Seven a.m. , the alarm came much to soon. I stumble out of bed thanking God that it is Friday. On the way to the bathroom I see that my printer has jammed. I left it printing last night when I went to bed, at about 3:00 a.m., but my crappy hardware needs a baby sitter. I bump the mouse to interrupt the screen saver and see that the job was stopped on page six, out of ten. After a short delay fumbling with the computer I hit the bathroom to prepare for the day.

On the way out I grab all of the homework I graded the night before, pull the 2000 line spread sheet off of my printer and stuff it in a folder labeled "Mechanics, Chaotic Oscillator". On the way out I stop at the fridge to contemplate breakfast. It is empty except for one egg, some cheese that looks partially dehydrated, some stale bread and one can of Jolt. I have passing thoughts of an egg and cheese sandwich but instead I opt for the remaining Jolt Cola. I pop the top and drink half of it in one long gulp. The caffine starts to take effect. Outside I tie up my dog Shredder (short for Schrodinger) and give her the cheese. Shredder is my faithful companion and sometimes I am convinced that she is sentient. Of coarse I never tell anyone.

"Good dog, STAY, be good."

" Woof Woof " [translation] " Don’t go! Take me with you!"

The ride to work is mercifully short. The sound of my rear axle grinding through its last few miles is all that keeps me awake as I stare at the road through a sleep depraved haze.

I meet Dr. Prebble in the hallway just in time to give the graded homework. He gives me a smile and thanks me. "Yeah right", I think, thanks for what, thanks for staying up till three a.m.. Oh well, he had to pay his dues. At one time he was in exactly the same position I am now. I can’t let the work load get to me, I know that my professors all want to see me succeed and they all have my best interest at heart. Although some of them have strange ways of showing it.

My next stop is my office. I have one hour to finish the mechanics homework that was so elusive last night at 3:00. It is amazing what four hours of sleep can do for your analytical skills. As I finally get a handle on the last problem I here two students in the hallway asking where I could be found. It is real easy to eaves drop in the Grad office because all of the offices are separated by quarter inch thick walls that only extend halfway to the ceiling. The whole Graduate Physics office could be dismantled in minutes if it wasn’t for the WW2 vintage desks. I thought about hiding because it wasn’t really my office hours, I wasn’t obligated to see them. One problem, four years ago I was in exactly the same predicament , so I take pity on them. I yell to them over the wall and my students usher in with their questions. It is these questions that have made me re-analyze everything I learned (thought I learned) as an undergrad. Their questions used up the last of my hour before Mechanics class. So..., so much for that last Mechanics homework problem. Oh well, at least I got most of them done, gotta love that partial credit.

In Mechanics, Dr. Stilton walks through examples methodically and almost machine like. Taking notes in this class is crucial. Stilton’s notes are filled with method. Rock solid method that never fails you. Sometimes his attack to problem solving is lengthy. He often uses the proverbial sledge hammer to crack a proverbial acorn. He knows all the short cuts, but he doesn’t always use them in class. Methodical, machine like approach, is Mechanics . If Stilton were an extra-terrestrial he would definitely be a Vulcan, and I mean that as a compliment. One problem, he assigns homework like a Klingon. Oh well, to bad I am to tired to take notes today. I sit and try to take the class in by osmosis. Yeah right, osmosis only works for amebas and frogs, neither of which are known for their mathematical ability. I’ll have to copy Jenny’s notes.

In between classes I have ten minutes. I run downstairs for more caffeine. I heard once that Mountain Dew has the maximum amount of caffeine available in any soft drink. While downstairs I meet my research advisor. I try to engage him in animated discussion. I am researching quantum optics under his supervision but I haven’t done a damn thing this week and I pray that he doesn’t want a progress report. Luckily he doesn’t. We fill the time between classes with a discussion of the fundamental mystery of Quantum Mechanics. Are they particles or are they waves, and how do they know when we are watching? Continue reading, I will get to this in more detail later.

I take my seat in Quantum and open my note book to a random sheet. The sheet will be used for doodling. I haven’t taken one note in Quantum yet and we are over a month into the semester. My attention is divided between the wave mechanics being discussed in class, and the sexy undergrad women parading by outside the window. I find that I have a relatively good grasp of what is going on in class, and the carnal thoughts help keep me awake. I scratch down some equations to be sure I am following the prof, I simultaneously fantasize about two coeds standing outside the window, not 3 feet away from me. So close yet so far. Dr. Alex makes a joke about a drug flashback, something to do with Woodstock. I realize that five minutes has passed and I haven’t heard a word he has said. Class is over. The parade of coeds outside the window starts in full throttle during the interval between classes. To bad fall is here, the cold weather means that the girls will start wearing more clothing.

For the next hour I lay my head down on my desk. It seems like seconds later when Dave wakes me. Time to go to the lab set up. I spend the next hour taking notes on electronics. I have to learn what I will be teaching next Tuesday. It isn’t good enough to just learn the lab. I have to know every detail. The students invariably follow Murphy’s law. They manage to find every possible twist, what can go wrong, will go wrong, and probably twice. At least I have it good, I’m teaching a senior lab, I’ll take them over freshman the any day. The lab set-up session ends.

I begin to feel better. Maybe it was the hour of sleep in my office. Or maybe it’s because it is payday. Whatever the reason I am in the mood to unwind. I stop by the grad office in Roudebush Hall to pick up my anemic stipend check. While I’m there I meet some friends who invite me to Margarita Madness at Ozzie’s. Sounds like just the ticket.

Ozzie’s is a cozy little hole, one pool table, older juke box, kind of threadbare, not really the "in style" place. Mostly grad students hang out there. Occasionally a professor will wander in. It is not really the kind of place that attracts the undergraduate meat market. They normally hang out in droves in some of the more cool places. They might say that it is the "cooler" places they like. The 60’s flash-back crowd has their own hangout. There is a Punk / New wave bar for the kids with black lipstick, black mascara and combat boots. There is even a bar that advertises Country & Western line dancing. Mostly you find bars packed with preppy boys and girls spending daddies money. Ozzie’s just isn’t cool enough for them. That’s why we go there.

The Rolling Stones editor stated in a recent article that my university was packed with "The preppy pink progeny of Pennsylvania pencil pushers.". I think he is right except for one thing. Pennsylvanians aren’t really represented that well. Besides we are racially diverse if you count the ubiquitous Chinese and Indian students. Ozzie’s is a favorite stop for international students. This is mainly due to the fact that international students make up such a disproportionate number of American graduate students. Especially the Chinese who are the most prevalent group of science graduate students. Of coarse China is just begging for a brain drain after Tienamen Square. Everyone remembers Tienamen Square, that’s the incident where the Chinese military broke the Ohio National Guards record for Total Number of College Students Shot at a Single Peace Rally. I wonder if there is a prize for that.

The night progresses smoothly as I play pool and toss down cold beer. I can’t handle tequila so the half price margaritas are out of the question. After loosing to one of the Indian students I wander out on to the balcony. There I find a few students puffing on a joint and a few people standing around chatting. Someone reaches to hand me the hooter.

" Here Al, try some of this."

" No way Mellisa, last time I smoked some of your pot I couldn’t stand up. That stuff should be illegal. Besides, I never mix pot with crack."

"Crack?... Oh yeah right. {laughs} Suit yourself."

Among the pow-wow I find Dr. Gryta, a psychologist.

" Hi Sarah, how’s the research going?"

" Hi Al, doin good. Bonzo taught himself to add and subtract."

Sarah does her research in speech and communications. She works with a chimpanzee named Bonzo. Bonzo has an electronic talk board, he can comunicate by pushing buttons with symbols on them. Each symbol stands for a word. After attending a couple of her seminars I am convinced that the little guy can talk. So if Sarah says he can add and subtract I believe it. I never met the original Bonzo of Ronald Reagan movie fame but I bet this one is smarter. At least this Bonze can speak without being prompted, which is more than can be said for the original. Of coarse this Bonzo could never be elected president because he wasn’t born in the U.S..

"How’s your research doing, Al? What is it, optics or something?"

"Yeah, Quantum Optics."

"Quantum, you mean particle wave duality and all of that stuff?"

"Yup."

"That’s all theoretical right, like , none of it can be proven?"

"What do mean. Of coarse it’s proven. I can’t believe you would even say that."

Sarah has done some really amazing work and it is easy to forget that she is a psychologist. Most physicists and chemists would consider her to be JUST a psychologist, not a scientist.

"Well, when I was an undergrad I read The Dancing Wu Li Masters, a book about modern physics. It was real interesting but I got the impression that modern physics was borderline philosophy. Shrodinger’s cat and all that stuff, really confusing. How could cat be both alive and dead?"

" I’m familiar with that book but I’ve never read it." I know at this point that I’m in for the doubting Thomas routine. The concepts of quantum mechanics are bazaar at best, especially when they get applied to real world objects.

"Shrodinger’s cat was really a way for Shrodinger to show the absurdity of applying quantum mechanics to the macroscopic world. Since then people have been using it for just the opposite. The main point of Shrodinger’s cat was that by observing a quantum particle to be in a certain state you destroy the possibility of its other states. You put a cat in a box. With the cat you put a radiation source like a lump of uranium. Also in the box is a device that releases poison gas when the uranium puts out some radiation. We can’t tell when the uranium will decay but we can assign a probability that it will decay. Close the lid to the box and you can’t tell whether the cat is alive or dead. As long as the lid is closed the cat exists in a superposition of two states, live cat and dead cat. In other words, as long as you don’t open the box the cat is neither alive or dead. This logic sounds absurd for something like a cat, but it works great for objects on the atomic scale."

"Yeah, it talked about the cat and tried to tie it in with an experiment where electrons behave like waves, unless you were watching them, then they behave like particles . It sounded like hocus pocus to me."

"Well join the club," I said "I thought the same thing when I first encountered it, but it can be proven in the laboratory. It’s also the foundation of quantum theory. And until something better comes around it’s the best we have. The meaning of Shrodinger’s cat is this; ‘It is impossible to construct an experiment that observes both the particle and the wave properties of a quantum object.’" I have ideas forming to try to explain but the subject is to slippery even when I’m sober.

"Sounds fishy, what about this theory I hear about that says people can walk through walls." she asks with the "now I’ve got you" look on her face.

"OK, you just wizzed through a bunch of concepts that are extreme interpretations of quantum physics. Some of it’s B.S. and some isn’t. So let me start with tunneling or walking through walls as you call it. Every particle in the universe has a wavelength associated with it called the de Broglie wavelength, even you have a wavelength. Your wavelength gets bigger as your energy increases. So the faster you go, the larger your wavelength. The de Broglie wavelength is inversely proportional to your mass. So larger objects have very small wavelengths. Your de Broglie wavelength is less than one Angstrom.

" So I am a wave."

" Well actually you are a particle and/or a wave, that’s duality, but since your wavelength is less than the width of one atom there is no way we can measure your wavelength. We don’t have any yard sticks smaller that one atom. If we could increase your energy by accelerating you to some large portion of the speed of light, your wavelength would be large enough to measure. When your wavelength was about the same as the thickness of the wall there is a probability that you could tunnel through the wall. You would pass through the wall without striking it."

She asks, "So if I were walking at near the speed of light I might be able to walk through a wall?"

" Well not really, you see, as far as we know quantum particles wont exhibit that kind of behavior if you watch them that closely. You can’t actually watch an electron tunnel. Isaac Asimov had a good analogy. He said that tunneling is like a little school kid sticking his tongue out at the teacher when she turns her back. The teacher knows that it happened but she didn’t actually observe the tongue. You would have a probability of tunneling through the wall if you had a high enough energy and you were completely unconscious so that you would be unable to observe the tunneling."

"Why can’t I watch. I like to watch." she says breathing heavily like some kind of obscene phone caller. I can tell that the brews have taken there toll on both of us.

"If I were watching you I would be observing your particle properties and that observation would destroy your wave properties. The two models are mutually exclusive. Waves can tunnel. Classical particles cannot. This is illustrated in the Double slit diffraction experiment. You send a beam of particles through a barrier that has two slits cut in it. The particles pass through the slits and land on some sort of collector like photographic film. The particles land in a wave interference pattern on the film. This experiment is easily conducted with light or electrons. The dilemma is that we know the electron is just a point mass so how can it be a wave. If you let the electrons go through one at a time, they still form the interference pattern. The question is, if they are going through one at a time, how can they form an interference pattern. So..."

"Wait a minute first you have to explain what an interference pattern is before I can understand what you are talking about."

" Well it would be easier for me to show you. Why don’t you drop by the lab sometime?"

" OK, but try to explain anyway."

" For now I’ll try to explain it like this. Picture two boats traveling through the water parallel to each other at the same speed. Each boat creates a wake. Where the wakes overlap you will see what physicists call superposition of waves. If two crests coincide with each other they will form a crest twice as high, where two troughs overlap their amplitudes will add to form a trough twice as deep. This is called constructive interference. At some points you will have the high part of one wave overlapping with the low part of the other boats wave. The waves at these points will add up to zero and it will look like there is no wave there at all. This is called destructive interference, simply put, the waves have canceled each other out.

In the double slit experiment each slit is like a wave source. The waves emanating from these two holes add through a process like the two boat wakes adding. Particles like electrons or photons are fired at a wall. The wall has two holes in it. Some of the particles pass the holes and proceed on to the film. If you are standing at the film you see particles flying at you from the two wholes. So the two holes act like two sources of waves. The film picks up an interference pattern which looks like light and dark stripes. The light stripes are where constructive interference occurred. The dark stripes are where destructive interference occurred. A method like this was used to prove that the electron is a wave. The problem is that people already knew that the electron was a particle. They decided that the electron must be passing through one of the two slits and it should be possible to tell which hole it went through. So they set up equipment to tell which hole it went through. As soon as they did so the electrons quit behaving like waves and began behaving like regular little particles with no wave properties at all. The particles will form the interference patter even when you send them through one at a time. This leads to the question, Which hole did it go through?"

"Well, which one did it pass through?"

"You can’t know. all you know is that it had a probability of passing through either hole. Like Shrodinger’s cat. Fienman said that as soon as you try to visualize what was going on you were sunk."

I drained the last dregs of my drink and said "Well I’m out of beer and I can’t really discuss this farther without a more beer."

"All right , Al, why don’t you stop by my lab tomorrow and check out Bonzo. Since he’s doing simple arithmetic maybe you can teach him some calculus."

" I thought he was more of an artist type, doesn’t he paint?"

"Yeah, well, he’s a renaissance chimp."

" All right I’ll see you tomorrow."

I sneak home on the back roads being sure to avoid the local trooper hang-outs. I live in a small farming town about eight miles from the campus. It is cheaper than living near campus. Often times its more peaceful. The town is called College Corner but most of the students call it Cabbage Corner. The average college student is willing to pay an outrageous rent for the convenience of living walking distance from the campus. Small farming towns just don’t have what it takes to keep undergrads amused. I like College Corner because it is quiet.

Shredder greets me with her tail wagging so hard that her whole butt oscillates.

"Woof grrruf grrr woof." [translation] "Oh boy, I thought you weren’t coming home at all."

As soon as I lie down sleep comes instantly.

Dr. Stilton stands in front of the class repeatedly warning us to take this next test very seriously. As Stilton slowly fades I see myself surrounded by a huge crowd. My friend Jan is there. I don’t have time to wonder what she’s doing here she should be back in Ohio at my undergrad almamater. Jan tells me that that everyone came to see me. "They all came for you Al. You’ve been nominated for the Nobel." It seams perfectly logical that a university janitor would be here informing me of this wonderful news.

On the stage the M.C. announces the next category. Two people walk out on stage and I recognize them. One is a famous supermodel whose name I can’t remember, the other is the lead guitarist for a famous heavy metal band whose name I can’t remember. The long haired guitarists begins to speak but his words are half obscured by censor’s beeps.

" The next award is for the best f------ physicist on the whole f------ planet. His work revolutionized the whole f------- thing man. Like f--- man. Ya know? So give a big f------ hand for , ah , what’s his f------ name."

The supermodel tears open the envelope and says, the winner is ,(drum roll), AL. The crowd responds with a laugh and I realize that I’ve been in standing there my underwear the whole time. Shrodinger’s cat taps me on the shoulder and tells me that I’m going to be late for school. I try to say something to him but a distant beeping sound pushes me farther towards consciousness and my dream begins to fade

I wake with a slight hangover, hit the alarm, and see that it is eleven o’ clock already. Saturday is my only day to catch up on my R.E.M. sleep. Unfortunately it is also my only day to catch up on homework and the day is already half gone. I make some coffee and fry my last egg for breakfast. I spend the next three hours grading lab books and homework.

At four o’clock I decide to call Sarah at her lab. She answers,

" Hello."

" High Sarah, what’s up."

" High Al, I’m just cleaning up the lab, Bonzo is a rotten house keeper."

" Don’t you have a grad student pee-on to do that."

"Yeah but I’m not really a slave driver like the people in your department. Listen , Al, while I have you on the phone I want to talk to you about Bonzo. I’m planning to try to build him a simple calculator and I wanted to bounce some ideas off of you. I’m also thinking of studying his capabilities to use simple tools. I don’t really plan to take much of your time but I could probably get the department to cut you a check for a few dollars. The girl who wrote the software for his talk board got paid four hundred dollars. Don’t expect that much though. Maybe something like twenty bucks for a basic physical design and a brief paper discussing it. If you end up actually building the thing you will probably get more. I left you an e-mail message but you won’t need that now."

"Sounds cool. Interdisciplinary research, thats real resume stuff. What are you doing right now? I was thinking about heading down there."

"Yeah come on down."

Once again I make the short trip from Cabbage Corner into town. I wonder how many more trips are left in my old truck before the axle goes for good. I wouldn’t dare drive the thing home for Christmas break. The campus is deserted every where except the parking lots surrounding the Science buildings. Saturday is just another day for chem and physics people. Your average MBA is at home swilling beer or reading the Wall Street Journal for enjoyment.

Inside Cooper Hall is quiet like a funeral parlor. I guess the average psych major is at home doing whatever psych majors do on a Saturday afternoon. Sarah’s lab is in the basement. It was a major battle getting space in Cooper Hall for a monkey. When Sarah’s work began to get national recognition the opposition was slightly quelled. Then one day PBS decided to do a special on talking monkeys which focused on Bonzo for a full half hour, soon it looked as if Bonzo was going to be appointed to the Office of Dean. Of coarse he is not qualified to become the dean because he is incapable of large scale corruption.

Sarah’s office is the typical academia cave. Full of books and folders, two filing cabinets and a desk that holds a new Macintosh computer. Publish or perish is the name of the game. Of coarse if your work ends up on TV you might even get some new toys. Sarah enters the office from her lab which consists of several rooms connected directly to her office. Bonzo bounces in with her. As many times as I have seen him it is still a little unnerving. Chimps seem so cute and small until you meet one in person and close up. Bonzo is quite a little brut and I wouldn’t want run into him in a dark alley. He looks comical in his short pants, puffy from the diaper he must wear. He can talk but he can’t figure out how to use the john.

"Hi Al, come on in."

I follow her into the lab. The lab is really just Bonzo’s apartment. One room has his cage, general storage and bathing facilities, one room is a play room, the third is like a play room except that it has video recording equipment. That third room is where the double blind tests are conducted. During the early days of talking chimps, there were several camps who held the view that all chimpanzees were incapable of speech. The double blind tests were developed to prove this wrong.

It would be a likely assumption that the chimps were picking up body language queues and simply doing the most obvious thing at the time. The premise goes like this, the researcher uses

sign language and says "Come on, eat the banana." then stares at the banana and points. When the monkey eats the banana the researcher says " See, he understands sign language." Of coarse the same results could be obtained with mice and cheese, or hungry piranha for that matter. Tests had to be developed to prove these naysayers wrong. The eventual result was a series of experiments that were triple blind.

Bonzo sat in his room with baby-sitter who was wearing walkman headphones. The baby sitters were not allowed to help him in any way. One person would read off commands over an intercom. The person reading the commands could not see into the room. The baby sitter could not even here the commands because the headphones were blaring. A third person sat in a third room and filmed each experiment. The person filming would push a button to let the speaker know when to read another command. The commands were completely non intuitive like "Put the keys into the refrigerator." and "Put the banana in the toilet." Eventually the baby sitter was removed and Bonzo proved without a doubt that he understood spoken English. Similar tests were devised to prove that he was actually speaking with his talk board. He was asked questions about objects in the room. His answers were precise and the questions were far from obvious. A star was born.

Sarah led me into the play room already beginning to explain the arithmetic experiments.

"We started to notice mathematical ability when we got the second chimp. It took us a long time to teach him his numbers and what they mean. With the second chimp here competition for food began. Basically, Bonzo wanted all of the jelly beans for himself. To make a long story short just watch."

"Bonzo, How many oranges are there in the bowl?" She pointed to a bowl and Bonzo was following her gesture with his eyes. He swaggered over to the bowl and contemplated for a moment then walked back to his talk board.

Bonzo pressed a button on his talk board and the readout screen printed "5."

"How many oranges could you eat and still have two oranges left."

He got fidgety for a while and the question had to be repeated. Just when I thought that it was futile he pushed a button.

The talk board said "3".

Next Sarah opened the lid on a tupperware and asked Bonzo " How many jelly beans are there in this box?"

"3" Which was correct.

She opened the lid on a second tupperware and said " How many jelly beans are there in this box?"

"4" Correct again.

Then she pored the all the beans into one tupperware and closed the lid. " Bonzo, now how many jelly beans are there in this box?"

Bonzo thought for a moment and pushed a button, "7".

I was floored. Sarah went on to explain what she wanted in the way of a calculator for him. The circuit would be fairly easy to build. There was probably enough junk just lying around the physics department machine shop to build a real bitchin monkey proof calculator. It would have add, subtract, multiply and divide. I doubted that he would ever get to the point that he would need the multiply and divide functions but who knows. He already knew as much math as the average jock. The conversation continued for about a half hour and the design was becoming set in stone. Before I left I invited her over to the lab Tuesday afternoon to check out the double slit diffraction experiment first hand.

Outside the building there were a couple of religious fanatics handing out literature. I couldn’t believe they came to campus on a Saturday. You know your in the Bible belt when the J. freaks come out on Saturday. These particular guys didn’t look to crazy, two old guys in suits
smiling and handing out pamphlets. Last week we had a crazed looking guy yelling and calling people fornicators, waving a sign that said "BILL CLINTON IS A MURDERER". These dudes didn’t look quite so fanatic. I had to take a pamphlet because one of them was standing right beside my truck. The front cover had a picture of Jesus and the back cover had a picture of a smiling Grim Reaper saying "HI THERE." I decided to keep the pamphlet and hang the back cover on my office door.

When I got home I got the usual wagging greeting from Shredder. It was already late so I went straight to bed. Sunday and Monday were both blurs of work and stress.

I found myself walking up a steep hill. The walking took several hours, days, maybe longer. After a while I was joined by Bonzo.

"Hi, Al, what’s up?" He spoke with a perfect Boston accent.

" How come you’ve never talked out loud before?" I ask.

"Well, it’s kind of a union thing."

"Oh, where are we headed?"

"Well, you’ve got a date with the Big Guy." Bonzo looked respectfully up.

"Hi there." Our group was joined by a grinning Grim Reaper and we continued to climb. After a while we came to a large gate, The Gate. The Grim Reaper dissappeared and just Bonzo and I stood before The Gate. Saint Peter appeared at the gate and asked for our names. We both

gave our names. Bonzo’s last name was a monkey screech. Saint Peter looked directly at me and said,

"You realize that we don’t allow pets."

I protested "What do you mean, if someone can speak and communicate he’s not a pet, I don’t care what he looks like."

Saint Peter looked at me with sympathy and said "I’m sorry but no exceptions, no pets."

I looked at Bonzo and shrugged then I began to walk through the gate. Saint Peter knocked me flat on my ass with a firm right hook and yelled, "I said no pets." He put his foot on my chest to keep me down and gestured for Bonzo to step inside. Bonzo walked through the gate and Saint Peter slammed it behind him. Bonzo looked out at me between the tightly spaced golden bars of The Pearly Gates and said, "Wait here I’ll see if I can put in a good word for you."

Right then Shrodinger’s cat tunneled through the golden wall and told me that I was late for school.

A distant beeping sound pushes me toward conscienceness.

I wake up feeling strange. I think to myself "I really got to lay off of the caffeine late at night. It’s giving me nightmares." Tuesday morning is the day I get a new assignment to grade for Dr. Preble. Sure enough, when I get to work my mail box is stuffed with a folder full of homework. I hang the picture of the Happy Grim Reaper on my office door. The rest of the day is typically busy. At least constant work makes the days fly by.

Sarah showed up around seven. Bonzo was dressed like a little hairy preppy. They look so comical holding hands, like Bonzo was her kid. Much like a kid, he needs constant human companionship and supervision. He didn’t have his talk board with him today. Instead he had a drawing pad. Sarah was holding a box which no doubt held crayons.

"Hey, what’s up? So he’s an artist today."

"Yeah coloring keeps him busy for hours."

"Well, I’ve got the equipment set up in one of the basement labs. Let’s get started."

"After you."

She follows me down to a lab stuffed with electronic equipment.

"Over here. This is all of the equipment needed enclosed in this big bell jar. When I turn on this pump the air is evacuated from the bell jar. The air molecules would cause problems because the electrons would collide with them. The apparatus at the right end is the electron emitter. The wall in the middle is the barrier. The barrier has two wholes in it for the electrons to pass through. On the barrier is a detector which is capable of determining which hole the electron passes through. It does this by a process we call scattering, basically it looks for light bouncing off of the electron. On the left hand side is the receiver. The receiver is like a television camera, without a lens. The camera is connected to this monitor. Any questions so far?"

"No, I’m still with you."

Bonzo sits patiently at one of the lab benches coloring his paper like a good boy.

"All of this stuff is wired, even the barrier has a voltage applied to it called the accelerating voltage. The whole thing is controlled by this excruciatingly slow little 1988 vintage Macintosh. Now, here’s what happens. The electrons leave the gun one at a time. They fly toward the wall. Most of them get stopped by the barrier. Some of them pass through the holes. The camera sees both holes as a wave source. The electron has a probability of passing through the left hole and it has equal probability of passing through the right hole. If we don’t know which hole it goes through it will exist in a superposition of wave states, left hole state and right hole state. These probabilities overlap and form the interference pattern. They go through one at a time and land on the camera receptor. After several minutes of this you will begin to see the pattern forming one electron at a time."

I punched in the proper incantation on the little Macs keyboard, hit return, and nothing happened. After a couple of minutes white dots began appearing on the screen. At first the dots looked random but soon a pattern developed. The dots all fell in vertical columns. The columns slowly filled in until they began to look like solid white stripes. In between the white stripes there were dark stripes.

"OK, one more time, the white stripes represent areas where constructive interference occurred, the black stripes are where destructive interference occurred."

"So if the electron goes through one at a time, what is interfering with it?" Sarah asked.

"It interferes with itself I guess. Shrodinger believed for a while that these waves are only guiding waves and that the particles were just moving along a coarse that could be predicted by wave mechanics. The more popular belief is that they really are waves. Of coarse if we want we can conduct tests that prove the electron is just point mass, a little tiny speck. I could even weigh one for you by determining the ratio of the charge to the mass. If it really is a wave it can pass through both holes and interfere with itself. If it is a particle it must pass through one or the other. Watch this."

I input the correct stuff to the Mac and press return, then I explain.

"On the monitor you will see dots again. Over here on the computers monitor you will see a list of numbers in one column and a corresponding L or F in the other column. I’ve tuned on the sensor that tells us which hole the electron went through. The number is a particle count. The L or R stands for Left Hole or Right Hole. Look at the developing pattern."

The pattern on the monitor was random. White dots fell every where on the screen with a higher density towards the center. The pattern was basically the same thing you would get if you took a shot gun and fired lead shot through a quarter inch hole.

"We have successfully observed the particle nature of these electrons and in doing so we have destroyed their wave nature. The same experiment is running but now we are getting different results. The two views particle Vs wave are mutually exclusive. At first people thought that the detectors were making the results different, but that is not the case. This is not some limitation in the equipment. We simply can’t have both scenarios at the same time. You can’t sneak up on them either. No matter how hard you try you can’t observe wave and particle properties at the same time."

Bonzo got up off of his stool at this point and wandered over to grab a lab coat that was left draping over a chair. He put the lab coat on and looked like a hairy little scientist. We both began to laugh and he made monkey hoots shaking his head up and down, ears flapping, teeth bared. Then he crawled up on the chair in front of the Macintosh and tapped a button on the keyboard. The computer was set to restart the experiment if any key was struck and quit when the escape key was struck. So when Bonzo struck the keyboard the experiment began running again. The sight of a chimp scientist running a computer was side splitting and we laughed again. Bonzo was intent on the monitor watching the white dots appear. The apparatus responded instantly now that everything was warmed up.

"He won’t hurt this stuff will he?" I ask.

"I’ve never seen him get radical with equipment. He’s been using his talk board since he was little."

"That reminds me" I said "I have the plans for his calculator across the hall if you want to see them."

We left the door open so that we could keep an eye on Dr. Bonzo and Sarah followed me over to a room across the hall where there were several drafting tables and computers. The circuit diagram and mechanical drafts were all computer generated, the drafting tables were obsolete leftovers from the day when drafting was an art.

As I was searching for my design Sarah began questioning me about the exact nature of the experiment of the experiment we just conducted.

"So, I still don’t really understand, how come the particles behave differently when we observe them closely?"

"Well, there are a couple of explanations. One is Action At A Distance. Action at a distance says that somehow the electrons are effected by the sensor long before the ever reach that point in space. Physicists don’t like action at a distance for two reasons. First, it means that signals can be sent faster than the speed of light. Second, we don’t like it because it is never true anywhere else. Occultists like action at a distance because they can dream up all kinds of scenarios that make psychic phenomenon possible.

Another explanation is Subjective Reality which says that nothing exists in a definite state unless it is observed."

To demonstrate I turn around and face away from her and say, "I can’t see you right now so you may or may not exist. That’s subjective reality at the extreme."

I turn around and face her again. "Most people don’t like the idea of subjective reality for obvious reasons. Neils Borh said that if you wanted to even discuss the state of a quantum particle you must first exactly specify how you are going to measure its properties. Fienman had similar ideas.

Sarah said " That sounds the same as subjective reality."

"How so?"

"Well if you first specify how you are going to observe the particle, you are in effect admitting that you have no idea what it is doing while your not observing it. So when your back is turned it very well might not exist."

I had no choice but to admit the logic of her statement. I decided to do some reading on the subject.

As I was showing Sarah the designs I saw something strange out of the corner of my eye. I looked into the room across the hall and I could swear that I saw blue and red light reflecting off of Bonzo’s face. The apparatus was situated so that the monitor was facing away from me. All I could see was the back of the video monitor and Bonzo’s face.

"Sarah, do you see that?" I asked.

"What?"

"The light reflecting off of Bonzo’s face is colored."

"Yeah, its red, so what." she said shrugging.

"The display should be black and white, not colored, maybe he has the software all monkeyed up." I say as I head across the hall to check him out. When I got to where I could see the monitor it was definitely displaying a black and white diffraction pattern. I checked out the Macintosh and everything checked out OK. Bonzo looked at me and shook his head hooting. I left him to his monkey business and headed back across the hall.

"What was it?" Sarah asked.

"I don’t know, I could have sworn that the monitor was producing colored flashing light. That doesn’t make any sense, that is a color monitor but the experiment should only produce a black and white pattern."

"Check it out." She said.

She pointed toward Bonzo and the light reflecting off of his face was definitely alternating red blue and green.

"What the heck?"

We both walked into the lab with Bonzo and as soon as we entered the red and blue light disappeared. The monitor was showing the diffraction pattern.

"You saw it to?" I asked.

"Yes what do you think it is?"

"I suppose that it could be a software glitch, but this experiment has been operational for months. I really doubt that it was software."

"Maybe it was Bonzo observing his own subjective reality."

"Huh!"

"No really," she said, "think about it, maybe the light we were seeing was some other pattern formed by the electrons. Maybe Bonzo was observing some other subjective reality. We can’t verify it just as we can’t open the box to observe the cat. As soon as we enter the room to look at the monitor we force the experiment into a definite state. This is great, you realize the research grant I could get. You could help. We could come up with a new definition for sentience. A sentient being is one who is capable of observing a subjective reality."

"Yeah right," I said " why don’t I just write my dissertation on scientific comedy!"

"What do you mean." She looked at me as if her bubble had been burst.

"I could get laughed out of a job. There is no way I’m going to suggest that I’ve found a new facet to quantum mechanics, BUT, to conduct the main experiment supporting my postulate you need to collaborate with a monkey. Wait, on top of all that, if you try to verify the monkeys results the experiment collapses."

Jokingly she says "Then we could hit the talk show circuit."

"Exactly. You get what I’m saying."

We parted and I went home. On the way I thought about Bonzo and the strange colored light I saw reflecting off of his face that day. It is possible that he was viewing some of aspect of reality that I was incapable of viewing with my own senses. Quantum physics is filled with such apparent paradoxes. Usually these paradoxes can usually be diminished with the power of mathematics.

I found myself sitting in Quantum class. The happy Grim Reaper was sitting next to me with his note book open.

"Hi there." He said enthusiastically.

"Hey, what’s up dude."

In front of me Schrodinger’s cat sat on top of a desk with his note book open. He looked at me smiling with that smug look that cats always have. Professor Bonzo walked in wearing his lab coat. He waited for the class to quiet down then he began to speak in his perfect New England accent.

"I’m handing back your tests today. Each of you will receive a box which contains your test. As long as the box remains closed the test will remain in a superposition of states, it has a respective probability of having a grade of A, B, C, D, or F. As long as the box remains closed the tests will remain in this superposition state. As soon as you open the box and observe the test you force it to take on a definite state."

I looked at the happy Grim Reaper and asked, "How do you think you scored?"

"HI"

"I figured you would say that."

I looked at the cat and shrugged pointing at my box. Shrodinger’s cat asked me if I would like to know how I did on the test.

"Yeah, but I’m afraid to open the box. What if I observe an F ?"

"I’ll check for you." he said then he jumped off of his desk top onto mine. He tunneled right into the box like Casper the Friendly Ghost walking through a wall. I heard paper shuffling around inside the box for a few minutes then he tunneled back out of the box and spoke.

"You really screwed up on that last problem."

"I know that." I said, upset that I still didn’t know the grade. I had been amazed at his ability to tunnel for some time now so I decided to ask him about it.

"I thought particles with macroscopic mass and conventional energies couldn’t tunnel?" I asked the cat.

"Mass and energy are relative concepts." The cat answered smugly.

"Ouch. You got me there."

"Your going to be late for school." He said.

The buzzer denoting class change began to sound. It kept buzzing until it became the beep of an alarm clock.

I woke with a head ache thinking that I should really limit my caffeine intake. I decide to ask Sarah about the significance of dreaming about cats. While I was getting ready for school I thought about Bonzo and subjective reality. What if reality really was subjective? Suppose that my reality could be different simply because I wish to observe a different state?

I decide that this morning I would observe my vehicle to be a brand new Lexus instead of a worn out truck. I would observe my job to be in the state of tenured professor instead of grad assistant. While I’m at it I’ll wish for a million dollars.

I finish getting ready and step out of my apartment to find that something is definitely different this morning. I can sense it in the air, something has set this morning apart from all other mornings. My truck sits in the driveway rusting, no Lexus. I assume that I am still a grad student and there is no wad of cash waiting in my bank account either. But something is definitely different. For this morning there is a tractor stalled directly in front of my driveway blocking my exit. The tractor has two farmers in front of it unsuccessfully trying to jump start it. An old pickup is wired up with no avail. Hitched behind the tractor is a manure spreader filled to capacity with a pungent load of pig manure. The air in Cabbage Corner is filled with the scent of country fresh manure. I am definitely going to be late. The neighbors cat sits on top of my truck grinning. I shoo the cat away and Shredder picks up the chase, the cat dissapears through the hedge like an electron slipping through a barrier. So much for subjective reality.