Everyone Says That at the End of the World

by Owen Egerton

  Roy loved physics. He adored how fluid, strange, and yet seemingly logical the world was. For Roy, the weirder the idea, the tastier. The arrow of time is not necessarily a constant; his own body is made up primarily of empty space; the shape of the expanding universe demands an infinite amount of matter like rocks weighing down a picnic blanket on a windy day.

  Through their first two years of college, Milton watched Roy gobble down lectures, ace exams, chatter theories. But Milton found it all vaguely nauseating. The language of math felt metallic in his mouth, like sucking on loose change.

  Quantum Physics was the worst. Twice a week Milton would sit stone-faced as Dr. Asiv Sang chipped away at the observable world in his thick, and slightly bored, Indian accent. Unbending truths like gravity and classical mechanics were discarded with the same patronizing tone an aging child dismisses fairy tales and Santa Claus.

  It was Roy who finally revealed to Milton why he suffered through a subject he detested.

  “Ten or more dimensions. Maybe time as a dimension, too,” Roy said, splashing his beer at the Cactus Café. “It’s all wiggling strings!”

  “I can’t see any strings! I can’t feel any strings.”

  “You feel nothing but strings!” Roy said.

  “What use is a law that makes sense in math but has nothing to do with the world I’m looking at?”

  “Who cares about what we see?” Roy said. “So we’re blind little moles, we’ll barely scrape the surface of it all. But we get to scrape the surface! What was that quote Sang read? ‘The universe isn’t just more fucked up than we ever imagined. It’s more fucked up than we ever can imagine.’”

  “Not sure that was the exact wording.” Milton mindlessly slid his pint glass about the table. “If the world is just a collection of subatomic particles randomly bouncing around, then what’s the point? Right? Then there’s that whole Heisenberg thing. We can’t even look at the world without changing it. Nothing is certain. You can’t believe anything.”

  “No, no, no. It’s the other way around.” Roy grinned. “You can believe everything. Anything!”

  “I don’t know why I do this. I’m barely passing. I hate the classes.”

  “I know why you’re doing this,” Roy said, smiling. “You’re trying to figure out what the fuck your father was talking about.”

  On the Tuesday of the fifth week of class, Dr. Sang scribbled the words Schrödinger’s cat on the chalkboard.

  An icy prickle crawled up Milton’s neck. The professor drew a crude drawing that was, presumably, a cat in a box. All Milton could see was Fluffs.

  When Milton had been five, his mother had given Milton a fat, furry, brown and white hamster for Christmas. He named it Fluffs. His father named it Schrödinger.

  “A cat in a sealed box,” Sang began. “Inside the box is radioactive material in the midst of decay. At any moment an electron may or may not be released. There’s also a Geiger counter to monitor the release of any electron. If one particle is detected, a vial of poison will be smashed and the cat will die. If no particle is released, the cat lives on. Its life hangs in a quantum balance.”

  Milton had woken one morning in his tenth year to find his father sitting in the kitchen staring with red, sleepless eyes at a closed wooden box sitting on the kitchen table.

  “What’s in the box, Dad?”

  “A creature existing in the probability cloud between alive and dead.”

  Milton had shrugged off the comment and headed to school.

  “So Schrödinger explained, with intention to mock, that according to the Copenhagen view, the cat is both dead and alive until you open the box and view the cat. Only when the cat is observed does the particle decide its position and the cat’s fate is declared.”

  On returning home that afternoon, Milton found Fluffs’s cage sitting atop an overflowing trash can. Just below it was the wooden box, its lid ajar. He stepped closer. A patch of brown fur, an open eye.

  He had banged on the locked basement door for fifteen minutes before his father finally unlatched the lock, opened the door, and stared with annoyance.

  “You killed my hamster!” Milton yelled.

  “Don’t blame me,” his father had said. “Blame Schrödinger.”

  “Now this was Schrödinger’s way of mocking Bohr’s idea,” Sang explained. “But many people have taken the thought exercise as an example of . . . Yes?”

  Milton had raised his hand—a rare event.

  “Isn’t that cruel to the cat?”

  Dr. Sang stared back with an emotionless pause. A few of the hundred students in the hall snickered.

  “It’s a thought experiment. Theoretical. No real cat.”

  “But,” Milton continued, unsure what he was about to say, following a thread by instinct more than thought. “What would a cat, a theoretical one, experience inside the box?”

  Sang came close to smiling.

  “Interesting question. How does the cat experience this? Let’s presume the cat can’t experience anything after death . . . Yes, I know many of us would argue this point. But for now, let’s say there’s not kitty heaven or hell and conscious experience ends at death.” Sang paused, thinking. “It depends on which theory you subscribe to. There is the agreed-upon math of quantum mechanics and then there are the dozen or so theories explaining the math. Bohr . . . ”

  “The bastard,” Milton whispered. Roy turned, but Milton kept his eyes on Sang.

  “Bohr would say the Geiger counter is observation enough to collapse the wave function. But some of his disciples would argue the cat actually experiences the cloud of probability in some way. The objective collapse theorists would say the environment or the cat itself would observe its own state, and again there would be wave function collapse. While people siding with the many worlds theory would say . . . well . . . how to put this?”

  Sang coughed. Milton understood. For the first time, the math and theory were clear—so clear and simple that he understood what Sang was explaining before the professor spoke.

  “The cat was in a superposition, a quantum moment of both life and death. But it doesn’t experience anything after death, so it only experiences surviving the experiment in some other world. No matter how long or how many times you shove the cat in a box, the cat itself only experiences surviving the box. Experiences another world where it lives. While in nearly countless other worlds, we open the box to a dead cat.”

  Milton stood. Heads turned. Dr. Sang was busy scribbling a happy face on the cat on the board and continuing his explanation. Milton squeezed past Roy’s questioning face, past the knees of his classmates.

  “Milt?” Roy said. Milton made his way to the door as Sang lectured on.

  “Max Tegmark has some ideas about this. He proposed a machine based on particle spin—”

  Milton let the metal door snap shut behind him. He took three steps and vomited into a plastic trash can.

  His father was the cat. His father was Fluffs. His father was dead and alive.

  It was a theory. Not even the leading theory.

  He stepped outside into the sunlight with an empty knowledge that he had gotten what he had come for. He would never step into another physics classroom again.

  Choose a faith

  HAYDEN BROCK HAD two major obstacles preventing him from becoming a saint:

  1. He enjoyed doing naughty things.

  2. He didn’t believe in God.

  He didn’t see these problems as insurmountable. Merely challenges. After all, he had learned to tap-dance in three days for his first major role as Chimp-O the plucky orphan on the television drama White Slavery.

  First things first. Choose a faith.

  In Blythe, California, Hayden walked out of the dry midday heat and into a two-story, air-conditioned Barnes & Noble. He purchased a double vanilla latte and sought out the spirituality section. He was surprised at the quantity of options: Christianity for Dummies, Buddhism for Beginners, Understanding Mormonism.

&
nbsp; Christianity was of course the most familiar. Saint Rick lived out a vaguely Christian/Judeo ethical system, or so he had been told. He’d also celebrated both Christmas and Easter. Christianity might work, but it felt too easy. Hayden remembered a fraternity brother back in college telling him the heart of Christianity was accepting Jesus. What’s not to accept? Jesus is great.

  Islam looked more exotic, but Hayden had seen the news. Too violent. And too much spicy food.

  Buddhism wasn’t bad. One of the writers for Saint Rick was a Buddhist. Nice guy. But dull. Never got angry. Or even really happy. No, Buddhism was like a sweater Hayden could admire but couldn’t imagine actually wearing.

  Throughout the afternoon Hayden sought and thought, book back cover by book back cover. On his third vanilla latte of the day, Hayden discovered A Guide to the Saints. There in crisp detail and alphabetical order was a description of hundreds of saints. A few he had heard of: Francis, Peter, Nicholas. Most were new to him. But what amazed him was that each and every one of them was Catholic.

  Catholic. Like Christian, but different.

  Hadn’t there been a Catholic family on his block when he was a kid? Yes. The Flynns. Serious family. Well dressed. Clean. Never dragging along neighbors on Sunday mornings like the Baptists two doors down. Come to think of it, they mainly went to church on Saturday night. That makes more sense than Sunday. Hayden hardly ever got into trouble on Sunday mornings. What else about the Flynns? They weren’t the screamers and shakers? No, that was the poor family who went to the small white church twenty miles away. No. The Flynns did things with style. With tradition. But what was it they did? Hayden did not know.

  “Be careful of Papists,” his father had once said, jerking a thumb at the Flynn house. “If America ever goes to war with Rome, they’ll be tossing grenades in our lawn.”

  “Are we going to war with Rome?” Hayden asked.

  “Nah. I’m just saying.”

  The Flynns had a boy his age. A thin boy with wide eyes. He was quiet. Not shy, just quiet. He was calm. His entire family was calm. The Flynns were different. Members of a secret society. Mysterious and . . . what was it? Sure. That’s it. They were sure.

  Hayden tossed his empty cup, gathered the book on saints plus a Catholic Bible (they have their own Bible!) and A Guide to the Catholic Calendar.

  He piled his books by the nearest open register and placed his credit card on top.

  “Are you a member?” the girl behind the counter asked.

  “Not yet,” Hayden asked. “Are you?”

  “All employees get free membership.”

  “Get out!” Hayden examined the store with new eyes. Barnes & Noble, a quiet Catholic haven, granting young people membership into their holy society. “I hope someday I can be a member as well.”

  The girl shrugged and picked up his credit card.

  “Wait. Are you . . . ?”

  “I am.”

  “I love . . . ”

  “Thanks.”

  You’re flying, child. Your tits look great.

  AS THE SKY darkened, Rica undressed in her bedroom. She looked down at her round body and touched her belly. It rose up like a bald hill blocking the southern landscape.

  Little girl, she thought to her baby, I can’t see my cooch.

  The baby kicked as if to say, “Don’t worry, mama, it’s still there.”

  The change of scenery bothered her. It felt too horribly symbolic to watch her sex-realm disappear behind her yet-to-be child. Her breasts were changing, too. Growing in weight and size. This worried her almost more than the hidden nether regions.

  Rica’s breasts had always been extraordinary. She loved them and they loved her, so seeing Rica alone was like seeing two friends you enjoy as a couple. And they hummed. A sweet, wavering hum, like the flight of a hummingbird. Lovers believed her breasts to be sacred. Milton and Rica had made love three times without him touching her chest. He ran his fingers along her collarbones, he nibbled at her navel, but he only gazed at her breasts. On their fourth night together she took his hand in hers. “It’s okay, Milt,” she said, and placed his trembling palm on her right breast (the finest of the two). Milton smiled. Slowly he lifted his other hand and placed it on her left breast (some would argue that, in truth, the left was the finest). He knelt there on the bed, eyes and hands on Rica’s humming breasts.

  “They’re warm,” he said, his eyes wide with wonder. Rica nodded.

  But now things were changing.

  “My body’s been hijacked,” Rica had told Jeppy a few days before. “I was a sex kitten, I really was.”

  “You still are. Didn’t you have any second-trimester urges?” Jeppy was slicing tomatoes in the Mundi House kitchen.

  “I was hot and bothered for a few weeks. Surprising Milton in the middle of the day and all, but it felt like a last hurrah, like a dying man getting up to dance one last time.” Rica added a pinch of dried lemon peels to her soup. “I thought my body was built for me. Now I find it had this secret agenda the whole time. My tits, Jeppy. I love my tits. I love using them to get better service at restaurants. I love distracting people at bookstores. But tits are really for milk making. They’ve been waiting for this.”

  “Rica, Rica, Rica.” Jeppy shook her head and placed her knife down. “You have no idea how sexy fertility is. It’s one thing to see a butterfly sitting on a leaf, it’s another to see it in flight. You’re flying, child. Your tits look great.”

  Rica wrapped a satin robe around, or almost around, her body and strolled down the hall and into the living room, her mouth curling into a secretive smile. From her purse she pulled out a DVD. She placed it in the player, lowered the volume to barely audible, and pressed play. The film was Night Beat. It was Hayden Brock’s one major film credit. He plays FBI agent Chip Bradley, a spunky new recruit who gets shot with a high-powered crossbow within the first thirty minutes of the film.

  Rica had rented the film over a dozen times and had never gotten further than that scene. She tried once, but found that Night Beat without Hayden Brock was a poorly written, tedious piece of fluff-crap. But the first half hour was wonderful. Chip’s wry humor, his naive excitement, his expertise in martial arts, and, most impressive of all, his generous spirit. When not chasing down drug lords, Chip Bradley volunteers with Big Brothers Big Sisters. Every Saturday he takes a twelve-year-old boy named Rocket to see life outside of the inner-city slums.

  “Why do you do it?” his grizzled older partner, played by Emilio Estevez, asks.

  “When he grows up there’ll be one less drug lord to track,” he says. And he smiles. And when he does Rica’s naughties throw back the shutters, sweep the porch, and turn on the flashing “Open for Business” sign.

  Then comes the horrible ambush in Redwood Park. Chip and his partner are waiting to meet their narc when out of nowhere an arrow rips into Chip’s chest. In slow motion, his body flies backward and is pinned to the gigantic trunk of a redwood. A trickle of blood dribbles from his surprised mouth. His partner runs to his side. Chip looks up at him, struggling to breathe.

  “Partner, do me a favor. Take Rocket to the rodeo now, huh?”

  “I’ll take him,” his partner says. “I’ll even buy him a hot dog.”

  Chip smiles, sighs loudly, and drops his head.

  Rica cries every time. She also inexplicably feels that some kind of justice has been dealt.

  Tonight Rica paused the movie the moment before the arrow is launched. Chip Bradley is in midchuckle, reacting to an off-color joke his partner made about his cooking abilities. Chip is turned slightly, looking into the camera, smiling out to Rica. Rica smiled back.

  Hayden Brock—his looks, his movements, his voice—stirred something in Rica that no other person did. There he was, frozen on the television screen, like some high-definition version of the ornate icons her grandmother used to pray to. A perfect balance of distance and presence. The image of Hayden Brock was alluringly illusive and undeniably tangible. He was there an
d he was not there. The perfect man.

  “Hayden Brock,” she said. “You’d want this baby.” She placed both hands on her belly. “I wonder where you are tonight. I wonder if you remember me at all.”

  Can I help you?

  “HEY! YOU!” CALLED the woman from inside the taco trailer. “I’m shutting down. You want any more?”

  “No. No, thanks,” Milton said with an embarrassed cough. “What time is it?”

  “Ten till ten.”

  “Crap!”

  Milton’s heart gave a sick hiccup. He was late for work. He jumped up, grabbed his bicycle parked beside him, and aimed himself downhill toward the shine of downtown.

  The avenue’s boutiques and vintage stores were long since closed and the street artists were packing away their wares, but the restaurants hummed with diners sitting on open decks or crowded around window-side tables. Guitar-driven Texas blues splashed out from the Continental Club each time a customer snuck out to smoke. In an empty lot on the east side of the road, a row of converted Airstream trailers sold gourmet French fries, tacos, and high-priced pastries.

  Downtown Austin was home to the Crockett Brew-and-View Movie Theater. The theater, carved out of the innards of an old warehouse, was known to host the most eclectic collection of films of any theater in the country. One night would feature the latest art flick from Paris and the next night would be a marathon of all three Porky’s films. All this and beer. The Crockett was one of Milton’s favorite places in the world. Even in college, Milton was a regular customer of the Crockett. Standing in line for Kung Fu Sunday tickets, arriving naked for free seats to Doris Wishman’s Nude on the Moon, gawking at Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, and other film celebrities who would drop by the theater unannounced.

  After abandoning faith a year after college, the Crockett became Milton’s house of worship. Two to three nights a week, one could find Milton sitting in the dark feasting on films. He sat in the rows with a congregation of zealots laughing or screaming in unison, being transported by stories and images, connecting with truths hidden in fictions, and, if only for a couple of hours, believing in the images before him.