On the Watch and Other Stories

What Lies Ahead

How did I end up here? I am sitting in a small, confined space, the carcass of a cat next to me, and in front of me, a metal plate. Behind it is our fate. The cat’s demise. My possible salvation.

Even though it must be less than twelve hours, it seems like ages ago that Professor Rodinger asked me to join him in a special experiment. He brought me into an empty room with nothing but a wooden table and a few chairs in the middle. He asked me how I lived. Alone in a small flat, I replied. My parents died in an accident when they came to visit me at college a few years ago. Since then, I have had no time for social interactions; all my life is focused on studying. The beauty of quantum physics, the pure and enthralling logic of problems like Schrodinger’s cat or the EPR paradox was all I had left in my life.

Out of adoration for Schrodinger’s work and because I admired its elegant and independent character, I had even bought a cat and called him Erwin. After a while, we started to talk about science. Rodinger kept bringing up the many-worlds interpretation, a way of explaining probabilities. I had read about it a long time ago, when I lost a game of heads or tails and the winner told me not to worry, in a different universe I would have won. According to the theory, every possible outcome of a situation has its own universe.

After a while, Rodinger led me into another room with a big, white box in the middle. I could not see what was inside, for the man-sized door that led into it was closed. Before I could turn around to ask Rodinger about it, a bat hit the back of my head and knocked me out on the spot.

-----

When I regained consciousness, I was strapped to a chair, and Rodinger was pacing up and down in front of me. “Ah, you woke up. I was hoping I didn’t hit you too hard; I am very impatient when it comes to waiting for my resources to be ready.”

“What do you mean? Let me go!” I growled, still groggy from his blow.

“I do not think so. You are about to receive a special honor, so be still and listen,” he said, while bowing closer to me. “If you know the many-worlds interpretation, you must also know why it was created.”

I nodded. “Schrodinger’s cat.”

“Exactly,” he proclaimed, delighted by my response, “but do you know what the biggest problem is? We have no accounts that verify or deny this interpretation. If we did, if we knew the many-worlds interpretation to be true, we could start to discover ways of traveling between the universes, maybe even live in a different, better world. But what we need is somebody to find out for us. A human that has experienced the experiment Schrodinger suggested, not just as an observer, but as an actual participant.”

His plan dawned on me, and I tried to free myself from the shackles that bound me to the chair. “You are mad! You can’t do this. Besides, I can only take the path into one universe, not into all the possible outcomes at once.”

“That is what we think, because we can always see each other. Schrodinger’s experiment is only working as long as nobody looks inside the box where it takes place. We on the other hand are always observed by each other. My experiment is dependent on me not looking into the box, and as long as I don’t check, everything can be possible at once,” he said, obviously pleased by his logic. So was I, and for a moment the irresistible curiosity of the scientist overcame me. But then I realized it might very well be on the cost of my own life.

“I assume you are going to use the exact installation Schrodinger suggested for the experiment?” I asked, almost hopefully.

“Yes. You will be sitting in a small box made of metal. Behind one of the walls is a radioactive atom that might decay in the next hour. If it does, a Geiger-Mueller counter will detect the radiation and cause hydrocyanic acid to be released in the box. The amount will be immediately deadly, so don’t worry about suffering for a long time. Can I assume from your interest that you will obey quietly?”