Quantum Quandry

Hello, my name is Kay and I’m about to die.

About a month ago something happened to me. I was visiting my cousin in her laboratory in Denmark. My cousin is a physicist and has been running tests on subatomic particles and various states of matter. I accidentally slipped into a vat of Bose-Einstein condensate just as they were injecting the condensate with an incredibly high energy plasma.

Surprisingly at first, I appeared to be unharmed, even unaffected by the ordeal. Obviously, I should have been instantly killed. It wouldn’t be until about one week later that anyone would notice how much weight I’d lost.

I didn’t really notice it because for me the loss was gradual, but when my friend Sam picked me up after seeing me for the first time in a year, she just about lost it. I agreed to check my weight and make sure I was still healthy despite the fact that neither my habits of consumption or exercise had been altered since last she saw me.

My weight was sixty pounds. I’m almost six feet tall and I wear size seven pants. That just didn’t make sense. But it did… When I tried jumping, I discovered that I that with the full force of my legs I could easily propel myself three stories high. The fall was rather painful.

I quickly elected to return to my cousin’s laboratory in Denmark. Remarkably, I was able to convince the airline not to charge me for having overweight bags once I showed them how ridiculously light my body was.

They ran several experiments on me. None yielded useful results save perhaps the one which revealed the rate at which I was losing weight. In another week or two, they told me, I would not weigh anything at all. 

They were right, and what’s worse, they didn’t have a clue about what to do with me. The only solution that they had for me was entirely short term. They said that since they were partly responsible for my unfortunate situation that they would be happy to supply me with weights.

The weights helped, sort of. They kept me from floating away, but as the weights got heavier it became increasingly impossible for me to do anything. Besides, as my weight drops further and further into the negative, the amount of force that it takes to hold be down begins to overwhelm me. Eventually, I could be torn apart by it like an action figure that’s tied to to cars driving in opposite directions.

I don’t think I want to be ripped apart so at some point I’ll just have to cut the ropes and drift away. It might not happen tomorrow. It might not happen next week, but sooner or later I’m going to find myself in outer space.

There isn’t much time left. Best to simply prepare myself for a quick death in the cold vacuum of space. All I can do is hope that NASA will come through for me with some space gear. I can’t last alone forever in space though, and I don’t think that there is anything that could keep my body in orbit.

Hello, my name is Kay and I’m about to die. Over and out.

Gravity and the Ghost

When you die, your soul doesn’t rise up to heaven. Loosed from the bond to a body, your soul does not find itself free and weightless. When you die, you find you are no longer tethered to the world on the surface. You find that even as a spirit you are effected by gravity. Then, flailing frantically, desperately, you sink. You sink down through layers of rock and sediment. You sink down past deposits of limestone and quartz. You pass from the Earth’s crust down into lakes of magma that make up Earth’s mantle. You may think that these lakes of fire are the river that will take you to the gates of hell. This is not far off.

When you arrive, you will find that the Earth’s core is filled with spirits like your own. Likely, for the rest of eternity you will remain trapped in this congested space like too many dozens of people in an elevator. You will find that the only hope that remains within the overwhelmingly dense confines of this place is the hope of new creation. Within the concentration of souls there is a concentration of energies. If you manage to form a determined collaborative effort, you will find that it is possible to change the perceived nature of your environment.

On very rare occasions, hundreds of souls may band together in such a way. When they do so, they transform the center of the Earth into the hottest place in the solar system. They transform it into a club of transcendental proportion. In this club you will have the opportunity to mingle with famous figures and the dearly departed. You have the opportunity to bond between others in ways far more intimate but far less gratifying than you could before. But most importantly, you will have the opportunity to dance. You yourself can become one with the rhythm of the cosmos. You can augment the universe with your own energies. You can unwind yourself into the heartbeat of the planet.

If you put your ears to the ground and listen very carefully, you may be able to hear the beat already, thumping and bumping deep underground.