The Quantum Wanderer

I am Marcelo, a diligent graduate student in physics from a federal college in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  I live kind of close to college, and so I still live with my mom.

I haven’t really slept the night before.  I went out with a friend of mine, an influencer.  The influencer doesn’t really drive, so when we go out, I would be kind of a designated driver, and the influencer would do his thing in the nightclubs, helping promote them.

We met two foreigners, one American and one Mexican, and talked all night.

Once they went to the hotel with the tourism group, we went after them.

We ended up being expelled from the hotel before anything could happen.  But of course the whole thing was not quick.

I come home around 6:00, and classes start at 8:00.  I leave the sheets on the bed, so that Mom doesn’t think I was abducted or something.  Yes, Rio de Janeiro is *very* dangerous.

My eyes are kind of dry, I am walking in the corridor wearing sunglasses, on the way to my next class, in [Electricity].

A friend of mine stops him on the way, “Yo, playboy, ready to surf?”

“Yo, I just didn’t manage to get any sleep.”  Lifting the sunglasses, he shows off his sore eyes.

“Dude…”

And I continue with his way to the classroom.

Upon getting there Fernanda, one of the 5 female students that entered the college the same year as me, looks at me.

“Hey, ready for the test?”

“Test?  What test?”

“You know, P1, like half your grade.”

“Fuck!!!”

A drop of sweat comes by the side of the head. The professor had a very heavy accent, it was really tough to understand him.  That’s why I used Feynman’s book on Electromagnetism.

The professor arrives and distributes the tests for everyone.

I can’t remember the equations, but it looks like the electrons are talking to me.  Based on the units being used, and some of my memory, I reconstruct the formulas needed. 

I finish the test, it looks like I did as well as possible, considering my state.

After talking some more with my friends, I go back to my car, and start driving home.  All of a sudden, this really bad traffic jam.

I look around, and some cars just start doing a reverse, and maneuver to get in the wrong way.

I see people coming among the cars in the front, running.

A “drag net” is coming.

In Rio de Janeiro, there is a mode of mugging in which a large group of muggers (20 – 50 muggers) get together and start mugging everyone.  It is called, in the local language, “arrastão”, because of the fishing method with the same name.  This fishing method is the one where nets, from several boats, go all the way to the bottom of the sea, in a sandy area, and just pick *everything* up.  It is very predatory.  Both the fishing and the mugging.

In this country where guns are banned, the bad guys have easy access to guns.  In particular, drug lords have access to war guns, such as assault rifles and hand grenades.  The general population has no luck, guns are forbidden.  Getting a concealed permit is almost impossible, you have to be in a security firm, which generally is created by policemen.

 Now I am terrified.  My car is blocked in the back by other cars.  I take the seatbelt off, stand up, and then I feel something wet on my chest.  I look down, and then everything is engulfed in a white light.

***

When the light fades, I am in an ethereal dimension.  I look down, and the floor is a comfortable grass.  I look around, and I am inside this stadium, right in the middle of it.  I am not too good at estimating distances, but I must have something around 150 feet to the closer walls, and around 250 feet to the farther ones.  It has elliptical format.  The walls look to be some 10 feet high.  Above them, there is this stair format that goes all the way up, some 100 feet.

On the sky, in front of me, there is this very typical Black Hole.  I can see the characteristic light disc around it.

To my back, I can sense some warmth, and the shadow on the ground shows me that there is a light source around.

I can’t really look at it, it is uncomfortable.

 The Black Hole, with its gravitas and commanding presence, spoke first. Its voice was like the echo of the void, resonating with the weight of countless eons. ”Marcelo,” it intoned, ”you have been chosen from among the recent deaths on your planet. We have summoned you to this plane.”

I look at it, and can’t help it.  “Where am I?  Who are you?”

“You are between two instants, between two places.  This is between here and there, the present time that is past and the present time that is to be.  In your math language, you are in the dt instant.  As for who I am, you could define me as Order.”

I remember my calculus training, how calculus is based on calculating what happens at an interval that is so small that it tends to zero.  The points are so close that they tend to be the same.  Yet you calculate them as if they are different points, and then force them to be the same point.  This is weird.

“Am I dead?”

“In body yes, in soul not.”

“Do we have souls, then?”

“Are you familiar with the ship of Theseus?”

“Yes.” The ship of Theseus is a paradox involving small changes.  It starts with a wood ship, namely Theseus’.  If you change one board on the ship, it continues to be Theseus ship.  If you change a second board, it continues to be Theseus ship.  If you keep going, and end up having all boards changed, is the ship that has been maintained still Theseus ship?  It would not contain any of the original ship’s material.  And what if you gather the wood that was replaced, and build a ship with it?  Would it be a new ship, or would it be Theseus’ ship?

“Well, just like the math for infinite series is the response to Achiles and the turtle paradox, the soul is the answer to the ship of Theseus paradox.  It is a place to store intelligence, experience, capabilities, tendencies.  Basically what makes you, you.”

I try to turn around, but the light is blinding, so I close my eyes, and cover them with my arm.  “And who are you?”

“I am Entropy.”

Entropy is the name physics gives to chaos at a molecular/atomic/particle level.  It is a concept generally seen in Thermodynamics in physics.

I wonder what is the limit on what they can do.  “Are you guys omnipotent?”

“Your definitions are too lacking to see the picture in which we could answer that question.  In a very simplistic way, let’s say we are.”

“What do you want from me?”

“We just want you to live there.”

“How will that benefit you?”

After this question, the disk around the black hole bent a little down, and I could sense that light from the star turned a little less bluish.

“Congratulations, you’re the first one to ask that, among all the other candidates.  First thing to understand is that consciousness can alter the universe around it.  In your universe, the amount of change that can happen is small.  It only applies to very small situations, such as electrons.  In other realities, it can be bigger.  The reality you are going to one of those bigger ones.

“That allows for human consciousness to alter reality more freely.  What your literature might call magic.

“Every so often, they use that to invoke a hero.  But we select the hero.  And this time we selected you.

“This is something that you will only understand later, but you are going to be a kind of balance element”.

This is all really weird, but I can’t stop my curiosity.

“Based on what did you select me?”

“You died at the right time, and we deemed you balanced.  After you leave here, you are to just follow your desires, we will not intervene.”

I have so many questions, but I just get cut short.  Entropy’s disk looses it’s bulge, goes back to straight, and the light behind me assumes the bluish tone again.  Apparently they are back to ‘serious’.

“Choose: power or potential?”

In every experiment in physics I did, I noticed that there is always some sort of balance.  And the small changes, if you give them enough time, can grow to big differences.

“I choose potential.”

In a sudden movement, I am thrown in a dark place.  Slowly, my eyes start adjusting to the smaller amount of light.  As if I was staring on the sun, and then got into a darker room.

I start hearing people people shouting, and apparently, celebrating.  I can’t understand a word they say.

I look around, I am in a square room, it must be around 15 feet long on each wall.  It has a closed door.  This door seems to be very solid, with a small opening at eyes height.

An old man, leaning on a staff, comes close to me.  He has a treated white beard, and is almost completely bold.  He asks “Cześć. Jak się czujesz?”

I have no idea what they are asking.  I just put my ‘I have no clue’ face.  The person that asked me this looks at me and sighs.

The people that were celebrating got a little less enthusiatic, all of a sudden.

The old man turns around, and says ”Myślę, że wezwaliśmy jakąś zwykłą osobę.”

The old man gets close to me, and makes a movement with his hand, and a crystal ball appears on his hand.  It is a little bigger than a softball.  He says ” Połóż swoją rękę na tym krysztale”.  He then points to my hand, and points to the crystal ball.

When I touch the crystal ball, I feel a very light tingling on my hand, the crystal doesn’t respond.

He points to one guard, and says “Trzymasz go za rękę.”  He points to another, and says “Uderzasz go w tył głowy.”.  The first one holds my wrist with hands.  I get worried, but they have lances and swords, so I try to keep calm.

The other guard comes around, and slaps me in the back of the head, really hard.  My response is immediate, I shout “What the fuck!”, and try to take my hand out, but now more soldiers are restraining me.

Now there are soldiers restraining me completely. 

The old man says “ Poziom pierwszy, brak umiejętności. Wydaliśmy środki na nic.”

The old man then goes to the door and hits his staff three times against it.  I can see a face through the small hole in it.  They then open the door, and he steps out.

The guards push me back a little, I fall on my butt.  They then leave the room and close the door.  I don’t even have a reaction.

This is all so crazy. 

I try to pray to Entergy and Order, but nothing happens. 

I bang on the door, asking for help, no one shows up. 

I curse the duo of gods, but nothing happens again.

I get tired of stress.  I am fucked.  I cried.

I wake up splashed by cold water.  I wake up in shock, and there is soldier in armor with a bucket in his hands.  He looked back and said to his friend “Hej Adam, czy wyobrażałeś sobie kiedyś, że ten bohater jest takim gówniarzem?”

He looked at me, and kicked my leg “Obudź się, do cholery, śpiąca królewno”.

They leave some water that could have been some soup at some point, and some bread with mold.  The parts that were not moldy were really tough.

My mind is blank, I am just going through the motions right now.  I try to eat a part that doesn’t have mold in it, and try to drink some of the soup in a corner.  I am aware that they have swords, while I don’t even know how to use one.  It reminds me of the feeling of being mugged at gun point.  My parents always said to never react to a mugging.

After I finish eating, the guard picks the metal bowl that had the soup, and says to his friend “Czy kiedykolwiek wyobrażałeś sobie, że uderzasz bohatera?”.  He looks at me, smiles.  Then the world twists around me, and I am sent to the floor.  My cheek hurts.  The guard laughs.  Apparently the joke was funny, whatever that was.

The days go around like this.  I am fed once a day.  I am hungry even when I am done eating.  I try to keep a minimum of cleanliness by always using the same corner of the cell for my needs.  Even with that, the smell is probably really bad.  I can’t even smell it anymore.

I don’t get a lot of beating, but at this point, it doesn’t even matter anymore.

***

I get waken up with a bucket of water, again.  I don’t count the days anymore, I don’t know how long I have spent in this cell.  Everything is the same.  I just don’t care.

I felt cold.  They gestured me to stand up, and the took me out of the cell.  They brought me up the stairs, and into a large patio.  I could see some stands, with some weapons on it.  On some of them, some metal weapons, and on some of them there were some weapons made entirely of wood.  Some lances had a padded top instead of being sharp.

There wasn’t anyone around, though.

I was brought to a carriage, with two horses in front, a place to sit, and a sheet cover.

They lifted the back part of the sheet, it was a cell, with some chains in the middle of it.  The floor was just wood, while the crate was made of some metal.  Probably iron.

I was chained to the middle of the cell, and then it was covered again.  I just went with it.  There was nothing to do.  The guards were visibly stronger than me.

The vehicle starts to move, slowly.

The hours pass.  My stomach rumbles with hunger, but I don’t really feel like trying to speak out.  If I did, they wouldn’t understand.  Even if they did, I don’t feel like it would matter much.  The swing of the chariot just keeps on and on.  It is funny how, in other situations, this would even be soothing.

The horse, all of a sudden, starts making a lot of noise, and the cart stops moving forward.  It even goes back a little.  I hear the conductor making soothing noises, “Ohhaaa…  Ohhaaa…”

All of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.  I hear the conductor scream, “PIERDOLIĆ!!!!!!”.

I hear some really messed up noises.  There is a strong pull on the front of the cart, and it tumbles on its side.  The left side of the cart is against the floor.  It is dragged for a little forward.  The whole thing shakes violently.

The horses cry out, and then one goes silent.  Then the other one.  Now a very heavy silence is around me.  I can feel death is looming around.

My heart is beating a thousand times a minute…,  I am looking at the sheet…   After what feels like an eternity, but is actually a small amount of time I see claws tearing it open slowly.

A muzzle appear between the rips, and does this deep smelling.  It disappears, to be replaced by this huge animal eye.

It roars.  It’s hard to describe, but I don’t simply hear the roar, I feel the roar in my belly, in my bones, and it terrifies me.  Everything goes black.