Sartre said Hell was other people. What happens though if it's your own thoughts you need to escape? Is there a way out?
A Cat’s Chance
Black floor, grey walls, white ceiling. Not the most imaginative décor. At the end of the long corridor was a door marked CBT. The note in his hand bore the same letters, so Erwin knocked.
“Enter,” commanded a voice.
There was no one in the room.
“Good morning,” said the voice.
He looked up and around for speakers. “Where am I?”
“Incorrect response.”
“Good morning. Where am I?” Erwin offered.
The objects in the room seemed familiar. “I think I’ve been here before.”
“On many occasions,” confirmed the voice, “but convergent thinking is not what we require.”
“What do you want? What are these things doing here? What am I doing here?”
“Okay, we’ll play it your way -- again. Examine the objects and tell me your thoughts.”
“Is this some game?”
“The letters on the door… did they hold meaning for you?”
“CBT. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
“Interesting.”
Erwin thought irritation at the tone of this remark would serve no purpose.
On a table at the centre of the room, there were three boxes. Two were open but the middle one was sealed. “The observer’s paradox,” he said. “This cat is dead. And this,” he looked inside the third box, “is alive, so the one inside this box is in a superposition of states.”
“And you deduce…”
“We cannot know whether the atom has decayed, whether it is at the tip or the surface of the bulk material, whether tunneling is occurring; but we may assume that for all practical purposes in macroscopic coherence, the cat’s wave function will have collapsed and it is either dead or alive and not both simultaneously.”
“You wear these thoughts like slippers,” said the voice. “Tell me about this computer.”
“Basically it is a box housing electronic components capable of receiving and storing data and carrying out complex algorithmic searches. But I would need to switch it on to find out what it can do. May I?”
“You may not.”
“The visual unit would provide a liquid crystal display of photons. And that in itself is interesting because at the quantum level…”
“Yes, so you have explained in some detail,” said the voice. “What of the photograph on the wall?”
“It’s a tennis match,” said Erwin. “One of the players looks angry. There’s chalk dust flying. Looks like the ball is outside the box.”
“The outcome is therefore open to question.”
“Yes.”
The next box was a coffin and a suspicion crept into Erwin’s mind – a suspicion he did not much care for. “Is there anything inside this?”
“Are you speaking ‘micro’ or ‘macro’scopically now?”
“Am I keeping you amused? Are you enjoying your little lab-rat game?”
“Barely. You would have to open the coffin to find your answer -- observe, collapse the field, to determine whether there was macroscopic coherence, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. Sometimes you know I wish I’d never dreamt up that damned cat.” Erwin looked back at the three central boxes.
“Do you recognize these pictures?”
“This is the Nine Dot Puzzle; Lloyd 1914. And that’s Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney. In order to solve that puzzle you have to think outside the box and that was what Disney always encouraged his cartoonists to do. That way you create volume. You can turn two dimensional characters into… That’s it! Isn’t it.”
Looking up, he saw now that nowhere did the walls of this room join the ceiling. There simply was no ceiling and there never had been -- only light. “All this time I’ve been thinking inside a box,” he said, “not only that, it was a box of my own making!”
“Well done, my friend. CBT -- Cat/Box Therapy. All your questions have been irrelevant. ‘Where?’ is Infinite. ‘When?’ is Now. ‘What?’ is a Matter of conjecture and ‘How?’ is for the moment, Light. You already knew these things.”
Erwin went and looked inside the coffin, confirming his suspicion.
“Now -- I have a gift for you.” The voice said. “Go and open the middle box.”
Erwin did so. At last he would have the answer. But all he found inside was a simple card.
“It is the next question,” said the voice. “Read it.”
Erwin read it. “Why?”
With that, the outer walls of his cell collapsed and the card turned itself inside out making three dimensions, and again, five dimensions, and again, eight dimensions -- eleven. He laughed with sheer elation. Here was an entire multi-verse of questions to explore and here he was – Erwin Schrödinger at the centre of it all.
Copyright: © 2007 Oonah V Joslin
