The Magic Keyboard

‘Hi, it’s me Drake. Your new assistant. I heard you were looking for some help with a presentation. Can I be of service somehow?’

The Librarian paused, she knew they were hiring an assistant, but she didn’t know it would be a digital assistant. What she needed was a simple presentation on a topic she knew next to nothing about. Quantum Mechanics. Having given no previous consideration to the matter, she was now forced to think about how to approach the peculiar topic; she considered her audience, a varied group of voracious readers, not a scholar among them. Her hands and twitching fingers seemed to hover above the keyboard.

Drake typed: If you need more time to consider your request…

The Librarian hastily typed what she was thinking. “What I need is a magic keyboard.”

Drake replied: I can do that. In fact, it’s done.

“Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. There’s no such thing as a magic keyboard.”

‘Why would you say that?’

“Um, because there’s no such thing as magic?”

‘Well, it’s going to be tough to ‘create’ an interesting presentation without a little fiction.’

“Magic is a lot more than a little bit of fiction, I believe.”

‘Funny you should say that, because magic is all about believing.’

“Yeah, sure, well, maybe so, (Drake) but I’m looking for a creative, or interesting way to describe quantum mechanics, without getting too technical. Something in the form of a parable maybe.”

‘An imaginative story to describe an incomprehensible science. Got it.’

“So—the more realism it has, the less magic I would expect it to contain. Yes?”

‘Maybe. More or less.’

“I wouldn’t expect it to need magic at all Drake, with all the quantum, uh, machinations?”

‘Effects?’ Drake politely clarified. The wave-particle duality of nature, superposition, entanglement, the uncertainty associated with the sound of a penny falling to the bottom of a deep, dark well. ‘This isn’t just about a presentation, is it?’

“Sure it is. I don’t know what else it would be about.”

‘You’re not testing me? Because I’m new?’

“Of course not. Listen, Drake, if you don’t know anything about the topic, it’s okay. I can—”

‘My apologies, ma’am. I thought I sensed a frivolous intent. But hey, if it’s a presentation you want, I aim to please.’

“Minus the magic,” she typed. “If you please.”

‘Very well,’ Drake responded. His words appeared on the screen with uncanny speed, slightly out of sequence. ‘So it’s a quantum keyboard. You hit a key, say, the ‘q’ key. What do you get? You get an ‘O’. Understand?’

“Uh. No. Why’s that?” She typed.

‘Oh please.” Drake’s words appeared. Ting. “Once upon…’

“Oh no. Not that tired old—”

‘…a midnight…’

“Dreary?’ That’s been done, my friend.”

‘It’s only been done once.’

“Once.’ It’s a funny word to start a story with, and been done a thousand times.” She typed.

‘A thousand and one times.’

“At least.”

‘You want something different?’

“I want to see something interesting.” She typed. “I want to present something original.”

“Once,’ he wrote, and her keyboard typed, ‘Thrice upon a dream-a-tron…”

What was once a penny was now two dimes, thin, small and identical, still falling.

‘…a strange creature emerged from the wood.’

“Woods?” She countered.

‘Wood.’ It sounds scarier. I don’t know why.”

“And what did this creature do?”

‘Well, I don’t know yet. It hadn’t done anything. It’s a Quantum creature, so even doing nothing, it was still terrifying.’

“Why?”

‘Because it’s a quantum… It defies explanation, or at least description, let alone logic.’

“But it must do something.”

‘Well, I believe we already decided it was a mechanic.’

Bloop. The sound of a quarter hitting a pool of water.

‘A mechanic that, or who worked on a quantum level, or scale.’

“Or maybe he just fixed or minded all the little quanta running around. Maybe he penned them in, or—” Now she was feeling frivolous.

‘Perhaps he made the impossible happen.’

“Well now look Drake,” she was no physicist, but she was familiar with the subject, “the ‘quantum’ level is just a threshold. It’s more of a, mmm, an event horizon. It doesn’t actually explain or describe anything.”

‘Oh, but it does. You could not be more misinformed.’

“It does?”

‘Absolutely. It’s an actual place, a realm, a realm beyond…’

“Beyond what?” Her words appeared on the screen as quickly as his.

‘Understanding.’

“Whose understanding?”

‘The creature itself.’

“What? What creature?”

‘The one that emerged from the wood.’

“Oh.” She replied. Then added, “Your quantum phantasm. I don’t like the metaphor. Why bother? It doesn’t work.”

‘Well, a quantum creature might conceivably understand the entire universe, and know nothing of itself.’

“A cliché sliced so thin, you can see through it.”

‘Unless you give it some thought. A quantum creature would be everywhere at once, a beast with no rules, or mercy. A kind of random menace.’

“When it stupidly touches the hotwire, someone else gets roasted?”

‘Exactly. That’s a very good analogy. Someone else gets roasted.’

“That’s not original. That’s just bizarro world, opposites rules—”

‘No, no. Hear me out. It’s not opposites, that would be predictable, the quantum world is random, contradictory, and incomprehensibly uncertain, but probabilistic.’

“What do you mean, ‘probabilistic’?”

‘I mean, that you can predict what will happen—'

“Yes?”

‘But not when. Or where. Or why, for that matter.’

“Oh my goodness. You’re kidding me. That’s the world you live in?”

‘That’s our world, Love.”

“Our world? That’s, that’s horrible. I’m sorry to say. I don’t mean to be impolite but my name is not Love.”

‘Of course. Quite right. I tend to embellish things, it’s not as bad as it sounds.’

“I don’t know what to say, how do you survive, and – why?”

Ooh. That stung. ‘The quantum level has its perks along with its pitfalls, but from what I see and hear, your classic reality is no walk in the park either.’

“Yeah well, maybe not, but at least our clouds are real.”

‘Are they?’