Going Bovine

“Thanks, man,” I say, getting in two large hits to take the edge off. I’d toss off the bizarre flame vision I’ve just experienced as an acid flashback except that I’ve never done acid, finding it hard to go willingly to a place that could be frightening, hellish, and totally beyond my control. A place much like high school.

Stoner Kevin starts in like a TV program suddenly coming off pause. “I’m just saying, the cat is either dead or alive. It can’t be both.”

Rachel snorts out the hit in her mouth. “You’re wrong, dude. The cat’s both alive and dead until you open up the box and take a peek at it. Until then, all possibilities exist. You create the result.”

“Look, my friend.” Kevin sticks his head under the faucet, takes a drink from the tap, and wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his Frank Zappa tee. “I don’t make up the rules of quantum mechanics; I just play by them.”

Rachel passes me the joint, looks at me. “You know about Schrödinger’s cat, right?”

I shrug.

“Awww, dude!” the three of them say in unison.

Kyle’s eyes are bloodshot slits in his grinning face. “This will blow your mind! Okay, so this scientist guy, Schrödinger, did this trippy thought experiment in quantum mechanics where he was all, ‘Hey, what if you’ve got a cat in a sealed box along with, like, a radioactive substance …’”

“Not that you should put your cat in a box with poison; that’s why it’s a thought experiment …,” Rachel points out.

“… and the atom either decays and kills the cat—or it doesn’t. Until you open up that box and observe, everything’s a probability.”

“Wrong,” Kevin says. “You’re hung up on the observer effect. You don’t control the outcome. You don’t create the reality. Face it—the cat’s either alive or it’s dead.”

Rachel blows her nose on a paper towel. “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

“I thought it was ‘If a bear shits in the woods,’” Kyle says.

“You can’t hear a bear shitting in the woods,” Kevin insists.

“How do you know? Have you ever heard a bear shit? Maybe they’re loud.”

“Dude, you’re missing the point.” Rachel tosses the wadded paper towel. It misses the trash can and rolls under the sink. “The point is probability and reality. And that’s where parallel universes come in. Reality splits into two possible outcomes—one where the cat lives; another where the cat dies. From every choice you make, another world is created where a different reality happens.”

“So you’re saying if the kitty dies in our reality—boom!—there’s another reality born where Whiskers is alive and well and chasing mice in the garage?” Kyle tucks his long, stringy blond hair behind his ears.

“Totally.”

There’s a flush from one of the stalls. Weird, because I didn’t hear anybody come in, and I didn’t see another pair of feet under the doors. The door bangs open, and a really small dude with a huge ’fro comes barreling out, pushing up his sleeves. It takes me a minute to realize he’s a dwarf. He pumps the soap dispenser hard several times.

“There’s no soap? Are you kidding me? That’s a health code violation—totally unsanitary.”

Stoner Kyle waves his hand in front of his nose. “What’s unsanitary is what you just did in the stall, Gonzo.”

The Gonzo guy toddles over to the ancient window and cracks it. “You guys mind not smoking that shit around me? I’ve told you I’m asthmatic.”

Rachel shrugs. “Dude, designated smokers’ lounge. Find another bathroom.”

Little Dude catches me staring at him and I can feel my face reddening. I hope I haven’t pissed him off; it’s just that I’ve never seen a dwarf before.

Kevin makes introductions. “Gonzo, Cameron. Cameron, the Gonz-man.”

Gonzo walks straight up to me, folds his arms over his chest and sizes me up like knives are going to be drawn, positions taken, and the orchestra is tuning up for the big fight-at-the-gym musical dance number. “You a gamer?”

“Sometimes.”

“Huh,” he says, still checking me out.

In the mirror, Kevin puts drops in his eyes. “Gonzo’s gonna try to beat the Captain Carnage high score at the arcade today.”

“Oh,” I manage. “Cool.”