Quantum Footnotes

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them though we well. - Hamlet

I am what I am. That’s all that I am. - Popeye the Sailor Man.

Once upon a time….

"Uncertainty Principle. Principle of quantum mechanics, discovered by Heisenberg, that there are features of the universe, like the position and velocity of a particle, that cannot be known with complete precision. Such uncertain aspects of the microscopic world become ever more severe as the distance and time scales on which they are considered become ever smaller. Particles and fields undulate and jump between all possible values consistent with the quantum uncertainty. This implies that the microscopic realm is a rolling frenzy, awash in a violent sea of quantum fluctuation."

(The Elegant Universe by Bryan Greene)

QUANTUM FOOTNOTES

BEYOND THE SPEED OF LIGHT

by

Carlos Ortiz

Copyright © 2012 by Carolos Ortiz

Smashwords Edition

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Momma.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 1

The Big Bang

(Scene opens with several people gathered in a large conference room. Or maybe not.)

I shouted something to those in my cage for they were forever glaring at me with unrelenting, unforgiving eyes. Actually, please don’t ask me what I shouted because I don’t know, and I suppose it’s possible that I never really did shout, but if I did scream, then it was definitely to let them know who I am, and that I was somehow configured unto this plane without the slightest consideration as to who I was, or what I had wanted.

Perhaps definitely is too strong a word in the landscape of text for the use of such a proclamation, perhaps it argues more for a promise set forth, a presupposition that who I am and who I was are set in points static, firm, immobile, and thus observable, but that’s what presented itself after my scream, if in fact that’s what I did for there were no salutations, no glares resembling familiarity, no gestures of Welcome Home for all that remained before me were the continued constant of faces smeared with confusion, befuddlement, perhaps even anger. Point not made I thought, but merely area indecipherable. Replaying a string of a time frame I asserted that perhaps what they heard was nothing more than a grunt, a groan, an abridgement of a low moan for as best as I could tell there was no recognition of words hammered from my lips to their ears, nothing that bespoke intended message received. I went through the whole process, this communication, as I could feel my teeth crash in a milli-second slam as my mouth opened and closed behind withering vibes. In fact, the mouth shut so quickly that I thought the bony processes that made up my lower jaw would fly through my nostrils, past my eye sockets, and jut out through my cerebellum finally exiting past my skull at the speed of light. The scream, the shout, the plea rattled my very being. Yet it really made no difference to those in and out of my cage for they appeared not to understand me. My words, fragments of perhaps anti-thought spewed from my throat like burning fiery, red lumps of puke until they splattered to the ground like bird droppings apparently marking annoying trails of confusion everywhere. Compelled into a parallel obscurity, I was forced into staring at staring eyes for it was all I had left in this dark hole. Beware the parallel structure that intrudes upon the gentle emergence of the others for all that may come of it is confusion, frustration, and anger wherein the first is unavoidable, while the latter two, futile. If the very basis of the I am, I am, iamb are metrically immeasurable, if one is deemed incomprehensible by the you are, you are, then anger and frustration are null and to a-void. They are indifferent, apathetic and unconcerned for they cannot understand you. This annoying intrusion plays upon my delicate brain causing me to understand the frailty of my own thoughts as nothing but thoughts left in unpacked bags for strangers to trod upon. They cannot understand me because they do not know that the matter and the particle each dream their dear, sweet anti-dream before it dares to serve another, and another, and another. And thus I am estranged from my own thoughts as they were not the thoughts I had thought them out to be, or not to be. I am become multiverse in a flash, in a flush, in the flesh. Too many possibilities, too many seen, yet nothing is said, too little is possible.

Empty are these words, these bits, these bytes, these bits that lack so much bite, equations lost over time, lacking the ability to link, to lock, to knot, making the string not, only made me understand so many words lost over time. How much time? I never saw the sun rise, I never felt the glow dance across my face, so how much time had elapsed I could not tell you for it had to be a time dilation, perhaps best said as a time delusion. And thus lost over time colors as little more than a passing thought, lost over space.

Whatever I spoke to them, I simply couldn’t engage them, and so I disengaged in space so that though they may have stood before me, next to me, behind me, they were quantum points away from me so that as I roared, their eyes told me that I bored; and not through their skulls.

Words to live by, words to love by, words to lullaby. Bye. Bye.

If I cannot string the world with my words, rather it is the world that is stringing me along, then what is my memory of this moment; nay, what is this moment where I believed that I was saying something to them. My memory of this moment passes too quickly, spinning, whirling in a myriad of semi-circles, thus making the moment loopy and unable to return to its point of origin, and so I have had to shout, I must have shouted for I had to join, to melt, to fuse, to blend. I had to shout my existence and thus imply theirs. My implication was not by a matter of degrees, for its appeal would have been far too weak a force and thus neutralized, so that as best as my memory can anchor I chose to accuse with what I believe to have been a "Fuck You!" I think that’s what I said. I believe that’s what I said.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Indeed, old man, indeed. The "Fuck You!" was my accelerator, something to shoot through so as to measure structure, but perhaps because I was deeply embedded within the cage that I could not escape being observed as I was observing. But I don’t know if I said "Fuck You!" because it was their very indifference, their lack of accurate observation that argued for some incorrectness conveyed through my message. Then, I think, owUng83Isy4.3 - 2Uv 10x6 WnyaWoi7xao34147.

Time had long since abandoned me and no amount of tea would suffice to help me, and yet I instinctively knew that somehow I was in my bleeding cage far too long! Forget the lack of sunrise for perhaps I was beneath the curtain of an implosion, the type that would bring an end to everything but the continuation of darkness and mayhem. Continuations that would never cease. I had to get out. I had to be somewhere else, I have always needed to be somewhere else. But the legs, my legs felt as if they had been pinned down by needles or nails. There was such heat like a fire out of control splitting my veins until the surge like a wild beast gnawed at my thighs, slashing my very bones. With every conscious attempt at moving my legs I felt them rip away, at first in minute pieces until the thrash offered itself in larger separations. And while time had vanished in the confusion, I was able to keep track of space for my legs had not really left, and thus the walk, while painful and slow could nonetheless mark space as I shuffled along.

You have to save her!

What? What? Save who?

Save her!

Who? Save who? I don’t know who you are talking about. I don’t know who you are. But it makes no matter. Made no matter? You see the confusion in time. But to demarcate space in the hopes that it would allow a measured delineation in time proffered itself in the form of searing legs as I chose to piss a bright, burning lava-like serum out my prick and unto the floor. Each time the incision at the tip flushed out its flow, I shouted a definite scream that oddly recaptured, (in part), a sense in time as the yell synchronized itself well with gaps of passage through time, while the florescent marking puddled itself just large enough to mark moments in space. Not perfect, but it was all there was. Is?

This delineation of space offered no resolution for I still found myself lost in this cage, though as I implied the sense of time gained impetus for the pain that accompanied my flow simply slowed time down, (pain is such a tremendous brake). Mark the child with the bandaged thumb from a pain incurred a week earlier and do note that their cries, screams and yells always announce the hours, minutes, seconds plunging everything to a halt like anchors tossed through oceans of distress until it deadens everything to its final stop, to the ever-present now. Yet the now is the most difficult loop in time to measure since no one can actually live in it. The now because of its immeasurability demands that it be measured, although it rarely is. The now lends itself to the future, which cannot stand alone. It can never stand alone. So there I was with gaping hole on the tip of my prick formed like the widening gape of hell. I could see the spewed serum, blood-red slosh forward like a failed birth making each second seem as if it belonged to the primal infant scream. Time - in this now. I had nothing but time shrouded in the afterbirth of space. Time, space quietly exert control even in absentia.

Inevitably, time played merciful benefactor masquerading as gravity for soon the volcanic spew I shot downward was soon over, though quite frankly relief passed over all too quickly as I was soon aware of a prickly stinging, a numbness below my waist.

I can’t move my legs is what I believed I screamed. Why can’t I move my legs?

Roaches, the numbness on my legs was like tiny, prickly, slime-oozing roaches crawling up my legs, and though I had this incessant need to shake my legs so that whatever may have been there could fly off, I couldn’t move, twitch, wiggle my limbs. It was as if my legs had been locked in place by a vise, a steel grip so powerful I felt my ankles crushed and my feet ripped with every move I made. I rolled my eyes down in the hope of catching something, anything odd just beneath my crotch.

It hurt. The further my eyes fell, the more it hurt as if a powerful, very intense light had blared before me causing me to squint, to look obliquely as if, I’ve often heard, a sinner to a saint. Such a sharp pierce that slashed through the corner of my eyes, slashing the retina, yet I had no choice but to continue to stretch my gaze down, past the slice, past the cuts, past the virtual scars for it was not just what I felt, but what I could hear as it was like the drag of a chain link that somehow was being swallowed by an indifferent wheel. I had to continue keeping my head as straight and up as I could so as not to rattle those about me in my cage. Like an experienced whore, I knew if I had wanted less of a painful jolt, I would have to move as little as possible despite the harsh thrusts. Yet, I could feel the incredible surge of air through the sockets of my eyes as I dove them beneath normal linear scans. In fact, the vision had gone so low I had wondered if I had lost both balls through my throat; a feeling I had once had on a date, (sort of). Once having seen what I actually did see I did wish, quite frankly that my eyes had disappeared into the far below and within and thus render me blind for I had come to realize that the reason that my legs felt as if they were clamped in a steel vise is because they were clamped in a steel vise. I believed I screamed. Understand my child, these chain screams still stand, (stand still?), alone and vulnerable for in the face of such confusion, I wondered if my eyes were intent upon playing tricks on me. I had to ponder the possibility that perhaps my eyes had dropped through my mouth because I swear I could actually see rush of winds swirl through my esophagus, jut through the tongue and past the teeth. And this could not have been a Cartesian illusion: I scream; I am. Consciousness, thy very name is scream. I tried to lull myself into a sleep of comfort, a most delectable state for most, and thus be drawn into the world of not-isms, or at least softer isms. But postulating, securing yourself with dream potentialities demands all is to be questioned, thus the dream becomes questions, those little, crooked strands with blackened points of loop that entice bitch probability through so many hoops before she returns to the same starting point in the same manner of form as the horizontal eight, eternity. Thus you are trapped in the land of the eternally perplexed and doubtful that are locked within parallels. The lines are blurred, the circles enticing, but the faces, frightening. Under this premise, what then becomes of my cage.

Too much time. Too much time to ponder and too many chains for there were far too many creatures, beasts such as myself chained in the same spirit as I. They, however were being dragged in a single, slow, apparently painful, clockwise direction. At first, they traveled in slow, concentric circles, each traveler having their right hand extended towards the center as if they were afraid to release themselves from their clutch of the hub, a sort of immobile, static, intersecting point, though from where I was I could see no such center point. There were only gaps of space; fluid, grey, shrinking, fading, disappearing, renewing, enlarging gaps of space caused by the hindered movements of the beasts. Whatever they claimed as their centerpoint was bred, born, killed, and resurrected with their every shuffle. They trammeled,