Quantum objects can exist in two or more states at once: an electron in superposition, for example, can simultaneously move clockwise and anticlockwise around a ring-shaped conductor.
I am a Professor of Materials Engineering and a specialist in the electromagnetic properties of the rare earth minerals. What makes my case unique, apart from the weird and wholly inexplicable symptom I wish to describe, is that I am probably the only human, the only mammal or terrestrial organism, to ever come into such intimate contact with this specific alloy of the rarest of rare metals. My mind was on certain personal issues, rather than safety, when I arrived at the laboratory that day, and so I neglected the usual precautions, accidentally inhaling some of the strangely toxic fumes from the vacuum deposition oven. Nobody is to blame for my current condition but me.
I am told by the neurologists and bio-chemists that the compound seems to have a morbid affinity for a protein which sheaths the neurons of my brain. One must recall that the human animal is first and foremost a large set of self-replicating molecules that manufacture proteins. The part of us which one might call the “mind” is, in fact, more of an electrical phenomenon that occurs atop this chemical substrate. How exactly the tiny atoms and molecules of the unique substance interact with the electro-chemical signals of the human brain is unknown to me, but they seem now to act as what I call “Probabilistic Receivers.”
None of the people I see are really coherent any longer, and instead they exist in a fuzzy state of forever coming and going, of always being both here and there. They all have become outlandish fogs and smears around my bed, and I am never quite sure if I am speaking with an actual person or some quantum fragment of one.
Our standard Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics gives the macroscopic observer, by its necessary participation in processes at that scale, a decided agency over the unfolding of the Universe. As a so-called probability wave propagates through space-time as a superposition of possibilities according to Schrödinger’s famous equation, it is the unavoidable interaction of the observation which collapses the wave, interfering with parts of itself by carrying on in all manners available to it, down to just one. You might say that the observer thus “chooses” reality.
When the nurse comes to give me my medications, I can see a strange conglomeration of hairstyles, long and short, big and sleek, flips and bobs. One doctor seems to simultaneously sport a moustache, a beard, and a five o’clock shadow, all while being entirely clean shaven. My friend brings me chocolates, and flowers, and a teddy bear, and a magazine, when he arrives also empty handed. The words on the sympathy cards dance and morph as the phrasing of the sentiments expressed takes on all possible forms.
A less held view is the “Many Worlds” interpretation, whereby the entire Universe bifurcates at every quantum decision that occurs, such that the potential worlds which exist within the probability wave are not entirely lost, but rather continue on through their own timelines, normally mutually exclusive of, and oblivious to, each other. This best describes my current condition, for I have seemingly gained the power of sight and experience of Probability Space, that nebulous totality some theorists call the 5th Dimension. I am perceptive of a sort of “quantum bleed,” as I call it, between timelines, perhaps based on some sort of tunnelling phenomenon between what otherwise might have been and what is.
I know that I am a married man of fifty-nine with three children, and it is often that I have gone to embrace and kiss my wife only to find out that while we are still friends, this bit of her quantum wave has been divorced from me for twelve years. She was my high school sweetheart. We met in grad school. She lived across the street. She committed suicide shortly after the affair. At times my lab assistant rebuked my advances and it seems that my current personal issues evaporate in the cloud of the probable.
Thus, my personal reality has become defocused. Actually, widened is possibly a better term for it now that I think of it. Whether it is due to my perception of something actual or QBism’s muddling of internal notions about reality seems to me a matter of splitting hairs. While this phenomenon seems to affect the world around me it has not affected my actual person, securely interned in the hospital, to quite the same degree. I am absolutely certain that I remain who I have always been.
The most difficult part is seeing my loved ones from here. My son is studying chemistry, just as I had hoped. At the same time he is a garbage man in a far-off city. My daughters are happy, with one married and busy as an accountant and mother, the other returned from post-grad work at Princeton to be with me. I have no daughters. My only daughter cries. I think that my other daughter suffers from domestic abuse, as she seems to have a hint of blackened eyes, bruising, and a fat lip underlying her kind face. There sometimes appear at my bedside total strangers who call me “Dad.” I have asked these ersatz children of mine how their mother is doing, only to find out that she died of brain cancer seven years ago. My heart breaks from the grief in their eyes as they observe me struggle with the reality of unrealities.
But one thing is certain amidst all of these shadow worlds, and it is that I am dying. Perhaps my ultimate moment will continue for months, years, decades even, as the blackbody container of a slowly fading being. My influence on what is around me diminishes along an exponential decay curve until that unfathomable and unidentifiable moment arrives; when I will reach the final quantum of awareness and cease entirely, thereby leaving the worlds of what could have been forever.