Tinkering

1957

Danzer felt a frisson of humility as he strode through the cavernous dining hall. It was an unpleasant sensation for the American wunderkind.

The Augustiner Keller was a dazzling paradox -- raw masonry arched over elegant banquettes and the finest white linens. The last of Vienna's ancient monastery cellars, the grand “basement” had survived der Fuhrer and his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the communists, and a quadripartite postwar occupation that had ended only last year with the Austrian State Treaty.

Danzer spotted the aging man in the utilitarian tweed suit and signature bow tie nestled in an alcove, sipping delicately from an ornately leafed bowl. The candlelight glowed in his round lenses, and his broad forehead danced with highlights from the overhead fixtures as he perused what appeared to be a scholarly digest.

"Dr. Schrodinger?" Erwin Schrodinger glanced up, grinning deeply as he stuffed the rolled journal in his coat.

"And you would be Professor Danzer," he responded, taking the younger man's hand. "Please do sit down, and we will find you, as you Americans put it, a good stiff drink." Schrodinger signaled one of the antiquarian waiters, and Danzer ordered a barack, an apricot brandy he'd taken to at his hotel’s bar.

"You must forgive my rudeness," the old physicist rasped, nodding at the thick green concoction before him. "The night chills the blood, and I could no longer wait. Spargelcrémesuppe -- asparagus soup -- a specialty of the house."

“It's I who must apologize -- my meeting at the university ran late."

"No matter. I have so missed this city, and it has been through so much. But it is still much as I left it, at least in such important matters as a superior spargelcrémesuppe."

Schrodinger had completed a tortuous journey from Vienna to Vienna. The University of Vienna grad had taken up arms in the first world war before returning intact to academia in 1920. Stuttgart led to Breslau, and Breslau to the University of Zurich, and ultimately to what Danzer would call the mother lode – Schrodinger’s wave equation: "Total energy equals kinetic energy plus potential energy." To whit: Your arthritic grandfather rolls a ball up a steep hill. The odds of your catching it as it rolls down the other side are roughly those of Chicago’s Cubs taking the pennant. But under Schrodinger’s equation, as Danzer once whimsically informed a cluster of Duke undergrads, a ram conceivably can punch a hole in a dam and that ball, powered by potential energy, can make the uphill grade.

That propelled Schrodinger at 40 into the big time – Berlin – as successor to that father of the new quantum physics, Max Planck. In 1934, however, he fled Friedrich Wilhelm University amid Germany’s mounting anti-Semitism. He landed at Oxford, where he snagged a Nobel Prize with Paul Dirac, the guru of antimatter. Oxford was less enamored of Schrodinger’s playing house with both wife and mistress, and the polyamorous atheist again hit the road. Princeton shared a similar provincial reserve, and he wound up at Austria’s University of Graz in 1936 with two women and a simultaneously dead and thriving cat.

Schrodinger’s gedankenexperiment was designed to illustrate the cosmic crap shoot that was quantum indeterminacy. You take a cat, a flask of poison, and a hammer rigged with a Geiger counter to smash the flask, and lock all in a box with a single radioactive atom. If the atom begins to decay, the flask shatters and the cat is no more. If it doesn’t, kitty continues. Under Schrodinger’s “thought experiment,” kitty is both alive and dead until somebody works up the nerve to peek inside the box and observe the beast. “Schrodinger’s cat” and his theory of the potential “superposition” of atomic states laid the groundwork for a forest’s worth of new quantum speculation.

But indeterminacy soon shuttered Schrodinger’s Follies. After Germany annexed Austria in ’38, Schrodinger recanted his opposition to Nazism but was academically blacklisted for “political unreliability.” He existed like his famed cat as threats and harassment coaxed him into near-seclusion while the government urged him not to leave the jurisdiction. He and his understanding bride fled to Italy, then back to Oxford and, eventually, Dublin, where he spent the next war fine-tuning his opus What is Life?, an attempt to marry physics and genetics and postulated that human consciousness might merely be an echo of a greater force pervading the universe. The book received mixed reviews, but the sequel – Watson and Crick’s roadmap of the genetic double helix – was cutting-edge paydirt.

The University of Vienna welcomed Schrodinger back in ‘55, but you couldn’t keep a good quantum magician down, and he reclaimed the catbird seat for his critical view of nuclear energy. Even in the incandescence of the Augustiner Keller, he appeared a man spent from erecting and burning bridges.

“I assume you have not traveled so far to sample the family Bitzinger’s sublime fare,” Schrodinger mused.

“You’re familiar with Duke’s parapsychology laboratory?” the younger man opened.

“The Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology,” the physicist stated, smile intact. “Life after death, the untapped powers of the mind. Psychokinetic parlor tricks with cards and dice.”

Danzer swallowed a sigh with a dose of apricot liqueur. “Dr. Rhine originally founded the center to research evidence of an afterlife after attending a lecture on spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”

“The Sherlock Holmes fellow. I believe I begin to divine your interest.”

“You’ve never hidden your fascination with Hindu philosophy. Your wave theory was based in part on Vedanta’s theory of a universal, singular consciousness.”

“I merely attempted to chart the physical dynamics and mechanics behind such a unified consciousness – the levers and fulcrums and trapdoors that create the illusion of magic. ‘Magic’ is science we have yet to understand. To borrow from Niels Bohr, everything real is composed of things that cannot conceivably be regarded as real.”

“Unless they can be observed,” Danzer blurted.

Schrodinger’s lips stretched. “Ah. You wish to talk of dead cats.”

“Herren?” Danzer started and glanced up at a cadaverous, starched waiter, at the ready. “Bist du bereit zu bestellen?”

“Bitte,” Schrodinger chimed. “Weinerschnitzel mit Kartoffeln. Doctor, you must try the weinerschnitzel – Viennese schnitzel, our proudest postwar legacy.”

“That sounds…marvelous,” Danzer breathed. “I would like to talk to you about indeterminacy and observation, and propose what I think you might find an intriguing – hell, staggering – new frontier of investigation.”

“My,” Schrodinger smiled. “And how does my unfortunate feline relate to your new frontier?”

“Potential energy,” Danzer offered. “Or should I say, Schrodingerian forces?”

“And why should you say such a thing?”

“Your theories on consciousness, human genetics, the behavior of waves, of matter, of energy suggest a spectrum of phenomena beyond current human observation or understanding.”

“Like your Dr. Rhine’s alternate planes of existence?”

“I’ve always found Rhine esoteric and his obsession a diversion from paraphysics.”

“Paraphysics. I am not familiar…”

“Men like Rhine frame unexplained phenomena as aberrant psychology, parapsychology, condemning the discussion to soft scientists and dinner party babble. What if these things we view as popular voodoo are simply quantum forces beyond general observation? Or, like your cat, these forces exist only through human observation, possibly connected to your unified consciousness.”

“It would not be ‘my unified consciousness.’ But I am rude. Continue.”

Danzer smiled curtly. “The first ‘exceptional’ subject in Rhine’s extra-sensory perception research was Adam Linzmayer, an economics undergraduate, in 1931. Linzmayer scored 100 percent on two short, nine-card series tests administered by Rhine. In his first 300-card series, Linzmayer scored 39.6 percent, when chance would have dictated a mere 20 percent. However, over time, Linzmayer's scores dropped far closer to chance averages. What if we were simply witnessing the boy’s declining subconscious will to observe or, if you will, exert these forces?”

Schrodinger’s indulgent smile flickered. “Subconscious will? You are attributing his abilities to psychological causes.”

“Only in the sense of what we understand as psychological causes. What if Linzmayer’s abilities – this Schrodingerian force – can be observed only through. . .a unique subconscious will?”

 “You peer away, fret with the table linens,” Schrodinger noted. “Do not hedge.”

Danzer frowned as he spotted the approaching waiter. “All right. Here goes. What if these forces solely through the conscious belief that they exist? With the faith that they exist?”

“Faith,” Schrodinger whispered. He was silent through the ensuing service, save a murmured “Danke.” Then, as the waiter turned, the old man grasped his sleeve.

“Ein anderer Schnaps,” Schrodinger muttered. “Sehr schnell, bitte.”

**

“Into what rabbit’s hole are you inviting me to plunge?” Schrodinger asked.

Danzer sawed at his schnitzel. “I’ve been working with researchers in a variety of disciplines to study a series of historical anomalies that may present evidence of Schrodingerian forces at work.”

“Please,” the physicist chuckled. “Let us delay placing my name under Nobel consideration until I have enjoyed my weichselstrudel. What anomalies?”

“I would question your sanity,” Schrodinger said as Danzer concluded 10 minutes later. “However, I have been told I lack objectivity. A visiting scholar of our mutual acquaintance informs me you continue to consult extensively with the OSS, with the U.S. military. This leads me to question why you traveled across an ocean to discuss unified theory, telepathy, and, it would seem, theology, with a half-mad old scientist.”

“You’re far from mad,” Danzer protested.

Schrodinger grinned with acid amusement. “My good friend Einstein proclaimed there are two ways to live one’s life: As if nothing is a miracle, or as if everything is a miracle. I myself would not presume to declare the universe closed to conjecture.

“Einstein also held that the single difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has limits. Why should I want to confirm such things? I suspect I shall have all my answers soon enough. The more cogent question is, why should you want to confirm such things?” He lifted his barack, lowered it to the tablecloth. “This theorem of yours – the creation of force, of potential energy, through human will, it reminds me of a childhood tale. Have you by any chance read Mr. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy?”

Danzer drummed the table, stopped himself. “Saw the Walt Disney movie few years ago. Look, we’re prepared to provide you with unlimited resources, a more-than-generous stipend, and the opportunity to prove everything you’ve every theorized. Hell, to prove everything.”

Schrodinger settled back. “In the winter of 1928, I was fortunate enough to be my U.S. hosts’ guest for a performance of Mr. Barrie’s fantasy by the incomparable Eva Gallienne. Poisoned by the insidious Captain Hook, Tinkerbell takes to her deathbed, and Peter – Eva – implores of the audience, ‘Clap, please, clap if you wish to save my precious Tink! Please, clap if you believe in fairies!’” Schrodinger clapped twice, sharply. Diners turned, concerned, irritated, tittering at the outburst. Danzer grasped the tablecloth.

“It is truly an age of magic. We await like impatient children on Christmas morning to tear the wrappings from the secrets of human consciousness, of time, of the universe itself. But are these miracles and wonders we seek? Tinkerbell or Pandora’s swarm?

“As I tore excitedly through ribbons and tissue, little did I know my little tin popgun might someday wield the firepower to scatter the atoms of a thousand, a million, 10 million souls. ‘Lost boys were out looking for Peter, the pirates were out looking for the lost boys, the redskins were out looking for the pirates, and the beasts were out looking for the redskins. They were going round and round the island, but they did not meet because all were going at the same rate. All wanted blood except the boys.’ 

Schrodinger rose unsteadily. “Boys will be boys, Herr Danzer. But boys these days grow quickly into pirates and warriors and, indeed, into beasts. Thank you, but I believe I will not play today. Servus, my friend. Please try the weichselstrudel.”

**

The warmly exquisite constellation of the Augustiner Keller dining hall dissolved into an unsubstantial glitter that had more to do with hadron wave deterioration than with the crack EON CGI crew.

“This temporal recapture was brought to you by ChronX, a division of EON,” the late and lavishly compensated James Earl Jones intoned in a script represented to him 30 years before as VO for a Demolition Man sequel that never came to pass. “Time, Energy, Space, Life Extension, AI – we’re EON. And, now, please welcome your host for the evening.”

After absorbing a three-minute standing O from the 20,000-some $10,000 Crytopass physical attendees, roughly 5.4 million $3,000 PPV schmucks on all five remaining continents and LunaX, and the 375,500 MarsX Miles customers busy gentrifying the red planet or streaming free on NetfluX Plus. As the last nanosecond-delayed roar from the MarsX monitors died, the now-porcine, windbreakered titan flashed his trademark dimpled smirk and took his place on the center-stage apron.

“The magician Paul LePaul argued, ‘The illusion of magic is an idealistic fantasy; it exists only in the imagination of the spectator.’ LePaul was the inventor of the legendary ‘Card in Sealed Envelope’ illusion – the Las Vegas equivalent of Schrodinger’s pussycat in purgatory. But how do we explain in physical terms what millions of you have just witnessed? Is temporal recapture the culmination of nearly a century of quantum research and experimentation, or simply cosmic sleight-of-hand we’ve been permitted behind the curtain to divine?

“The admittedly horrific Miami Anomaly of 2043 – a bit of Old Testament razzmatazz by a megachurch prayer mob, or the ultimate proof of concept? Do we accept that God fulfilled the homicidal will of a quarter-million zealots, or that humanity finally unleashed its bottled potential? Tonight, I’m going to help you unlock that potential.

“But first, let me ask you. Are you an Erwin Schrodinger, shackled by fear and myopia, by the fairy tales our fathers and grandfathers and Hollywood and the literary and academic communities spun to thwart human potential? Or are you a Franklin Danzer – a visionary immune to ethical paralysis, to the nagging demands of the few at the expense of billions?” The former plugin car jockey broke into a mocking grimace. “Clap, please clap, if you believe in fairies!”

After a moment of utter mass confusion, an audience accustomed to railing, jeering, whooping, and general social cacophony fell into the greatest sustained silence since a tabernacle full of Reform Southern Baptists surgically willed a massive chunk of Miami’s populace out of observed existence.

**

The Lone Ranger cackled at the thunder rolling off the glowing EON Center. The old man, slight but steely even in what his container city neighbors speculated to be his mid-centenaries, had coined the nickname himself. Only a handful of the disenfranchised, displaced, and delusional had ever seen the creaky Johnny Depp flick, and certainly none could know the village scholar was referencing Clayton Moore, the original 20^th Century Lone Ranger stripped of his mask by some prick oilman bent on rebooting the legend.

The Ranger’s very age suggested he once had been one of the Half-Percenters, maybe some Big Brain discarded like half the residents of the Orlando camp by the asshole holding court three blocks away. But like most obsolete intellectuals, he was generous with his expertise in improving conditions among “The Cargo,” as the cops and bureaucrats called them. When he called the community out for a Friday night “power swap,” his neighbors shrugged and ventured from their boxes to see just where all this was going. They greeted the evening keynote initially with amusement, growing somber as The Ranger broke down the science and the magic.

And as the EON Center fell silent, the old man raised his withered hands to the skies, then brought them together.

 **

He glanced about with a stab of fury as his delicious silence shattered with the slightly arrhythmic slap of palm against palm. The slow clap embodied defiance, liberation, autonomy, and, for the wizard of space and now time, sparked a fleeting impotence no summary mass termination or malevolent Twitter Pulse could treat.

A minor annoyance — the ChronX team could fix things in post-edit. But as a second pair of hands, then a third, then a fourth, then a tenth, then a hundredth joined the alpha clapper, he realized the disruption was coming not from the terrestrial or LunaX or MarsX monitors, nor from the premium ticketholders casting about for someone to dismember. Some of the motivated had grown nearly cyanotic maintaining silence, and a symphony of coughing and diatribes accompanied the disembodied “applause.” A few bewildered souls assumed they’d misinterpreted their icon’s will, and began tentatively to clap, bringing the crowd down upon them. The folks in the cheap seats watched mutely as what had been billed as history’s greatest demonstration of “mass potential for positive change” devolved into a pay-per-view freestyle tag team brawl.

From the safety of the stage, he continued to hear the crisp, mocking rhythm of a single pair of hands above the escalating fray. And as the likely truth dawned, he realized EON either should have paid off the old bastard or simply eliminated the motherf-- 

**

The Cargo turned as one as the glow from The EON Center blinked out like a vintage refrigerator bulb and silence again descended on the neighborhood. The last of the ritual applause died as one of the “container kids” called attention to the body on the fragmented pavement. The Lone Ranger was on his back, eyes locked eternally into either wonder or malicious gratification, thin cracked lips frozen in a euphoric arc. At his elbow was a rounded screw top bottle of the Ranger’s favored spirit. They passed it around, eulogizing and celebrating and feeling the apricot warmth inoculate them against the now darker night.

**

And as Danzer drifted over his own impromptu wake, a gentle, thickly Teutonic murmur floated past him on the inland breeze.

“Faith and trust and pixie dust,” Schrodinger mused. “Ha brakha dabra!”