by Paul Pipkin
I looked at her evenly, “If I blow off everything to come be with you, do not imagine that your interesting family background is the reason.” Certainty like this comes but once…
She blushed, I swear she did. “It’s all that,” she whispered, and tentatively held out her hand. When I responded, she seized mine with an unexpected painful grip. “Check it out,” she said earnestly. “We’ll go hear Dr. Cramer. Then I gotta say good-bye to my mother, so you come home and pack, and I’ll pick you up after two o’clock. Not to come off butch, but I wanna be outta here soon. All kinds of traffic tonight, yea?” I agreed, and she squirmed like a happy child getting out of the booth. I marveled at yet another face of Justine.
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“QUANTUM WEIRDNESS, THE BEST GAME IN TOWN,” Cramer’s panel discussion, was held to a packed room. There were only two panelists, one being a mechanical engineer who wrote short stories with some interesting observations concerning the use of quantum mechanical principles in fiction. But the crowd had come to hear Dr. John Cramer, the physics professor from the University of Washington, who had published a couple of best-selling science fiction novels and wrote a column for Analog.
More importantly, Cramer had originated the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It was being ballyhooed as the “third interpretation,” opposed to both the traditional view of wave function collapse on the one hand, and the many-worlds on the other. While Cramer laid the groundwork, enumerating Einstein’s bill of particulars against the spookiness of quantum mechanics, I offered Justine my thoughts on the politics of the scientific establishment.
“When it began to seem that the results of quantum computing experiments could be explained only by the many-worlds, a virtual cottage industry appeared in the physical community. There was a purely ideological mandate to supply an alternative interpretation, any interpretation to let them escape the branching worlds as a model of reality.”
“Are we thinking that Cramer plays to that?” I was impressed that her degree in psychology did not prohibit a sound comprehension of the politics of actual life.
“Not really.” I clarified that I had the highest respect for Cramer’s work. “But when popularizers choose to believe that promoting his interpretation as one of the majors will serve their ideological imperatives, he’d be a fool not to go along with the process.” Cramer educated the audience as to how Steven Weinberg, the discoverer of the electroweak force, had explored a loophole of adding a small “nonlinear” term to the quantum equations. He mentioned that a colleague of Weinberg’s, at the University of Texas, had found that cobbling nonlinearity onto the many-worlds interpretation would allow for a communication between various branch universes.
“That’s Joseph Polchinski’s ‘weak connection’ between alternate worlds,” I whispered to Justine. In my research, I would turn to the deeper journals such as Physical Review or Annals of Physics only when necessary and always with perturbation. Doing so would require that I impose on someone with a hard-science background to translate most of the content. But I had read of this modified interpretation.
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THE BRANCHES MIGHT RETAIN A “WEAK CONNECTION.” The introductory line of Polchinski’s paper had stated flatly, “I show that Weinberg’s nonlinear quantum mechanics leads either to communication via EPR correlations or to communication between branches of the wave function.” My mathematically minded friends assured me that he lived up to his claim, which presented the physical establishment with a hellish choice:
… thought experiments described herein would seem to be simple enough to carry out in practice, thereby determining which of EPR communication (across time) and Everett communication (between worlds) is actually realized.53
It appeared that Weinberg had hoped to wed quantum mechanics to relativity, but feared that the nonlinear mathematics would violate Einstein’s laws. Polchinski had carried the contradiction further. He demonstrated that the only way to preclude communication across time, with its consequent violation of special relativity, would be to allow for the possibility of an “Everett phone” amongst the branches.
There the matter seemed to have languished for the remainder of the decade. As I had learned with the writers, so it was with the scientists. Whether we are in an “ignore it” phase or an “explain it away” phase, the mandate to the chroniclers is always the same—obscure the fact that a mystery or a contradiction even exists. Or, raise the fact of its existence to hallowed heights of almost religious inscrutability, like a form of faith.
Cramer credited Heisenberg and Schrödinger with the creation of quantum mathematical formalism, “completed” about 1927. He expounded the orthodox view that quantum mechanics were unique as a scientific theory, not having arisen, like most, from a preconceived notion of how the cosmos operates.
Quantum mechanics was supposedly an exclusive product of the math created to accommodate observed experimental results. Regarding the manyworlds interpretation, at least, I believed there was proof that this was partly a fiction. Far from springing full-blown from the head of Zeus, just such a preconception had propagated upward. It had come from strata of our human brother- and sisterhood that the scientific establishment will not credit for anything, beyond being potential guinea pigs for experimentation.
Justine began to exhibit intense interest as Dr. Cramer described how Eugene Wigner had shown how to make a quantum system run backward. By complex-conjugating it, the waves were shown running from the future to the past. As he proposed his transactional view of nonlocality, I saw her note down a quotation, “Backward in time to the source,” and underline it.
Cramer then bitched for a while about National Security Administration monies funding IBM’s quantum computing research. I’d already suspected that security interests in quantum cryptography were responsible for the dearth of information as to what was being brought on-line at Los Alamos and other sites. I wondered what research agendas Cramer thought were being shorted.
He was taking a purely utilitarian argument, emphasizing the relative value of the admitted probability of factoring large prime numbers without touching the question of where the gargantuan computing power comes from. Much less recognizing that the algorithms necessary to solve the problems implied that the results were achieved by collating information from computing resources in many universes working in tandem.
He offered comic relief with a story of how his second novel, Einstein’s Bridge, had been based on the assumption that the Superconducting Supercollider would be brought on-line in Waxahachie, Texas. When the project had been canceled, he hadn’t been able to look at the manuscript for a year and a half. Then he had a bright idea in the shower in Munich to embroider the story with a voyage in time to change history, so as to have the SSC really built.
To the charge of science fiction promulgating “junk science,” he penetratingly responded that, in his view, an “unholy graft” between science and Eastern religion was the real junk science. On that, Justine turned to me, “What are we thinking?”
“I tend to agree.” I shook my head. “I just don’t understand why Cramer and others can’t see manyworlds as the rational resolution of the quantum interpretation problem.”
Cramer was bragging that he troubled to attach appendices to his books distinguishing the real scientific roots from the literary fictions and speculations grafted on top. Justine smiled, “Like what was the branching paths grafted on top of?”
She began waving her hand as Cramer was responding to a query on micro-reversibility. He was explaining that the real practitioners of the manyworlds extend the formalism so that two universes that become physically identical may converge as well. He then touched on the notion that nonlinear effects might be experimentally sought at the highest energies and energy densities, and that the SSC would certainly have been helpful, before getting to her.
“Can you use these interpretations jointly, or any two of them together
?” she cut to the chase. I rather glowed as the room turned to look at this extraordinary little being beside me.54
“I think they’re mutually exclusive, actually.” Then he looked at her, and added, “Conceivably, you could have Everett-Wheeler joined at the hip to one of the other ones, but I don’t think anybody likes to do that because it violates Occam’s Razor…” He went on to talk of the metaphysical baggage that burdened each of the theories and how one wouldn’t look to acquire two such sets of baggage.
She looked to me again, and I felt enormously flattered at being allowed to annotate Dr. Cramer. I hoped that the life of the mind always got her this excited. It might stand in for irregular or lackluster sexual performance. As the panel wound up, I explained how a fourteenth-century ecclesiastical doctrine, purportedly the search for the least complicated solution, had come to amount to an article of faith. “It was invoked against Galileo because the mere implications of a starry night sky were too ‘uneconomical’ to be believable to the medieval mind. Many processes in nature violate Occam’s Razor. Besides, why should metaphysical simplicity be a consideration of science, anyway? As our friend Willie said, ‘To simplify that which is not simple, is simply to falsify.’”
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JUSTINE WAS INSISTENT on strolling the Riverwalk one more time from the convention center back to the Marriott. Secretly, I was elated as she held my hand and demonstrated to downtown San Antonio that we were a unit. I was only sorry that there wouldn’t be an opportunity for her to knock their socks off at the Cadillac Bar. In the lobby we met Joe coming down from the convention suite, so at least he had a chance to meet Justine in all her splendor. When she kissed me and ran upstairs to retrieve her belongings, his eyes were properly wide.
“What have you done did?”
“Don’t ask, because I don’t know,” I told him, admitting to my growing supposition that I could claim no credit for mechanicking any of this situation. I explained that I was going to have Cris see to Kong while I took off to Atlanta with this young babe. I gave him a quick outline of our meeting and the presumed connection with Seabrook and an original Justine.
“No shit! She has the mural?” Since we’d first learned of it, Joe had been beguiled by the notion of Marjorie’s painting. I told him that was the presumption, though I could honestly care less should she turn out to be thoroughly delusional. I mentioned the various faces of Justine, and how she’d seemed when I’d first encountered her. “Goth, huh?” Joe mused. “She doesn’t look like one now; don’t know how to characterize her. She sort of defies description, doesn’t she?”
“Well, yesterday, about all she was lacking was a Mohawk.”
“I don’t know about you,” Joe ruminated, “but the thought of that red hair in a Mohawk makes me hot.” He offered me a high five. If you are very lucky in life, you get to meet a few people who honestly wish you well, without secret agendas or personal designs.
Justine drove an electric blue Honda Del Sol. Seeing her off from the parking garage, I noted her fingernails were painted to match her car. I had the distinct feeling that the swatches of gaudiness about her were not in the way of a fashion statement, like Joe’s fantasy of a red Mohawk. The affects bespoke a fundamental personality template, as did the absolutely frightening way she hit the exit ramps going down.
Who knew what this girl might do? Heading for the house, I lectured myself to the effect that, if this were a chimera, I would know soon enough. Though a comedown would be a hard fall, either she would come for me or she wouldn’t; it was that simple.
I looked about my house, at the pathetic remnants of my life, as I had known it. If I let myself think, if I began to pick up the little mementos about me, the old hurts would begin all over. Was it my imagination, or had I just failed to notice, as everything had grown so dark and shabby? How long had it been since I had ceased opening the curtains? There was nothing left here but memories that burned like the bite of a whip. There was nothing to be lost that compared to what I might sustain if I let myself hesitate at this crucial moment.
I got food and water prepared for Kong, then came back in to find him sitting hopefully by my prepacked bag at the front door. Seeing that hurt, too—remembering how he used to go everywhere with Linda and me. I assured him that he would see me again, hopefully soon, and got a bit emotional thinking how he was the last part of my life, as it had been, about which I still cared.
Then I began to gather my essential materials into a large leather file-folder case I’d gotten off one of the lawyers with whom I worked. This included my basic Seabrook file, the photocopy I’d made of the library’s reference copy of Witchcraft, and disks with my rough draft and additional notes on such as DeWitt and the works of J.W. Dunne. The case being legal-length, there was some space at the end, where I carefully packed the copy of Willie’s autobiography and Marjorie’s book as well.
Had the kid been up prowling about longer than I’d thought? Apart from the Witchcraft file and the books, it seemed as though there was nothing I could readily lay hands on. It was one of those moments when nothing seems to be as you left it.
As an afterthought, I went back and added a copy of Borges’s “Garden,” and other loose sheets with obits and bios that I really should have gotten scanned so it could all go in my pocket. Union work was far behind the corporate side, and I didn’t have easy access to the new technology yet. Then I dressed more comfortably in jeans and a blue work shirt and pulled out a corduroy jacket. The professorial thing seemed to sell real well.
I tried to settle down and wait, but the silence in the house made me antsy. I made sure everything was turned off, pausing in the bedroom to remember the night before, which already seemed like a dream. There, too, something seemed different. Endeavoring to isolate the numinous effect, my scrutiny abruptly leapt back to the headboard of the bed. The old ties I had used to bind Justine’s wrists were nowhere to be seen. What the hell? Had she taken them with her, as trophies? The thought disturbed me. Treasuring mementos in place of the actual person struck me as too reminiscent of JJ’s approach to things.
I went back and sat down once more, then remembered to get my copy of Ward Greene’s book. There being no more room in the legal case, I put it in my coat pocket along with my stash of Valium (as much security blanket as necessary medication) and sat down yet again. The hour had elapsed. I pulled out the Greene book and studied the garish cover inside the protective plastic wrap. It was nothing less than Ride the Nightmare reprinted as a paperback in 1949. While tediously trying to locate the original, I’d been unaware of this version, due in part to its having been retitled: THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A MODERN MISTER BLUEBEARD!55
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What popular fascinations of 1949 the screaming association with Gilles de Rais had served, I had no clue. The lurid cover illustration presented Greene’s fictionalized Seabrook, in overalls, as an artist instead of a writer. He was seated on an ottoman with a drawing pad on his knees. Apparently secured to an easel, rather than a canvas, was the model herself, with her wrists crossed above her head. To all appearances unconscious, she was stripped to the waist, though a lock of long blonde hair strategically covered her breasts and the implied bonds were not visible. All this at “the amazing pre-War price of twenty-five cents,” the back cover touted.
Just before visiting Charles in Fort Worth, I’d gotten together with Joe and his wife Diane. Since it was near my birthday, they wanted to visit an interesting bookshop where Di had seen an item she wanted to get for me. Having about an hour to prowl before the store closed, Di went to find my present, Joe was about to go off to the science fiction, and I was headed for the erotica downstairs. Joe first pointed out a section of locked cases containing first edition science fiction, old occult, and other interesting items.
I’d noticed a job lot of old paperbacks on some open shelves below the cases and had begun perusing them, amused by the campy covers. “God, look at this,” I’d said,
showing a book to Joe. Only as I had been about to return it to the shelf, did I notice the author and subtitle. After I’d despaired of owning Greene’s book, my friends had inadvertently led me to an unknown edition, of which probably only a few copies still existed.
Even before the event at Charles’s house involving Witchcraft, this had gone into my record of synchronistic events. There had been, however, an anomaly that I’d dismissed as inconsequential until that further find obliged me to rethink all these matters. For long moments, as I’d knelt beside the bookcases, I’d seemed to deny the reality of what I held in my hand. I’d even entertained the irrational supposition that the very evident original title must refer to another book by the same author. Later, I’d taken hours before carefully examining it, even actually forgetting a few times during the evening about the remarkable item, which seemed as if it had been waiting for me.
Were aberrations of perception and memory common to instances of synchronicity generally? Did some censorial function in the brain dictate, “Now, here’s how it must have happened,” and, failing that, blank it out if possible? Certainly, anyone experiencing such would not be prone to report that aspect. If you’re making a point that something untoward has occurred, you don’t cast aspersions on your own memory in the same breath. Or, might this observed behavior, repeated by the bookseller, Charles, and me be linked instead to the peculiar “forgettability” of Seabrook’s historical record?
I leafed through this other present from the “Library Angel,” a semifacetious concept of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Collaborator with Jung in the study of synchronicity, Pauli had been renowned for such events in his personal and professional life. Justine would get a kick out of the parts about her namesake character, whom Greene had devised a full ten years before Seabrook had ever written of his Justine. Another hour had passed, and there was a heavy weight on my chest. Did it end like this, a flash in the pan that never went anywhere? Another “what if?” to torture me into old age? My experiences in bouncing off young women, even in my youth, did not inspire hope. How long before I heard the predictable “I just can’t right now?”