by Matt Greene
Even though it was practically undetectable to the naked eye, David Driscoll’s nod leads me to pursue some fairly massive trains of thought. To help me manage them, I open my Maths exercise book to a new page (while Mr. Carson drones on about quadratic equations, which I mastered in Year 5) and divide it into two equal columns. The first one I label “For” and the second one “Against.”
In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” the crew of the Enterprise ends up in a parallel universe called Mirror Universe, where they meet their evil twins, who are identical to them in every way imaginable except that their moral compasses are completely inverted so they don’t prick themselves when they do something wrong (and Spock has a goatee). This makes the inhabitants of the Mirror Universe the exact opposites of the Enterprise crew, because they have only one thing different.
Scientifically, this pretty much all checks out.
My favorite thing about Science is how it’s not always that different from Religion, which is probably why they make such good opposites. For example, a lot of scientists still believe that there is a cat in a box in Copenhagen that is both alive and dead simultaneously. The reason they believe this is that in Copenhagen subatomic particles exist in two quantum states at the same time (which means they’re in two places at once) until, that is, someone observes them. When someone does observe one of these subatomic particles it stops being in two places at once and starts being in one place at once. This is an example of the Uncertainty Principle, because if you can’t ever catch a subatomic particle out (which you can’t, because literally the second you see them they stop being so schizo), then you can’t really ever know for certain too much about them.
The scientists who believe in the Uncertainty Principle remind me of Mr. Carson when he’s writing problems on the board and he’s convinced that David Driscoll is misbehaving behind his back. However quickly he spins round he never catches David doing anything wrong. However, this only makes him more annoyed, because rather than taking the sight of David doing nothing wrong as evidence of his innocence, Mr. Carson uses it to reinforce his belief that the act of observation has altered David’s behavior. What this means is that the more Mr. Carson turns round and the less he sees David impersonating him having his stroke, the more convinced he becomes that it’s happening.
There is, though, one main difference between the scientists in Copenhagen and Mr. Carson.
Mr. Carson is usually right.
However, today he isn’t. Today, when he breaks off mid-equation to pivot round toward us with a speed and accuracy you would associate sooner with a professional ballerina than a forty-year-old Maths teacher with a face like the Countdown Clock (because ever since the stroke only one side of it works), he finds David in his usual quantum state of good behavior.
“Driscoll!” he booms, through the good side of his face.
“Sir?” asks David, as though melted butter would resolidify in his mouth.
“Now what are you up to?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Yes, I can see that,” says Mr. Carson, frustration ripping wavelike through the good side of his brow. “Don’t be cute.”
But David wasn’t being cute (by which Mr. Carson means clever, which is something he’d never accuse David Driscoll of being). The entire time Mr. Carson had his back turned David was diligently transcribing the equation into his exercise book. And when I looked over at him to confirm the lack of ill discipline in my periphery, he smiled at me.
Which brings me on to the cat.
The reason someone decided to put a cat in a box in Copenhagen is because he didn’t believe that something could be in two places at once and then suddenly stop being the second someone saw it. His name was Erwin Schrödinger (which is easy to remember (Scientists Crave Healthy Reason Over Darkness In General Except Reality)), and the point of his experiment was to prove that it didn’t make sense to have one rule for subatomic particles and another rule for pet-sized ones. In his experiment, a cat was put in a box with a tiny bit of radioactive material and a Geiger Counter (Gamma Easily Is Gettable Especially Radiation), which was hooked up to a Diabolical Mechanism. This is really bad news for the cat, because if a single atom of the radioactive material decays, then the Geiger Counter will twitch, which will trigger the boot, which will kick the bucket, which will release the marble, which will topple the tower, which will dislodge the ball, which will fall on the diving board, which will propel the diver, which will unleash the hammer, which will smash the vial, which will release the gas, which will kill the cat.
The reason that Schrödinger’s Cat is such an important experiment in Science is that it demonstrates a huge flaw in the way quantum mechanics works in Copenhagen. Which is this: If you believe that a subatomic particle is in two places at once until it is observed, then you believe that the radioactive material both decays and doesn’t decay simultaneously, which means you believe that until you take the lid off the box to have a look, the cat is both alive and dead. This is a bit like saying that until Mr. Carson turns round to check, David is simultaneously impersonating him and not impersonating him. In other words, it makes absolutely as much sense as Dad refusing to watch penalty shoot-outs in case he affects the outcome. Which is why most intelligent people now believe in Many Worlds.
(“Freeze!” screams Mr. Carson, swiveling round again like a sheriff in a Western. But the problem in the class is sitting quietly, so reluctantly he turns back to the one on the board.)
In the Star Trek episode, Captain Kirk finds himself aboard the ISS Enterprise, which is the exact equivalent of the USS Enterprise in a parallel dimension. This is completely realistic because of Many Worlds Theory. Many Worlds Theory agrees with the Not So Great Danes in one major respect: that a subatomic particle can be in two places at once. However, it has a much better explanation for what happens inside the cat trap. According to MWT, the cat really is alive and dead simultaneously inside the box. However, the cute part is when you open it up. Because when you do that in MWT instead of making one of the cats (i.e., the living one or the dead one) magically stop existing, what you actually do is lift the lid on one reality while at the same time another you opens the lid on the other one. (This is all actually kind of obvious if you think about it (which I am now doing), because if subatomic particles are allowed to be in two places at once in Copenhagen, then why shouldn’t they be allowed to be in two places at once everywhere else in the world? And, more important, if subatomic particles are allowed to be in two places at once everywhere in the world, then why aren’t we? (I think the only reason people have such a hard time accepting that there’s an infinite number of thems in an infinite number of parallel realities is because it makes them feel less special, especially when the alternative is to believe that they’re so special they can bring a dead cat back to life just by looking at it.))
This time when Mr. Carson turns round he notices that the two columns I have divided my exercise book into have approximately nothing to do with quadratic equations. After sidling up to me and reading the page over my shoulder he does nothing about this, a fact which I subsequently record in the “For” column. So far it reads:
1) David’s behavior
2) Jaws 2’s behavior
3) Dad’s behavior
4) Mum’s behavior
5) In theory there is no difference between theory and practice
6) Mr. Carson’s behavior
When Mr. Carson returns to the board (pausing en route to check on his unlicensed tribute act, who immediately continues to not misbehave), I think about the look Mum got in her eyes last night when I asked her about moving the bed and decide to whisper her back in at 6) using an HB pencil. Meanwhile, at the board Mr. Carson wipes out the first line of workings to make room for the solution. Noticing I haven’t taken any of the workings down, David nudges me.
“Do you need to copy?” he mouths, showing me his transcript.
I shake my head and turn back to my list. But he
nudges me again.
“What you doing May twenty-second?”
I shake my head again.
“My birthday,” he whispers. “I’m thirteen. Gonna be a party at my house. You’re invited.”
Here’s the thing that doesn’t make sense: If I had to characterize the way in which everyone’s behavior has been schizo lately, I’d say it’s that (with the exception of Jaws 2) they’re all being nice to me. However, in Star Trek, when Captain Kirk encounters people from his parallel reality, they’re the Evil Twin versions of everyone he knows. This is almost always the case on TV and in films, which suggests that if I have somehow passed through a portal into another world, I must have been living in the Evil Twin version to begin with. I add this observation to the “Against” column, where it slots in at 3), after 1) Goatees and 2) HOW THE F***?
On the blackboard Mr. Carson marks the spot (x) and then slowly adds two parallel lines (=). He is about to write the answer (which is 7), when instead he whirls round with such force that he almost takes off like a helicopter (or maybe in this world, screws himself into the ground like a helicopter). This time the sight of David Driscoll behaving impeccably is too much for him to bear. His (good) eyebrow trembles, his (good) nostril flares, and his (whole) head jogs on his shoulders like a dashboard dog’s. I wonder if it would be of any consolation to him to know that in a parallel world he’s just caught David red-handed, his spotty Irish face lolling lopsidedly in its cruelest Conundrum Carson routine.
In the end though consolation takes a different form. His voice cracks like thunder:
“CHLOE GOWER!”
Everyone turns to look.
(In this reality, it turns out albinos can blush.)
Mr. Carson strides toward her, his confidence returning with every step. “Why, is that for me?” he asks, holding one hand to his heart in a mean parody of emotion and with the other plucking the note from her stiff fingers. “But you know I’ve got no secrets, Chloe. If you’ve got something to say to me, then you can say it to the whole class.”
The look that Chloe gives him is withering enough to make fruit think twice about ripening, but Mr. Carson stands his ground. After what seems like forever, she kicks back her chair, gets to her feet, and snatches back the note on her way to the blackboard. With her eyes still fixed on Mr. Carson, who shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, she unfolds the note, takes a breath, and then recalibrates her gaze to the floor.
“We’re all atwitter,” says Mr. Carson.
“Meet—” starts Chloe.
“E-nun-c-iate,” interrupts Mr. Carson.
“Meet me—”
“Try to project,” interrupts Mr. Carson (which is ironic, because he’s the one Projecting. You can almost see him coloring Chloe’s hair orange and dotting her face with greasy Irish spots).
“Meet me after—”
“Breath from your stomach, not your throat. Try again.”
“Meet me after school—”
(“Oooooh,” says everyone.)
“Stand up straight,” says Mr. Carson. “Try and imagine there’s a string—”
“Fuck off,” interrupts Chloe Gower, and then storms out of the class.
“Well,” says Mr. Carson eventually, once the laughter and applause have died down sufficiently for him to be heard. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell whoever that message was intended for that if they wish to meet Miss Gower after school they’ll be doing so after detention.”
When the clock is about to strike half past, I make the Countdown alarm sound under my breath, but loud enough to get a detention of my own.
Chapter Fourteen
Alternate Miss Farthingdale calls me the prodigal son outside detention, which I find embarrassing because it reminds me of the time I called her Mum. We are at the entrance to the sports hall, which is all set up for exams and which is where detention is taking place. She asks how I’m feeling, and I tell her fine thanks, and when I make to walk past her into the sports hall she looks confused.
“Are you on the list?” she asks, like she’s a bouncer in a film with a velvet rope in one hand and a clipboard in the other (as opposed to an English teacher in a school with what looks like a Pez dispenser in one hand and a clipboard in the other).
I tell her I am, and she asks what I’m in for, but before I can tell her she says, “Actually, don’t tell me. That’s the first thing you learn in detention. Everyone’s innocent.” Then she smiles and beckons me close and asks if I’d like a Polo.
“No, thanks,” I say (shuddering almost imperceptibly). “They’re bad for your teeth.”
“What isn’t these days?” says Miss Farthingdale, and tells me to hold out my hand, which I do automatically. Then she double-clicks her Pez dispenser and two small round white pills appear in my palm. Their dimensions are identical to the gap in the middle of a Polo, like we’re living in a negative. I must look as confused as I feel, because Miss Farthingdale laughs and explains that they’re “Polo Holes.” And then (as though she knows I’m a visitor from a faraway place) she tells me not to worry because they taste exactly the same.
Inside the hall, Chloe and I sit one in front of the other in the shadow of the godivarous basketball hoops. Because we are far enough out of Miss Farthingdale’s earshot and because I’m the one sat behind in alphabetical order, we are able to converse effectively, me whispering and her holding up notes on an A4 pad. The first note she holds up is in pencil and too faint for me to read.
“E-nun-c-iate,” I whisper into the darkness of her hair.
“LOL,” she writes in biro, even though we both know she hasn’t. Then she traces over her original message with the pen.
“what did u find out?” it says.
“Bout what?”
“hampster.”
“I think you were right,” I mumble (partly to be quiet and partly because I don’t like admitting I’m wrong).
“project,” she scrawls.
“You’re right,” I say louder, disguised as a cough. “He’s not the same. And everyone’s acting really weird.”
“weird?” she scribbles, although I don’t know if she intends the italics or if she’s just holding the pad at an angle.
So I tell her about my driving lesson and about how David smiled at me and how Mum keeps looking at me in the third person and a little bit about Quantum Mechanics. And then, as it occurs to me, I tell her about how my life flashed before my eyes in the hospital and, specifically, how it felt like Time had come loose from its moorings, and how (now that I think about it) this might have been a Relativity-type thing, which would suggest that I was traveling close to the speed of light, and maybe I had died under the knife after all or rather one of me had because maybe death is just another word for reaching The Limit of Infinity, which is the only place in the universe where parallel lines can meet, which maybe, just maybe, might explain how it was I was able to hop across to an alternate reality (!!!) and carry on my life like nothing had happened. (Maybe that’s why when someone dies you don’t say they’ve died, you say they’ve passed.) Finally, to illustrate the point, I tear the For and Against page out of my Maths exercise book and pass it off to Chloe as she rocks back on her chair. She studies it for no more than three and three-quarter seconds (three Mississippis and an Amazon) before scrunching it into a ball and starting to compose her reply. It’s only four words long (or five if you count the apostrophe (which I don’t)), but the way Chloe writes it, turning the pad on its side and slotting the letters between the lines like she’s doing nothing more important than playing a game of Connect 4, it takes up a whole side of paper:
At the bus stop Chloe expounds her theory, which is another word for explain.
“He’s doing it so you choose him.”
“Choose him for what?” I ask. “Doing what?”
“Being ‘fun,’ ” she says, making the inverted commas in the air with only one hand so it looks more like Scout’s Honor. “So you choose him to live with.”
/> “What do you mean?” I ask, stupidly.
Chloe sighs. “He’s trying to be West Germany. He wants to make sure that when the wall goes up you want to be on his side of it.”
And then she tells me the story.
It all started one Saturday morning when Chloe’s dad suggested they went on one of their drives together, just the two of them. Already Chloe knew something was up, because they’d never before been on a drive together, neither as a pair or as part of a larger unit. (They had driven to places and then subsequently back from them, but that wasn’t the same thing at all.) When she got into the car Chloe had to adjust the seat, which recently she noticed had been set much farther back than she was used to. She could tell this for certain that Saturday morning because when she first sat down she couldn’t reach the radio dial, which had been retuned to Heart 106.2. On the motorway her dad asked her lots of questions about her life (what sort of music she was listening to (good), whether or not she had a boyfriend (not), how everything was going at school (s’okay)), and then a few more about her mum (did she like her cooking (s’okay), whether or not she wanted to be like her when she was older (not), how would she rate their relationship on a scale of one to ten (good)). By the time he was done quizzing her, a sign had welcomed them to Surrey.
“Where are we going?” Chloe asked.
“There’s something I want to show you,” said her dad.
The something turned out to be a house. They were greeted at the entrance gate by a six-foot-tall blond estate agent with a button missing from her blouse, who kissed her dad on both cheeks and told her she must be Chloe. Then she gave them a tour, which took forever because the house had seven bedrooms and a tennis court.
“What do you think?” asked her dad halfway through, when the estate agent had slipped away to take a phone call.