahead. The orange juice is warm. Gail makes a face and sets it back in the bag.
Okay. You’ve got two slits … one is closed, electrons or particles are zapping through the other one. What would you get on the screen behind the barrier?
With only one slit open?
Right.
Well … Gail hates puzzles. She always has. She considers puzzles as an invention of people who like to embarrass other people. If she senses the slightest hint of condescension in Jeremy’s mental tone, she’s going to punch him in the solar plexus. Well, I guess you get one line of electrons. A stripe of light or whatever.
Correct. Jeremy’s thought stream has taken on the slightly pedantic tone that he uses with his math students, but there is no condescension there. Only an eagerness to share an exciting concept. Gail does not hit him in the solar plexus.
Okay, continues Jeremy, now, what would you get with both slits open?
Two stripes of light … or electrons.
Jeremy sends the image of the Cheshire cat grinning. Uh-uh. Wrong. That’s what ordinary macro-universe common sense would dictate, but that proves not to be the case when you do the experiment. When you actually do it, with both slits open, you always get alternating bright and dark stripes on the screen.
Gail chews a thumbnail. Alternating bright and dark stripes … oh, I get it. She does, with only the briefest glimpse at the sentences and images Jeremy is framing for her. With both slits open, the electrons act like waves, not particles. The dark stripes are where the waves overlap and cancel each other out.
Got it, kiddo. A classic interference pattern.
But what’s the problem? You say that quantum mechanics predicts that little bits of matter and energy will act like both waves and particles. So they’re doing what’s predicted. Science is safe … right?
Bremen sends an image of a jack-in-the-box bobbing and nodding. Yeah … science is safe, but sanity is in real danger. The trick is … after all these years … that the very act of observing makes those particle/wave thingees collapse into one state or the other. We’ve tried incredibly complex experiments to “peek” at the electron during its transit … shutting one of the slits while the electron’s passing through the other one … we’ve tried everything. The electron … or photon, or whatever we use in the experiment … always seems to “know” whether the second slit is open or not. In a real sense the electrons behave precisely as if they not only know how many slits are open, but as if we’re watching them! Other experiments … Bell’s Inequality experiment, for instance … get the same reaction from separated particles flying apart from one another at the speed of light. One particle “knows” the state of its twin.
Gail sends the image of a row of question marks. Communication faster than the speed of light? she sends. That’s impossible. The particles couldn’t exchange any information if they’re flying apart at the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster than light … right?
Kee-rect, kiddo. Jeremy transmits the throbbing of his very real headache. And it’s been a headache for physicists for decades. Not only do these buggery little particles do the impossible … like know what their twin’s doing in the two-slit experiment and Bell’s experiment and others … but we still can’t get a peek at the real substance of the universe. The particle behind the curtain with its clothes off.
Gail tries to picture that. Cannot. The particle with its clothes off?
There’s no way we’ve devised, with all our hypertechnology and Nobel Prize winners, to sneak a peek at the real stuff of the universe when it’s wearing both aspects.
Both aspects? Gail’s mental tone is almost querulous. You mean both wave and particle?
Yeah.
But why is all this quantum junk important to understanding how the human mind … the personality … is like a superhologram?
Bremen nods. Part of him is thinking about Jacob Goldmann’s family in the death camps. Gail, the stuff Jacob is getting … the wave patterns that I’ve been translating through Fourier transforms and all the rest … they’re like reflections of the universe.
Gail takes a breath. Mirrors. You were talking about mirrors on Friday night. Mirrors of the … universe?
Yeah. The minds that Jacob’s been charting … those incredibly complex holographic structures, just graduate students’ minds … what they really shake down to is a sort of peek at the fractal structure of the universe. I mean, it’s like a two-slit experiment … no matter how cleverly we peek behind the curtain, there’s the same magic.
Gail nods. Waves or particles. Never both.
Right, kiddo. But we�
�re way beyond waves and particles here. The human mind seems to be collapsing probability structures in the macro as well as the micro.…
Which means what?
Bremen tries to find a way to limit the power of the concept to words. He can’t. It means … it means that people … us … you and I, everybody … we’re not only reflecting the universe, translating it from probability sets to reality sets, so to speak … we’re … my God, Gail, we’re creating it on a moment-to-moment, second-to-second basis.
Gail stares at him.
Bremen grabs her by the forearms, trying to get the terrible size and importance of the concept across to her through sheer pressure and force of will. We’re the observers, Gail. All of us. And without us … according to the math on my chalkboard at home … without us, the universe would be pure duality, infinite probability sets, infinite modalities.…
Chaos, sends Gail.
Yes. Right. Chaos. He collapses back in his seat. His shirt is plastered to his back and sides with sweat.
Gail sits in silence for a moment, digesting what Jeremy has said. The train clacks southward. For a moment there is darkness as they enter some short tunnel, then they are in the gray light again. Solipsism, she sends.
Hmmm? Jeremy has been lost in equations.
You and Jacob talked about solipsism. Why? Because this research suggests that man is, after all, the measure of all things? Gail never hesitates to use “man” to stand for “people” or “humankind.” She always says that she values clarity more than the feminist imperative.
Partially … Jeremy is thinking of Fourier transforms again, but more in an effort to hide something from Gail than to solve any problem in mathematics.
Why are you … who is this Everett person you’re thinking about? What does he have to do with that tree you’re trying to hide?
Jeremy sighs. You remember that Jacob and I were talking about some theoretical work that a guy named Hugh Everett did some thirty-five years ago?
Gail nods, sees Jeremy’s closed eyes, and sends an image of herself nodding.
