1
A child was born deep in the remote. Way out in the outskirts from all interceding presence; human, technological, natural, or otherwise. Her given name, Qia. With the soft “ch” in the beginning.
Qia is of no nationality, creed, country, or belief. She had to have parents, however she never met them. She lives in a solid concrete courtyard, where each wall is just high enough — but no ceiling, so that the outdoor elements can be witnessed. A particle shield keeps them out, and synthesises only a range of comfortable temperatures ranging from 60º F to 80º F, incredibly moderate humidity. Perfect if perfection was.
She is never lonely, for she knows no loneliness without something to compare to. Her existence is entirely monk-like. Qia is raised effectively, by no one, secured and nourished by the additional synthetic capabilities or her concrete courtyard. A hard womb of prudent living, exerting small reactions from Qia by occasional intense imagery provided by Earth’s Atmosphere. The sunset, the stars, the clouds.
It is good as it is.
This courtyard absorbs each of interstellar gifts handed to Earth; ranging from Solar Winds, to UV light, the Rain Cycle, dust and pollen, channeling these chemicals beneath the visible spectrum straight into Qia’s biochemistry. Qia has never cried, nor has she wasted. Concrete on her feet builds a strength in her soles. She feels the temperature change on her skin. Qia never bores, and her attention is equally sustained on the blank concrete wall as it is the stars on a clear evening. No pollution, nor thought of a concept: polluting. Qia is unpolluted by the things that most fill humanity’s incessant thought stream.
Filtered Sunlight leaves her pigment a fading auburn. White hair grows thick from every follicle, not one space vacant — pupils fill the dark grey iris dish presented on a clean tablecloth. She notes the stippled markings all over her body. Reminiscent of the dimples in Evening’s Sky. But she’s never seen herself. She knows only her body. Locomotion and experimentation. Testing limits within the concrete box due to knowing her own movements block to block, line to line, without any concept of measurement.
Laying on her back, she extends a leg upward and blocks out the sun with her foot. Light spills around the perimeter of her digits. Qia locks her leg and cranes it downward toward her point of view until she feels her ankle on her forehead. The resting leg behind all of this draws the foot near her fulcrum and, gently, she places pressure on this grounded foot. Her hips lift upward, arching her back. The cranial located foot holds its position until its toes make contact with the concrete below Qia’s head. The load-bearing leg asserts itself against the ground, propelling her body backward onto the inverted leg, completing a feather-like alien cartwheel.
Gravity applies to the nature burdened by it, beyond Qia’s courtyard.
2
“Then she’d be able to float at that point right?” I asked him.
“Yes! She can literally walk on water or through walls — molecules won’t apply to her,” Benny responded with a massive confidence. “Her understanding of how things are connected to each other is way different than ours.”
“But she’s standing on the concrete,” which is the point I was stuck on for the last 20 minutes.
“Yes but that’s her first discovery. In the experiment — you watch the particles go into the slots you shot them into. Slot 1 & Slot 2. As soon as you look away, the particles do whatever they want,” Benny recalled the cartoon they watched on YouTube.
Benny continued: “People don’t understand this because they get old and get taught limits the entire way up until they just let that be the final say. Fortunately, we’re on the inside track. We know about Quantum Theory early on… we have to be like 20 years ahead of even the scientists that made this video!”
Benny is citing a 9 year old documentary extract called Dr. Quantum Double Slit Experiment. A goateed, balding super hero flies into the first frame:
“What they taught us in school isn’t really the way it is — and, that our senses are playing tricks on us. You just gotta wonder: what is this reality that we find ourselves in?
Quantum theory says it’s just waves of information…but do I really believe this? I sure hope so!” The uncertain hero then crashes into a concrete skyscraper.
19th and 20th century scientists developed the Double Slit experiment over the space of 173 years.
Thomas Young began in 1801 England with light. To understand the nature of light, he shined it through two closely spaced slits and onto an opaque screen on the opposing side. Young observed that, once the light hit the dual-slits, it divided into new signals upon, causing an interference pattern.
On the result side of the experiment, the opaque screen exhibited multiple bands of light and dark, with the largest concentration in the middle, proving that light behaves as a wave.
Over 150 years passed before Claus Jönsson revisited the experiment in 1961 Germany with a far smaller particle, the electron. The beam shot a mass of electrons at the double-slit obstruction, under the hypothesis that the opaque screen on the other side would show two steady bands of light where the particles landed.
Jönsson’s hypothesis was proven incorrect, as the electron particles exhibited an identical multi-band pattern to that of Thomas Young’s experiment. It turns out, electrons also act as waves, baffling all scientists.
But still, the interference pattern appeared once again in the end result. What was causing this interference?
Humanity — or better put, adult humanity — does not accept the unexplainable so readily.
Instead, they make theories. Two Copenhagen quantum theorists, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg*, tell us that the measuring of a quantum system – such as shooting electrons, or eventually photons, is enough to breakdown the chaotic nature of the previous centuries’
results.
Our intention changes the particular behavior of our smallest realizations.
*An American was involved too, popularizing this concept, but as it is said, all wisdom is plagiarised… and usually by Americans.
Not 15 years later, a crew of Italian scientists revamped the experiment — firing off a single electron at a time over the span of an hour. Perhaps the particles were bouncing off of each other in the shotgun style approach of its predecessors!
We tend to punish and scrutinize objects like objections in the way — that which we stub our toe. To brandish our firmly human response to frustration, the fellows scrutinized one of the slats. They would 100% figure out what the hell was going on at the point of chaos.
Lo and behold, every particle chose a slit and stuck to it. Monogamy!
In this teeny tiny realm, nothing is certain unless we are asking it to be. As soon as we intervene, two things cannot be true at once.
Unless they are not observed.
3
“Humans have to eat though!” I tell Benny.
How is Qia going to have any footing in the quantum community if we’re cutting out the limitations of our very real realities? I’m fairly certain, no matter how early on we learn about quantum theory, we’re already indoctrinated.
One of my earliest memories is walking around a hotel pool, somewhere in the South U.S. I had a red Gatorade and dripped it into the pool. The vaporwave warp of Red Dye 40 barely holding its form before dissipating to the chlorinated teal. I dripped it again and leaned in to admire the visual effects. The inspection was too close and I summersaulted into the pool, underqualified for a swim.
I sank and sank to some muffled shouts. A larger force dragged me against the current he made diving in and returned me to the concrete. Faint images of this, but nothing more memorable than the revelation that I will sink.
I don’t remember anybody ever telling me that I would sink — but it seems like that would’ve made no difference.
Still, Benny insists: “Qia doesn’t know what she cannot do. Nevermind how human photosynthesis doesn’t exist. You can’t prove that it’s impossible. Plus: you don’t need it to be possible, because we’re not even sure about reality!”
“I sank in the pool! —”
“Yeahyeahyeah, without knowing about sinking, you sank in the pool! We all sink in the pool because early in our lives we see movies. Plus our Parents already are tainted with the knowledge that they’ll sink if they go in the water; they don’t want us to drown so they make it known that the water isn’t for standing!
“Qia will be able to go across the water if she has to because she would have never been shown or told otherwise. I bet, if she saw it fit, she’d be able to walk straight through the wall to the outside world.”
I ponder that for a moment. We are doing impressive thought experiments like the great science guys from Copenhagen: “When she walks out, and it’s raining, she’s going to get an impression of water.”
“She’ll have to make a decision.”
“But all humans that ever existed have to make a decision. They see the water come down and run over their skin. They see it make puddles. An infinite amount of kids over milleniums splashing in the puddles. Do you think one of them ever jumped onto the puddle and broke their foot?”
“That’s a good point. Great point actually — but you gotta realize, we’ve got it in our DNA that we sink. That’s actually probably what made you sink when you were 4”
“I think I was 5”
“You were 4”
“You were there?”
“I think so. I definitely remember hearing about that.”
“Where were you?”
“I feel like I was swimming.”
4
Qia experiences a tension. Something like inspiration, but this creature has no conflict or survival instinct that generates inspiration. She presses against the ground to rise, not so effortless. Qia’s brow folds like a birds’ wings. No name for this within Qia, but she sees these floating entities across her fortress opening. She mimics their locomotion, but has felt much light on those occasions.
From pressing herself off the ground, she makes a creative movement on her trot across the concrete. Heel first. Then as much of the sole as possible. Rocking into the ball of her foot, until all that meets the solid stone is the tip of a toenail. One after the other as if in performance to the firmament. She makes her way to the opposite wall as heavenly glow slices through the clouds above. She doesn’t name any of this.
Push.
She presses against the wall with a palm, using the force from her stippled forearm. Nothing happens, so she applies more. She wants to know if it’s like the ground. She’s never felt such motivation. Her peace is disturbed as the wall remains vigilant, steadily including more force from her core, her buttocks, her thighs, feet sliding before the immense immovability of the concrete looming over her. Why does it matter?
The smallest vibration occurs, and pedals into ripple and the wall swallows her arms up to the shoulder. Qia notices her breath for the first time with its absence. Lurched forward completely, once again on the tippiest of toes, she’s halts all forward momentum at the precise moment where all the sky can see of her is calves.
She hangs there in no-man’s land. Feeling a crowded, miniscule bounce against her everything — making the backs of her calves and her heels feel numb in comparison to the submerged half. She hangs for a moment longer. A curiosity. A question that comes with the sensation of unease. Uncertainty, new, is poisonous as fear. Fear, new, is cause for alarm. What is “alarm” within an impenetrable safety?
She withdraws from wherever that was.
Qia shudders, and her mind reclaims its resting pace of clarity. She admires the raised follicles of her dimpled arms. Something is different here, and another wave of nuanced pleasure crashes seemingly beneath her skin. What is skin?
She resumes her experiment toward the other direction. Heel, sole, toe, nail. Now the next foot: heel, sole, toe, nail. And again: heel, sole, —
5
“Toe, then nail. Then she’d just lift right off!” I threw my arms upward as if they were wrapped around a laundry basket. “She sees the birds, she’d want to fly.”
“She needs a reason to even want to!’ Benny debated. He didn’t account for this game to require this much decisionmaking. Their concept – along with their understanding of the Double Slit experiment – is full of embellishment, plot holes, and contradictions.
“But she’s gotta be so fucking bored by now! How old is Qia?”
“I dunno – like our age?”
“No way. I feel like she can drive.”
“Why would she, she can walk through walls, she can probably figure out flying! It doesn’t even matter though, she’s ageless — there’s no age if there’s nothing to care about.”
That’s true, I can agree with that. This game is getting a little stale.
“She hasn’t walked through any walls yet.”
“Well obviously now she can. She kind of did. And she always could, based on Quantum Theory.”
“I don’t think she’s gonna even do any of that — she has no need to do anything else besides look at the Sun.”
“The best inventions are accidental…” Benny paused. “But, I guess you’re right. Maybe she’s in a log cabin now — and nobody needs to know why, we’re not starting over.”
“Fine. But, how does that change anything?”
“I dunno, let’s see.”
6
Qia hangs there in the air — though frightened, she can see all around her. Her arms away from her side — unfathomably weightless, they might as well not even be there. Like her beaked entities but moving up instead of forward.
She had returned to homeostasis from falling into the wall and resumed her walking experiment. Heel, sole, toe, na— when as soon as the nail scratched concrete, she lost her footing.
Up.
The pressure to push through the wall deserts Qia as she glides up and away from the concrete slabs. For the first time, she makes no contact with any of the surfaces in this realm. Her complete existence in this space, and now each corner of it brand new, never explored. Something is within every square panel.
Up.
Not even whisper of a lift, as simulated in her locomotion game, beneath her. She’d never been away from the ground, once again her brow is bird-shaped. A mixture of joy, enrapturement, frustration keep her head bent downward, watching the platform decrease.
The firmament quietly sneaks up behind her. She finally gazes toward the infinite, uncharted atmosphere. Once an ever-evolving lighting fixture to illuminate her solitude, now an overwhelming and awe-stricking impossibility. She is still, but filled with sudden want to be in control, like when she used to step upon the ground.
A sensation overtakes that one, causing another question, another curiosity: the wall is hard. What if this is the only way Toward? Qia feels an urge to continue exploring down below. This is everything to Qia, and just as endless as the expanse coming closer and closer.
She hangs there, 50 ft tall — the clarity all around her, becoming more and more comfortable with this helpless state. If she focuses on her body, the microscopic tickles and bouncing surround all of her. Distrust dissipates.
Once again, this is all for Qia.