Alec wasn’t deterred.
When Alec finally summoned enough courage to ask the Professor to supervise his thesis, the man smiled and replied, “I thought you’d neverr ask!” There was a surreptitious sense of humour fomenting under that grey mop of hair that seemed to make the impossible more acceptable. And, when Professor McBride talked, all things sounded possible. At least to Alec’s ears.
“You’rre a young’un, me lad. You can go wherre an ol’ coot can harrdly venturre any morre.” There was a hint of sadness in the Professor’s tone.
Dr. McBride still tended to roll his r’s in the Scottish fashion, though Alec suspected this was just to add flavour to his other eccentricities. As for his allusion to quarks, that was a little more involved.
A quark is a subatomic particle. Its size is less than 1021 centimeters. That’s one divided by one with twenty-one zeros. Quarks and leptons are as small as a point drawn by an imaginary pencil. Nothing you can imagine is as small as a quark. Collectively quarks and leptons are called fermions. Although none of them can be seen or smelled or tasted, the scientists assign them three colours that have nothing to do with colour. They might as well have a smell or a taste. Colour was introduced by Murray Gell-Mann to explain certain experimental results, and to predict others. Speaking of others, other scientists also allotted quarks delightful names such as ‘charm’ and ‘strange’ and ‘up’ and ‘down’. Leptons have more prosaic names such as muons and neutrinos (tau), and the ever-popular electrons.
And so on, and so forth…
The reason these things are mentioned here at all is that since Democritus said, as is erroneously suggested, that the atom is the smallest indivisible particle, if we add up the eighteen quarks, six leptons, twelve gauge boson force carriers, then add to this list all the antiparticles, then you can see that there is a lot of room to explore in the invisible world of quantum mechanics. As for Democritus he never claimed that the ‘atom’ was the smallest particle. All he said was that a-tom is the smallest particle. In Greek ‘a-tom’ means the smallest, indivisible particle. Whatever it might be. Like possibly a quark or a lepton, only smaller...
Only they, those smaller ‘wee ones’, as Dr. McBride once referred to them, might, just might, consist of strings, and superstrings... which had only two dimensions, as long as you didn’t try to measure them...
And this is the world that fascinated Alexander. The world within; within all matter. A world as invisible as any reality of his private inner travels, his inner visions, actions, aspirations. As invisible as Sandra, only much, much less real.
The other reason Alec had hoped to get into Caltech to do his thesis was that the Institute was the ‘home’ of Richard Feynman. It wasn’t that the late physicist had come as close to fathoming Quantum Theory as anyone ever had; nor that Dr. Feynman was the Nobel Prize winner in physics. It was Richard Feynman ‘The Man’ that fascinated Alec. This Nobel Laureate once suggested that all physicists put a sign in their offices to remind them how little they know, or rather how much they don’t know. He also warned his students to ‘Learn from science that you must doubt the experts...’
But above all, Richard Feynman seemed to humanize physics. He once warned his listeners not to take his lecture too seriously. He said: ‘...if you will simply admit that maybe she (nature) does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. ...Nobody knows how it can be like that.’
This is very much the awe Alec held in his heart for physics, but also for the whole universe. When Alec was alone, and no one could hear his most secret thoughts, he dreamed of following in Dr. Feynman’s footsteps.
He never thought, nor would he ever dare to even suspect, that one day he would go much, much further.
Not all great minds have been enamoured with Quantum Theory. Albert Einstein, for instance, was a classicist. He believed in cause and effect. God doesn’t play dice with the universe, he’d said. Others might well think that God can do anything She bloody-well wants. With the universe or with anything else. Nevertheless, Einstein expected predictable results. In Quantum Theory only probabilities are predictable. Einstein didn’t like that.
To vent his spleen, or perhaps just his humour, as far back as 1936 Albert invited his pals, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen to put together, what else but… the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox. The original intent of the ‘EPR Paradox’ was to show that at least one of the implications of Quantum Theory was to Einstein and his buddies quite unacceptable. The three classicists wouldn’t accept that measuring a photon in one place could have an instantaneous physical consequence on another photon somewhere else.
Sometime after Dr. McBride accepted Alec’s subject for his thesis, Alec tried hard to explain to Suzy the substance of the EPR Paradox. It wasn’t easy. Frankly, it took him almost four years at McGill to understand the implications of his involvement.
“What bothered Einstein was,” Alec began, “that if one were to treat photons as real objects, rather than waves, awkward implications would creep into the field of physics.”
He recalled Suzy’s eyes shimmering as photons bounced off her irises.
“You know, of course, that the purpose of Polaroid sunglasses is to allow some photons to go through and some to be stopped. Right?”
“Yes, Professor,” she smiled like a dutiful student. Alec ignored that.
“So right here, we regard photons as individual particles. Problems start when we realize that we have no way of knowing which photons will go through and which won’t.”
“Is that bad?” she asked innocently.
“Not as such,” he tried not to lose his train of thought. To explain even the simple connotations of Quantum Theory was not as easy as one might think. “We can predict that half of the photons will go through, but we can never be sure what an individual photon will do.”
“Fancy that...” Suzy then noticed the concentration on Alec’s face and shut up.
“Now we get to the interesting part. Imagine that we entangle a pair of photons polarized at right angles to each other. Until you measure them, you have no idea what their polarizations are. They could be horizontal or vertical or at any other angle. All you know is that they are at ninety degrees to each other. Are you with me so far?”
“I think so. The photons are at ninety degrees to each other, but you don’t know in what relations they are to you, so to speak.” Her brow became knit in two delicate furrows.
“Good enough. Now the real fun starts. You now—this is all theoretical you understand—fire these photons off towards polarizing filters set up in opposite directions. OK?”
She nodded.
“Now if one photon passes through a horizontally polarized filter, it simply means that it was, originally, horizontally polarized. Right?” Another nod. “But, since the photons were polarized at 90 degrees to each other, this means that the other photon must have been polarized vertically. The second photon, therefore, would pass through any vertical filter, but not through a horizontal one.”
“Makes sense to me. But where’s the paradox?”
“Wait for it.” Alec smiled. “The problem is that until the first photon hits the filter, we have no way of knowing whether it has been polarized vertically or horizontally. You might even say, the photon didn’t know either, until it actually passed the filter.”
“So?”
“So how did the second photon travelling in the opposite direction know what filter to pass through? How did it know whether it was polarized horizontally or vertically before the first photon passed the filter?”
“It didn’t, I suppose,” Suzy admitted.
“And yet, at the precise instant of the first photon arriving at its filter, its counterpart instantly became its opposite. Remember, the second photon could not have known what the first photon would do until it actually did it.”
Suzy’s face remained blank. She blinked repeatedly.
“I think I understand the physics of this, b
ut aren’t you anthropomorphizing the photons?” she said at last. “You make it sound as if they are making a choice?
“Don’t you see, darling? There had to be some communication between the two photons? And what’s more, the communication must have been instantaneous.”
“Peek-a-boo?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
There ensued a prolonged silence. They sat facing each other, Alec’s mind whirling within the mysteries of Quantum Mechanics, Suzy growing in admiration for her man. Yes, she confirmed to herself. Definitely my man.
“And your thesis...?” she asked at last.
“I don’t know, really.” He shook his head. “I mentioned the EPR to Professor McBride and all he said was ‘About time’. As if he was just waiting for someone to get his or her teeth into the paradox. I suppose I just volunteered.”
“But you do want to tackle it, don’t you?”
His eyes finally settled on her lovely face.
“Yes, darling. For some unknown reason I want to get my teeth into it more than anything else in the world.” And he kissed her with passion he had lately reserved only for subatomic particles.
“And peek-a-boo to you too,” she whispered, when she finally came up for air.
Some 11,500 strenuous hours later, many of them passed as sleepless nights, after some 20 trips to Montreal and 10 visits from Suzy to Caltech, Alec became known as Dr. Alexander Baldwin, the youngest Ph.D. in Caltech’s history. But he took residence in Montreal. During the same period of time he hadn’t thought about Sandra even once.
Not even once.
Also, during this period, there had been not a single report of unexplained inclement weather. Alec was happy.
***
3
The Top of the World
After two and a half months of togetherness, Alec’s first job came out of the blue. A telephone call from Professor McBride came as a surprise. He’d missed the old man. On a number of occasions Alec had been at the end of his tether, literally ready to give up, and ol’ McDes had taken him by the elbow, lead him to his private office and practically forced a hefty drop of malt Scotch down Alec’s throat.
“What’s the matterr, Alec m’lad. Got stuck in the heatherr?”
The professor operated metaphors quite strange to Alec’s ears.
“Heather, Sir?”
“Got blown off the heath?”
Alec had no idea what the professor meant. Of one thing Alec was very sure. Whatever it was, the ol’ man meant well. And eccentric or not, the man was still brilliant.
“You’rre lucky, young man. Rreally lucky!”
The professor smacked his thin lips. The Scotch, as always, was first class. Sometimes Alec thought that the professor was just waiting for one of his charges to get depressed so as to have an excuse to partake in another drop of the hard stuff.
“I feel more depressed than lucky, Sir.”
“Aye... I rememberr it well... “ Dr. McBride was obviously wandering off on a tangent. “I was most deprressed the day beforre they nominated me forr the Nobel Prrize. Aye, that was most deprressing.”
“Excuse me, Sir, but I fail to see how a nomination for Nobel Prize could depress anyone?”
“You can’t, can you? Well, they also nominated that old fusspot from Irreland who couldn’t tell the differrence between a lepton and a leprrechaun. A boson and a bozo. A Quarrk and a quack. A meson and...”
“I get the message, Sir. You were not delighted at having to share the Nobel Prize with someone you didn’t particularly admire.”
“Admire? Admirrre??? Arre you trrying to insult me young man?”
“No, Sir. I am sorry, Sir. Nothing was further from my mind?” Alec rose to his feet. The old man seemed ready to hit him over the head with the bottle of Scotch.
And then McDes smiled.
“I got you going, therre. Just ferr a minute I think I got you going rratherr nicely, eh son? Get yourr glass closerr to me, son. You want me to spill?”
The refilled glasses were followed by a prolonged, high-pitched laughter over the rim of the professor’s glass. Alec just wagged his head. He felt like an ass, and he had no tail.
“You see, lad. The imporrtant thing, the exciting thing, is the trrip. Once you get therre, therre’s nothing morre. Nothing until you get the next bee under y’rr bonnet. And then it starrts all overr again.”
This scene had taken place no more than six months ago. Now Professor McBride’s voice seemed to be coming from very far away.
“I’ll be here for another couple of days. Why don’t you drop in and join me?”
“Where, Sir?”
“You can pick up a helicopter. It will drop you right at the hotel.” The Professor’s Scottish elongated r’s were conspicuously missing.
“Dr. McBride? Do you mind telling me where are you calling from?”
“Didn’t I tell you? From the top of the world.”
“What?”
“From Machu Picchu, lad. From the top of the empire. Bless my heart it’s beautiful here. You won’t believe it till you get here. I got your room all booked for tomorrow night.”
“But, Sir...”
“Oh, and by the way,” the Professor went on as if nothing was out of the ordinary, “I thought you might care to give them a lecture in Lima. They’ve got their pants all twisted over your conclusions on the EPR thing. The money isn’t that good, but it’ll be good experience for you. I’ll see you!”
The EPR thing was, of course, the substance of Alec’s, Dr. Alexander Baldwin’s, doctoral thesis. Thanks to Dr. McBride it had been published on three continents in quite a few languages. The Professor was not just brilliant; he was a really good friend.
“Anyway, therre’ll be enough left overr ferr a drrop of the harrd stuff, he, he...”
And the phone went dead. The resurrected rolling r’s and all.
For a while Alec sat staring at the silent receiver he still held in his hand. He was on the verge of doubting if the call had really just happened. Perhaps he was reverting to his youthful daydreams, only the subject matter had changed. Then he shook his head.
“Eccentric? Mad as a hatter!” And then Alec laughed long and hard. “God I love that man,” he said out loud. “I just love that man!” And he called the airline to book himself a flight.
For a moment he thought he would ask Suzy to come with him but, since his doctorate, he hasn’t managed, as yet, to bring in his share of the loot. Suzy was keeping up her end, while he was lagging behind. He hoped the fee for the lecture would cover his ticket and the hotel. He didn’t dare spend any more of Suzy’s money.
On her return from the CEGEP, Suzy, bless her heart, was overjoyed at the news from the professor. Rather than being jealous, she wished Alec Godspeed, every success, and happy hunting.
“But just one look at a señorita and you’re dead meat. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“Not if she was standing naked at the top of the highest mountain,” he swore.
“Then how would you know that she was naked?”
Suzy drove him to Dorval Airport that evening. He was booked on the 7 o’clock flight to Miami, changed there to AeroPeru and continued on to Lima. From there, he hoped to get a helicopter connection to Machu Picchu. If worse came to worst, he’d catch a local flight to Cuzco, and pick up a rotor from there.
The tickets set him back more than he could afford.
“Don’t worry, darling. The beginning is always a bit difficult. And anyway, what would you do with all that money.” Suzy smiled, seeing his frazzled expression.
“What money?”
“The money we wouldn’t have spent on the tickets?”
He thanked his lucky stars for having met her, knowing her, for being with her. He would have stayed in Montreal, by her side, if she’d said a single word. But he was grateful to her for not having asked. He had no way of advising Dr. McBride that he wouldn’t be coming.
“Will you marry me?” he asked for the thousandth time.
“I just might. Your name sounds much better with a Pheee’d after it. Ask me again after you get back.”
“You can count on it.”
To everyone’s amazement, the airplane took off on time. Alec leaned back and tried to spot Suzy’s car speeding home. Obviously, he couldn’t. But his thoughts followed her all the way. Would anything change when they got married? He doubted it. A piece of paper didn’t seem that important. Many people appear to rely on just such a document to get their share during divorce proceedings; but hardly to stay happy. Still, he liked the sound of Mrs. Alexander Baldwin. Except Suzy would probably keep her father’s name. Mrs. Susan Norman. He hoped she wouldn’t stick to the Ms. honorific. Perhaps she would hyphenate her name with his. Oh, well. Beggars can’t be choosers. He sighed deeply just as an airhostess bent over him to avoid another person in the aisle.
“Are you all right, Sir?” she asked, a look of concern on her motherly face.
“I am now!” he quipped.
It was good to be alive.
He landed in Miami in early evening. Luckily, the connecting time was just three hours away. Soon he was settled in the AeroPeru, a Scotch on the rocks in his hand, an extra pillow under his head. After a light, and almost tasty, meal, he tried to get some sleep.
He dozed off almost at once.
He saw himself standing on a very high stage, towering over a great hall filled with students, all dressed in Incan national costumes, the colourful topacus. He was delivering a lecture on the EPR paradox. Now and again, he flew down and shot through a polarizing screen, emerging unscathed on the other side. He then reversed polarity and rose instantly to his elevated desk.
Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two] Page 4
