“Oh, shit,” he muttered, careening around the twisty road, trying to watch the road and instruments at the same time and failing miserably at both. “I’m an electron.”
The crazy road race continued for some time, sometimes uphill and then, crazily, he would find himself going downhill without having reached a crest, the semi always on his tail, crashing into him any time he slowed down too much. When they were going uphill it would fall behind a little bit but it would come barrel-assing up behind him on the downhills. And always there were the police.
He got to a trance-state where he had a vague notion of where he was in the road and also how fast he was going. Not a perfect control of either, but a good approximation. He was all over the road though. And then, suddenly, the road ended in a guard rail right around a steep corner. He slammed on the brakes but the semi hit him from behind and he found himself flying through open space. Then the car, nose down, hit a wall on the far side and exploded.
He came to, lying on the ground at the bottom of the mountain, pieces of the car all around him. He could barely see them, out of the corner of one eye. He tried to move his head but it was immobile, his vision skewed up and to the left. He rolled his eyes and saw his torso, only slightly bleeding, lying on the ground next to him with a leg on top of it. Then the leg jerked into motion and slid over to the shoulder socket and attached.
“That’s not right,” Bill muttered, wondering how he could speak without lungs to provide the air.
There was more thumping and bumping around him and then he could turn his head. He got to his feet, clumsily, leaning slightly to one side, and looked down.
He had one leg and one arm attached as “legs.” He had a leg as his right arm and his left arm was attached, backwards, on his right. One buttock was just below him on his chest and he noticed that it wasn’t his chest but his back; his head was on backwards. And there was something tickling his hand.
He pulled the hand around, holding it upwards behind his back where he could see it. What was tickling his hand was Tuffy.
“You’re real,” he said. He noticed then that there still was no sensation. He hadn’t felt the turns on the road or land under his feet. He could see, but there was no sound of wind, no smell, no feel. Except for the tickling sensation from Tuffy’s fur.
“What is reality?” The words formed in his head. They weren’t even words, just the knowledge that such words had formed.
“I’m a physicist, not a philosopher,” Bill replied. “You’re real.”
“At your level, what is the difference?” The words were like lead weights in his mind.
“We’re better at sums,” Bill said. “And you’re real.”
“I thought that physicists hated it when people said ‘sums’?” the creature replied, honestly sounding puzzled.
“I’m supposed to have legs where legs go and arms where arms go and you’re arguing semantics?”
“Nonetheless, when all was uncertain you clutched for the certainty of philosophy,” the creature said.
“Descartes was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time,” Bill replied. “I didn’t read about him in a philosophy course, I read about him in a tensoral calculus course. His ‘I think because I am’ thing was just blind panic.”
“Yet you continue to use your mind, to apply logic, even when your butt is sticking out of your chest. Many would have gone insane.”
“I made my SAN check,” Bill answered. “I was an electron, all that ‘I can’t know my velocity and location at the same time’ bullshit in the car. Now I’m a busted-up electron that has been badly reassembled. I suppose it’s a metaphor for something. I’m still trying to figure out the cops. They looked just like Virginia State Patrol, except that Virginia State Patrol doesn’t usually have fangs that are dripping venom and yellow eyes.”
“Who do you think keeps an eye on the particles in your universe to ensure they don’t exceed the speed of light? And who destroys them when they do?”
“Cops with yellow eyes and fangs?” Bill said. “Makes as much sense as anything Einstein ever said.” Bill thought about something else and found himself laughing out loud. “And blue lights!”
He found himself back in the car, in the race down the hill. Tuffy was hanging from the rearview like a brown, fuzzy dice, swinging back and forth, attached by a silver thread that looked infinitely thin.
“Uncertainty principle,” Bill muttered. “I got it the first time.” His body was whole again, two hands on the wheel, bitterly trying to stay on the black stuff.
“All of reality is based upon uncertainty,” Tuffy said. “Certainty is impossible.”
Bill was certain that the police would kill him if he sped up. So he sped up. Before long he had a chain of police cars following him, blue lights flashing. One pulled along side of him. He looked over and the cop reminded him of a Virginia State Patrol officer that had pulled him over on I-81 the one time he had been stupid enough to drive to Washington instead of fly. Same fat face, same expression of casual disinterest in his existence. The dripping fangs and yellow eyes like a snake’s were at variance, though. So was the cop’s action which was to ram into the side of the car, Bill suddenly realized it was a Pinto, and shove it off the road into space. He’d somehow expected a ticket and a lecture on safe driving on twisty roads.
The cop car followed and the whole line behind it came along, the line of cars flying off into the canyon and impacting on the wall on the far side.
Bill woke up back on the ground. This time both his arms were in the place his legs should be, his torso had been switched for his abdomen and his head was on sideways. Tuffy was perched on his butt, which was about where his shoulder should be. That was when Bill realized he had his head up his…
“You’re real,” Bill said. “I don’t know about any of the rest of this Heisenberg stuff and I refuse to believe that I’m an electron, especially one with free will. But you’re real. And I think you’re trying to tell me something. Couldn’t you just send an e-mail?”
“Yes, Bill, I’m real,” Tuffy replied. “I’m the realest thing you’ll ever meet. Realer than a mountain falling on your head. Realer than a planet, realer than stars. More real, by far, than death. I’m as real as it gets.”
“This isn’t real, I know that,” Bill replied. “I can’t be talking without lungs.”
“Who says that you’re talking?” Tuffy noted.
That was when Bill realized that he couldn’t actually hear himself talk.
“So what is reality?” Bill asked. “Really.”
“Do you want to see?” Tuffy asked.
“I’ve always wanted to see,” the physicist admitted. “Since the first time I asked myself that question.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a philosopher,” Tuffy said, dryly.
“Well, you were right, at this level the only difference is that we’re better at sums.”
“Okay, I’ll show you reality.”
Bill suddenly found himself squeezed in on every side. There were Tuffys all around him, pressing him in, making it hard to breathe. They were on his back, in his hair, pressing against his mouth.
“SAN check time,” he said, noticing that he did not, in fact, have to breathe and that he hadn’t actually spoken. Just that certainty that he had.
“You’re doing well,” Tuffy said. It was all of them and one of them at the same time. “This is the ultimate reality.”
“What? Fuzzy stuffed animals?” He noticed that while there was a moment of panic it was actually quite comfortable. He also noticed that what he was standing on was Tuffys; they were squirming under his feet.
“Your scientists describe universes as soap bubbles,” Tuffy replied.