Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories (Science and Fiction)

by Michael Brotherton

  “No, no. Go on. You’re doing me a real favor by coming here.”

  “Not at all. In fact you’re doing me the favor. I’ve become very interested in the workings of the brain ever since....”

  Olivia placed a hand over his.

  “I’ve been watching my son for any early signs of neurological problems.”

  “And?”

  Roger forced a laugh. “Who knows? He’s ten. Hard to say what’s normal. He’s in a counting things phase: number of pairs of underwear he has, number of game cards, number of steps from home to school.”

  “That’s normal for ten.”

  “He does seem most of the time to be living in multiple worlds — ever since his imaginary playmate years. Very convincing playmate. Sometimes I found myself believing in him as well.”

  “I wonder,” said Olivia, thoughtfully, “if people, lonely people not well connected to the community, who show symptoms of DID actually are evidencing multiple universes.”

  “And ditto, young kids.”

  She nodded. “Maybe them, too.”

  “I’m the quantum theorist,” said Roger, lightly. “I’m supposed to be the one with the nutty ideas.”

  “You’re saying that the idea is nuts?”

  “Well…” — Roger thought about Bron when he was a toddler. — ”Maybe it’s not nuts.”

  “Is it perhaps subject to experiment?” said Olivia. “DID patients do seem to have identifiers in the cortex. But CAT scans shouldn’t be done too often on people — especially the high intensity devices we need to use. But maybe we could do the scans on....”

  Roger smiled. “On Schizophrenic cats?”

  “On DID cats.”

  In his mind’s eye, Roger observed the family cat strolling serenely to its food dish, and then running madly from room to room as if being pursued by the hounds of hell. MWI? “Maybe we could perform an experiment.”

  “Do you believe in MWI?” said Olivia, abruptly.

  “Me?” Roger struggled for an answer. “I…I do, sort of, sometimes.”

  Olivia laughed. “You sound sort of indecisive.”

  “I used to be indecisive,” said Roger, with a smile. “but now I’m not so sure.” Damn. Why am I doing this? She wants me to be serious. “My belief is compartmentalized. In the context of quantum physics, yes, I consider it possible, barely. But as far as the real world…” Roger shrugged. He pondered for a moment. “But beliefs aside, I think I can come up with an experiment.”

  “Soon?”

  “A few weeks. A month, maybe,”***

  The Schrödinger Cat Room, a room within a room, dominated Lab 202 in Harvard’s Physical Sciences building. Raised five inches off the laboratory floor by pneumatic dampeners, cocooned within batts of sound absorbing insulation, and with self-contained battery powered lights and air pumps, the Cat Room could be effectively isolated from the rest of the universe. The exception was an umbilical cord supplying power which would be unplugged prior to running the experiment.

  The whitewashed starkness of the room was relieved by text inscribed in blue on an outside wall, painted by Dexter, Roger’s grad student. He, avowedly nonreligious, had adorned the door with the somewhat devotional inscription,E = hν…and there was light.

  The room had a small door and no windows. The door, at the moment, stood ajar.

  Inside the room, Roger struggled to get the cat-drop module to work while outside, Bron sat struggling to get to level eight in his video game.

  External to the Cat Room, sat a six-by-six foot cage, the Cat Corral, containing two automatic litter boxes, four filled food and water dishes, and four towel-lined cardboard boxes to serve as temporary housing. At the moment though, the Cat Corral was devoid of cats.

  The lab, lit by banks of fluorescent lights, gave the room a shadow-free brightness and a hint of fluorescent tube hum.

  “Damn it to bloody hell!” Roger, clutching the screwdriver like a lethal weapon, stormed out of the Cat Room, back into the lab.

  Bron looked up from his game and stared at him with accusing eyes.

  “What?” said Roger.

  “You yell at me for swearing. It’s not fair that you’re allowed to swear.”

  As Roger tried to frame an answer, Dexter flew into the lab. “Hi, Dr. Tate.” Then he noticed Bron. “Hey, Brat.” He laughed. “Shouldn’t you be in school now?”

  Bron waved, hi.

  “Bron was suspended for the day,” said Roger, “for coming to school armed.”

  Dexter cocked his head. “Armed?”

  “A water pistol.”

  “Oh.”

  Bron smiled, sheepishly.

  “Water pistol!” said Roger “That’s an idea.”

  “What’s an idea?” said Dexter.

  Roger explained his problem with the cat drop, then turned to his son.

  “Bron. How would you like to earn another game cartridge?”

  “That would be… nice,” said Bron, warily. “How?”

  “The cat-drop mechanism doesn’t work, but the photon gun and the beam-splitter, the quantum coin flip, does.” Roger bubbled with enthusiasm. “So we’ll replace the drop mechanism with you.”

  “Huh?”

  “So you fill your water pistol with the black hair dye. You’ll run the coin-flip. I’ll show you how. And if the flip-LED flashes, say green, you do nothing. And if it flashes red, you shoot the cat until it’s all black.”

  “Fun!” Bron paused. “But I want two game cartridges.”

  “This is extortion,” said Roger with a laugh. “But, it’s a deal.” He held out a hand and Bron shook it.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” said Dexter. “It’s a different experiment, now.”

  “How so?” said Roger.

  “Well, originally we had a superposition of a live and dead cat — ”

  “A white or black cat,” Bron interjected.

  “Yeah, Fine.” Dexter went on, “So the cat wouldn’t have a well-defined… color until we open the box and look.”

  Roger nodded.

  “But now,” said Dexter, “we’d also have a superposition of Brats — of one who painted the cat and the one who didn’t.”

  “Hmm.” Roger considered it. “But Bron isn’t the subject of any quantum measurement.” He paused. “I’ll have to think on that.” He blew out a breath. “I really don’t actually believe in MWI. But… but then again maybe we shouldn’t run the experiment.” He looked down at Bron. “What am I saying? He’s just going in to possibly paint a cat.”

  “I’d be happy to paint the cat,” said Dexter.

  Bron protested. “That’s my job. It’s worth two game cartridges.”

  Roger sighed. “No, Dex. I need you to baby the CAT scanner.”

  “Yeah, fine,” said Dexter. “And anyway, I don’t believe we’ll have multiple Brats. I can’t really believe that any time Brat might or might not sneeze, we get a superposition of Brats.”

  “No. Not likely.” Roger gave a snort of a laugh. “I was just being silly.”

  Dexter glanced over at the Corral. “But where are the cats?”

  “Olivia’s bringing them — courtesy of the Tufts Veterinary School.” Roger checked his watch. “Should be here by now.” Almost by reflex, he glanced out the window. “Ah, a cab’s pulling in up front.” He watched for a few seconds. “Yes, that’s her.” He turned to his son. “Bron, would you go down and help Doctor Van Staaten bring in the cats?”

  “Sure.” Bron sprinted out of the lab.

  Roger continued staring out the window for a few moments. “Rotten weather. Looks like a bad storm’s coming.” Just then came a peal of distant thunder.

  “All right,” said Roger, turning from the window, “let’s get set for a run.”

  “Right!” said Dexter.

  While Dexter ran a calibration on the CAT scan unit, Roger disconnected the umbilical, then darted into the cat room to turn on the photon gun and beam-splitter unit. As he came back into the lab, Olivia and
Bron walked in, each carrying two occupied cat carriers.

  Dexter ran to help. “I’ll take those, Brat.” He relieved Bron of the carriers and sprang to the corral.

  Olivia, though, frowned at Dexter in obvious distaste. “Brat?” she said. “That’s not a nice thing to call someone.”

  Dexter looked confused as to how he should respond, but Roger just laughed. “Brat,” he said, looking at Olivia. “Bron Rattray Arthur Tate…BRAT.” He walked to be beside his son.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Olivia smiled but it seemed forced. After a pause, she said. “Why not Bron Arthur Rattray Tate…BART?”

  “In another universe, perhaps,” said Roger, lightly. “We flipped a coin when he was born. And anyway, my middle name is Allen — which makes me RAT.” He scrunched his shoulders. “Rat, Brat. Seemed fitting, somehow.”

  As they talked, Dexter transferred the cats, each one as white as a full moon in winter, to the corral. Each cat wore a blue collar with a transparent pocket displaying the cat’s identification number.

  Olivia looked from Roger to Bron. “Bron Arthur Rattray Tate. Such a long name for a young lad.”

  “An Anglo-Australian custom,” said Roger, tousling his son’s hair. “especially if there’s a number of wealthy relatives to keep happy.”

  Bron wasn’t paying attention. He was watching Dexter with the cats. “They’re beautiful,” he said as if to himself. “Green eyes, long whiskers, big ears, and big furry paws.”

  Roger followed Bron’s gaze. “All right, Dex. Bring me a cat. Let’s get going with the experiment.”

  As Dexter brought over a cat, Bron asked, “Can I hold him?”

  “Sure,” said Roger.

  Dexter transferred the Cat to Bron.

  Roger went into the Cat Room and urged Bron-cum-cat to go in as well. He took the cat and placed it in a little cage suspended over the vat of quick-drying, black hair dye. The bottom of the cage was a trap door. “The cat is supposed to fall into the vat if the beam-splitter collapses the photon to the detector.”

  Bron fidgeted. “Do we have to drop the cat into the dye?”

  “I wish we could but I can’t get the mechanism to work. So you’ll have to…to paint the cat.”

  Bron fidgeted some more.

  “So fill your water gun from the vat.”

  Bron did so.

  “Okay,” said Roger. “So here’s how it works. When I leave and close the door, count to, say, fifty.” He pointed to a button on an instrument console. “Then push this button. It triggers the photon gun” He pointed to an LED over the button. “If this lights up red, shoot the cat until it’s completely black. Then open the cage and let the cat loose. In about ten minutes from now, I’ll open the door and you and the cat can come out. So far, so good?”

  “Yeah,” said Bron, tentatively, dividing his attention between his father and the cat.

  “And if the light is green instead of red, don’t shoot the cat. Okay?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Bron. Pay attention.”

  “I am paying attention.”

  “Don’t worry.” Roger glanced at the cat. “ This won’t hurt the cat at all.” But we’ll have one very angry wet cat.

  “Yeah, fine.” Bron ‘s voice held a trace of trepidation.

  “Good.” Roger turned. “Oh. And don’t try to come out. I’ll let you out. The door will be locked to make sure the Cat Room is truly isolated from the rest of the world.”

  “I don’t like the idea of being locked in.”

  Roger patted his son the head. “Only for ten minutes. I’m sure you can stand that. Yes?”

  Bron nodded.

  Roger left the Cat Room. He gave a thumbs up to Bron, then closed and locked the door.

  He looked over at Dexter at the CAT scan unit. “Every thing okay?”

  “Perfect,” said Dexter.

  “Good.” Roger gestured at the wall clock. “In ten minutes, we’ll see.” He stared at the clock — and continued to stare at it. He did so as a cover, so he could think about his physics theory without being expected to engage in conversation.

  Olivia and Dexter exchanged glances, but kept silent.

  Roger bit his lower lip and thought, deep. Okay. I know the particle must oscillate at its Compton frequency. But why and how? What is the mechanism. It must have something to do with time. His eyes on the clock, Roger pondered time — until the minute hand indicated that ten minutes had elapsed. He broke from his thoughts and returned his attention to those around him.

  “Okay, here we go.” Roger turned, unlocked the Cat Room Door, and pulled it open.

  The cat, still white, ran out. Bron followed, slowly, and avoiding eye contact with the others.

  With Roger and Olivia watching, expectantly, Dexter grabbed the cat and petted it until it became calm.

  “All right, cat,” said Dexter, “Now for a nice little CAT scan.” He strapped the cat onto the bed of the scanner.

  After a few minutes, Dexter looked away from the scan console and shook his head. “Negative.”

  Olivia cast her eyes down.

  Roger let out a heavy sigh. “It may be that MWI is simply wrong.”

  “We could try it again with another cat,’ said Dexter.

  Roger gave a non-committal “Hmm.”

  Olivia and Roger watched in silence then as Dexter unstrapped the cat and returned it to the corral.

  Bron pawed the ground, nervously. His sneaker breaking the silence by making high-pitched squeaks on the tiled floor.

  The sound drew Dexter’s attention.

  “Brat. You did carry out your part, didn’t you?”

  Bron continued pawing the ground. “Yes.... Sort of.... Not exactly.”

  “What?” said Roger, sharply. He swiveled to face his son. “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t really understand what you wanted me to do.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Roger threw a quick glance of exasperation upward, then returned his gaze to Bron. “Then, what did you do?”

  “I counted the floor squares — ”

  “The floor tiles?”

  “Yeah. If there was an even number of floor tiles, I’d paint the cat. If there was an odd number, I wouldn’t.”

  “That means there was no quantum experiment,” said Dexter. “So, of course the experiment failed.”

  “Because Bron used the odd or even floor tile number to paint or not paint the cat,” said Roger, softly, as if to himself, “you’re saying there was no quantum universe splitting?”

  “Yes. Exactly,” said Dexter. “Of course.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “But the number of squares is known — ”

  “But not by Bron,” said Roger.

  “Still,” Dexter persisted, “it’s a number, deterministic, not stochastic.”

  “If true stochasticity were required,” said Roger, “then that would rule out the DeBroglie-Bohm picture.” And my IGSM model as well.

  Without comment, Olivia watched the interchange as if a spectator at a tennis match.

  Clearly wanting to avoid a theoretical physics confrontation with his professor, Dexter diplomatically changed tack. “You know,” he said, “Considering the Cat Room floor dimensions, I’d imagine the room would most likely have an even number of tiles. Odd times odd would give odd, but everything else would give even. “He turned to Bron. “By the way, Bron, how many tiles were there?”

  “Hundred seventy six.”

  “Ah. Oh, wait.” Dexter looked over at the Cat Corral. “One seventy six. Then…then the cat should be black.” He looked accusingly back at Bron.

  “Well…um…,” said Bron, wilting under Dexter’s gaze.

  Roger stepped in to save his son. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do the experiment again. This time, we’ll practice it, first. Bron” — Roger pointed — “into the Cat Room.”

  Bron, obviously happy to get out
from under Dexter’s accusing gaze, sprinted into the Cat Room.

  Roger turned to his grad student. “All right, Dex. Hand me another cat.” He paused. “No, wait. I’ll get him after we practice.”

  Roger sprang up into the Cat Room and let the door swing closed behind him. He turned to Bron. “All right then. Why wasn’t the cat black?”

  “Well, I did count the squares.” Brat retreated, defensively, to a corner of the room. “And there were really a hundred seventy six of ‘em, but…but I decided I liked the cat being white.”

  “What?” Roger slapped his hand down on the console, triggering a quantum decision — red. “Bron Rattray Arthur Tate. I should ground you for a year.” He let out a breath. “In another universe, Bron, you’re now probably getting the spanking of your life.” Why did I say that?

  Bron looked horrified and absently moved a hand to cover his bottom.

  “Hey,” said Roger. “I was only kidding. You know I never hit you. Although I’ve been sore tempted on occasion. He moved to his son, gave him a fatherly hug, then said, “Let’s get out of here.” He moved to the door, but it wouldn’t open.

  Damned lock system. Roger pounded on the door, knowing that it was likely useless. The room was designed to be an isolated unit. But still he pounded. There was nothing else he could think of to do.

  After a few minutes where Bron’s expression morphed from amusement to concern to fear and then to terror, the door opened.

  “Sorry,” said, Dexter. “When the door swung closed on its own, the lock must have engaged. I didn’t notice it until just now.”

  “No worries.” Roger bit his lip. “But…but something strange occurred in there.” He described what happened.

  “Hey,” said Dexter. “Maybe he was experiencing a spanking — in another universe. You might have caused a quantum decision. And…and because the room was so detached from our universe, you were able to sense a little bit what was going on in an alternate one.” He looked at Bron. “It that it, Brat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But my saying Bron was being spanked in some sense caused it to happen.” Roger rubbed a hand across his forehead. “And that would mean human thought affects quantum mechanics.”