Tina’s father, I fear, is ignoring the evidence for the existence of Quarks and for the existence of Yours Truly. But we (you, kind reader, and I) have more information at our disposal than Tina’s father.
We know that I exist. I know that Quarks exist. Someday someone will find a Quark. Tina’s father is unlikely to ever find me. So my mission, my goal in life, is to find Tina’s father49 and confront him with all this.“You can’t get there from here.”—Stephen Hawking, when asked what an encounter with a black hole might be like
12
Quark Soup50
A Quarky Character is one who, as I see it, goes a bit beyond “spooky.” The term “spook” refers to someone involved in clandestine activities.
Some spooks are spies for one government or another, or several simultaneously; some run drugs, guns or, as is usually the case, a combination of the above. But the true Quarky Character (I have coined a concept here) is more difficult to define or, for that matter, locate. Subatomic Particles and clandestine operatives have a lot in common. He (or she, though I’ve met only one Quarky Female) not only plays both sides of the fence, but has no idea what a fence is at all.
George (that’s all we ever knew him as) was one such fellow. His diverse close friends and associates have included Bobby Vesco, Richard Nixon, General Mohamar Khaddafi, Golda Meir, Poppa Doc Duvalier, J: Edgar Hoover, Idi Amin, plus various fun-loving guys from various organized-crime groups in various countries. And, naturally, Captain C.O.D.
George was a soft-spoken, well-dressed, conservative-looking man. There was a weird look in his eye, however—a look that gave even Robert the shakes.
After Captain C.O.D. coughed up $890,000 for our gold buds in Manhattan, José talked us (we were now stuck with Flash and Aileron) into paying George a visit in order to procure weaponry for his Bandito Army in Colombia. José felt he was falling behind in the Dope Lord Arms Race.
Robert, Jim and I had met George through a certain ex-CIA operative who has recently come to the attention of the media because of some minor faux pas he made as an arms dealer in the Middle East. We had also hung out with George in Fort Lauderdale when he was associated with Kenny Burnstine, the legendary kingpin of the Marijuana Airforce.51
Robert, Jim and I always had disapproved of blatant gun-runners and hard-drug traffickers. We used guns and drugs, sure, but that was our business. George was different. To him, the world was one giant Pac-Man game and George felt that he had unlimited quarters.
George was not only Quarky—he was downright creepy. He was having dinner with a KGB agent when we located him in a posh Manhattan restaurant, although we had no idea of what was going down.
Unfortunately, the CIA surveillance team that was taking our pictures from across the street figured we were all in on whatever convoluted scheme George had cooked up with the Bolshevik. This didn’t do much for our already tarnished image with the authorities.
George was aware that he was under intense government scrutiny and I felt it was a breach of etiquette that he failed to mention it to us.
The shit hit the fan later that night in George’s warehouse in Soho. We’d accompanied José on a tour of inspection of George’s merchandise.
Even José was impressed by the awesome firepower the Feds let loose on us. But George was prepared for every scenario. We emerged from his escape route via a manhole on Houston Street.
Our group was now at the top of every governmental shit list. Drug smuggling, inciting to riot and attempted murder (the drive-in theater fiasco), illegal entry into the U.S., assaulting federal agents (High Pockets had taken a chunk out of somebody’s leg), breaking jail, blowing up a jail, espionage, arms dealing and unsafe operation of a B-29 were just a few of our offenses. As I have said, we were a severely misunderstood group.
We felt that we had worn out our welcome in the Big Apple, so we had the Lear meet us at a suburban airport and headed south.
In modern terminology, we can now say that quarks come in six flavors.
—James S. Trefil
13
Cosmic Banditos
José has finally seen the light. I coerced him into spending a weeklong sabbatical from his Bandito Business. My shack was the monastery, I was the teacher. After completely absorbing my Worldview, José is a new man. Through meditation, Subatomic Particle Theory and tequila surreptitiously spiked with ground-up peyote buttons, he now sees the folly of his Bandito Ways.
I led José down the Path of Enlightenment gradually. I eased him into the Quantum World by starting at the beginning, with his mugging of Tina’s family. I first posed a question. This was it: If we were able to travel backward in time to the Big Bang, what would the odds be that fifteen billion years hence José would find himself at Santa Marta International, mugging a pubescent nymphomaniac and her family? Naturally José was stumped. I then suggested that a Cosmic Bookie would have probably given us some major-league odds, probably infinity to one. At this José’s eyes lit up. He asked me how much we’d bet. This forced me to explain that the size of the bet was irrelevant since an infinite number times anything except zero always equals an infinite number. This threw José off onto another tangent. It took a couple more peyote-spiked bottles of tequila to get him back on track. Using metaphors to reason with a Bandito can be risky.
Anyway, I went on to postulate that the probability that a universe like ours52 would actualize, given the possibilities that an infinite number of Alternative Universes could just as easily have been created, was about zero. I then dropped the Big Hint: Maybe in some sense this Universe doesn’t “exist” any more than the infinite number of Alternative Universes that didn’t (it appears to us) actualize.
I then threw José for a loop by suggesting that it’s possible that in addition to Rival Banditos on the other side of the mountain, he might also have Bandito Enemies in an infinite number of other Universes!
The astute reader is obviously aware that I was getting way ahead of myself by delving into the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics right from the get-go, but José is a tough audience, so I wanted to get his attention before his mind wandered or the drugs wore off.
Anyway, the possibility of an infinite number of Full-Blown Banditos wreaking havoc in an infinite number of Alternative Universes got José’s adrenalin pumping. He put his Thompson submachine gun on the table and swiveled around so he could cover the front door just in case some Alternative Banditos decided to actualize in our Universe and storm the shack.
This was more or less how Day One ended. High Pockets and I hit the sack, leaving José guarding the door against a surprise attack by Quantum Banditos.
Day Two was spent recovering from Day One.
Day Three was spent on Relativity Theory.
Day Four on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the Particle/Wave Duality.
Day Five on an overview of the works of Lorenz, Dirac, Planck, Bohr and Schrödinger.
Day Six was spent mostly in meditation53 and in various other forms of stupors.
Day Seven broke clear and crisp. High Pockets and I got up early and began preparing a hearty breakfast. Legs was nowhere in sight—a stroke of luck since it was Wednesday. José had spent the night in a lotus position in the front yard. He was still out there being bombarded by Subatomic Particles, his sombrero pulled down over his eyes and his Thompson in his lap.
Day Seven was the big day, the day I promised José I would drop the Quantum Bombshell. On Day Seven I would probe the very heart of Quantum Theory. I would describe a phenomenon that is absolutely impossible to explain in any classical or “commonsensical” sort of way, a phenomenon that is the basic peculiarity of all Quantum Mechanics—The Double Slit Experiment.54
The Double Slit Experiment was the coup de grace as far as José was concerned. By the end of Day Seven José had himself become a Quantum Bandito, and as a result no longer suffers from Alternative Bandito Paranoia.
Anyway, I had High Pockets revive José and bring
him inside. The three of us stuffed our faces with eggs, goat brains, rice and mescal, then after clean-up I had José sit across the table from me. We sat quietly for a few minutes, contemplating our digestive tracts. High Pockets was stretched out on the bed, presumably doing the same. I then asked José to remove his sombrero and imagine a brigade of Cosmic Banditos attacking an army garrison at the speed of light. Imagine further, I told him, that there was only one way into the garrison and that only one Bandito at a time could fit through the opening. I reminded José that all Cosmic Banditos (metaphorical photons or Subatomic Particles) are identical. There is no way to tell them apart. Also, Cosmic Banditos have the properties of waves as well as those of particles.
I paused for a moment to light a joint. José had a belt of mescal. He said, “Ahh.” I exhaled contemplatively, passed him the joint, then continued.
“Let’s say that as the Cosmic Banditos pour through the opening in the garrison wall, some, say sixty percent, head for the Generalissimo’s headquarters to pump him full of Cosmic Lead. The remaining forty percent head for the jail to free Cosmic Banditos captured in previous assaults.”
At this point José interrupted me with some irrelevant tactical criticisms of the assault itself. I agreed with him before reminding him that Cosmic Banditos are really Subatomic Entities and can’t be expected to have his insights into guerrilla warfare. Tact is everything when telling a Bandito that he has his head up his ass.
I rambled on. “As I have told you previously, it is in principle impossible to predict the behavior of any single Cosmic Bandito. We can only predict what they will do as a gang, statistically. Now things get very weird.”
I glanced down. Legs’s head was sticking out of his favorite crack. He was staring malevolently at High Pockets, who, it appeared, had dozed off.
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that the first sixty percent of our attackers bolt for the Generalissimo’s headquarters. Remember that we have already established that, overall, sixty percent end up doing this. The impossible now happens. All the remaining Cosmic Banditos automatically head for the jail.”
I had a belt of mescal and slammed the bottle onto the table for emphasis. “Think about it.”
José scratched his three-day growth, nodding sagely.
His eyes lit up momentarily, then dimmed.
He said, “Ahh.”
He shook his head.
He fiddled with his sombrero.
Then he admitted that he was stumped and asked how the last forty percent had known that their mission was to storm the jail.
I was very pleased with this response. José was catching on. I dropped the metaphor.
“Now you’ve gotten to the crux of the matter.” I was getting excited so I had a couple more belts of mescal to calm my nerves. “It appears that any given Subatomic Unit knows the Quantum State of any and all other Subatomic Units in its system!”
José cut loose with the longest “Ahhhhhhhhh” I’d ever heard.
“The conclusion we must come to is inescapable. Denizens of the Subatomic Realm process information and they do it instantaneously!”
José stood up and started pacing.
“E.H. Walker has postulated that Subatomic Particles are, in some sense, conscious entities!”
I went on to describe what happens when there are two ways into the garrison (hence the name “Double Slit Experiment”). Two slits cause Subatomic Units to “interface” with each other because of their wave-like properties. The astounding result of this aspect of the experiment55 is that as Subatomic Units pass through one slit or the other, they “know” whether or not the other slit is open regardless of whether it’s being used by other Units. In other words, not only do they know what each other is doing, but they also know the entire experimental setup! The real bombshell—not that these bombshells aren’t enough—is that the little bastards actually seem to know when they are being watched and alter their behavior accordingly (and randomly). Subatomic Particles seem to be giving the Universe the Cosmic Finger. “Fuck off,” they seem to be saying. “Mind your own business.”
At this point High Pockets let out a yelp. I looked over at the bed. Legs had him by the nose and had wrapped his body around High Pockets’ neck. High Pockets was howling like a maniac and shaking his head, but it was obvious that Legs had planned his sneak attack perfectly. There was absolutely nothing High Pockets could do.
“Fucking Wednesdays,” I muttered as I tried to corral High Pockets, who was now staggering sideways toward the door, yelping and whining. Legs dug his little teeth further into High Pockets’ nose and wrapped the tip of his tail around High Pockets’ left ear for a better grip.
I wrestled High Pockets to the floor and pinned him. I then grasped Legs just behind the head and pried him loose from High Pockets’ nose, which was leaking blood from dozens of tiny holes. I unwrapped Legs’s body from High Pockets’ neck, lost my balance and somersaulted over backward, ending up in an unnatural position under the table. High Pockets bounded out the door and disappeared into the jungle, still howling in fright and pain. I looked at Legs.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” I roared. Legs regarded me with his beady little eyes, a bored expression on his face. I stuffed him down the crack and told him not to come back until he’d straightened out his act.
I stood up and dusted myself off. José was still pacing back and forth, mumbling to himself in Spanish.
He gestured for me to sit. I did. I started complaining about Legs’ fucking attitude. José motioned for me to be silent, then spoke softly. He said he thought Cosmic Banditos were pretty similar to Real-Life Banditos.
Thus far I hadn’t thought much about the metaphors I’d been using as a teaching device. I considered José’s statement for a moment, then had an “aha” experience.
“Chemistry, therefore biochemistry, is closely dependent on Quantum Theory,” I mused. “Maybe the relationship extends itself.” I paused. “Maybe even to the world as we know it. The world of Bananas, Banditos, Contrabandistas and Dope Lords.”
“Exactamente,” José said. Without another word he walked slowly out of the shack, mounted Pepe and disappeared into the jungle.
He didn’t show up again until yesterday.
He explained that he now fully understands my situation with respect to Tina’s father and insisted on accompanying High Pockets and me on our pilgrimage to Sausalito.
Because of our problems with the authorities (fools that they are), it will be a long, dangerous journey, but José and I believe that destiny is on our side. We will make our way under cover of darkness, as it were, from one Bandito Stronghold to the next, gaining aid and succor from José’s Bandito Allies. We will make our way north, through Central America to Mexico, where we will enter the United States by bolting across the border with the first group of wetbacks we can locate.
Then north, ever north to Sausalito. And Tina’s father.
José, Noble Savage that he is, concocted a concept that I find mind-boggling in its brilliance and simplicity. (The true scientist’s Worldview is childlike.) I call his plan the Concept of the Creeping Banditos. Here it is: The pattern of my note-sending will change from the Simultaneous Bandito Stronghold Theory to the Encroaching Bandito Theory. I am certain that Tina’s father has a map of South and Central America with little pins and dates on it, each pin representing a Bandito Stronghold that it appeared I mailed a message from. With José and me sending messages from each Bandito Stronghold as we move north, it will soon become obvious to Tina’s father that we are creeping up on him! As we close in, the messages themselves will become progressively more cryptic and abstract. We’ll keep a sharp eye on the International Trib’s classified ads to see his reaction.
I think Tina’s father will get the idea when I start slipping in references to Gravitational Theory. I’m sure he will understand the metaphor.
The mutual attraction of two celestial bodies is inversely proportional to the square o
f the distance between them.
—Albert Einstein
14
The Earth Sucks56
I’ve always maintained that the best way to see New York City is from the back of an outbound Learjet at 46,000 feet.
It was pretty crowded and somewhat rowdy in the back. Harry, as usual, had amply stocked the jet with bubbly and exotic snacks. High Pockets’ favorite was goose liver pate with a dollop of black Russian caviar on top. Aileron, like Flash, was indiscriminate in his culinary habits. The rest of us—José, Jim, Robert and myself—mostly concentrated on the champagne and on planning our next move.
Harry stuck his head into the cabin and inquired about a possible destination. Everyone yelled out a different suggestion, so I told him we’d get back to him.
At this point, Flash got it into his head that he wanted to try his hand at the controls, having never flown a highpowered bullet like the Learjet. Harry said, “Sure.” This turned out to be a mistake.
Since we didn’t know where we were going, Flash thought he’d practice some aerobatic maneuvers. This didn’t bother anybody (we were used to spilt champagne in the back) but it had unseen repercussions far below on the ground.
The Feds (a veritable army of them by now) had alerted all the air-traffic controllers in the Northeast to report any erratically-flying aircraft. Any aircraft that seemed to by flying aimlessly (a perfect description of our behavior on every level—aimless). The cops had finally figured us out. It had always been nearly impossible to keep track of us because there was no pattern to our criminal activities. Since we never really knew what we were doing, how could anyone else?57
Flash’s bizarre flight path, the obvious lack of intelligent thought behind his random arcs and sweeps in the stratosphere, was immediately seen on every radar screen in at least six states. The die was cast. The authorities were mobilized. They would track us wherever we went. What goes up must come down—and when we did, they’d be waiting.
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