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| | |\ \| | +--+ | COMICS PRESENTS #33
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| |__|__ \/ | | | Lurker Lad in "Quantum Flux"
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Every morning, Lurker Lad's alarm clock goes off at 6:00 so he
can get up and get an early start on his day.
Every morning... except this morning.
.o(Wha?) It was 7:16; the sun was still low in the sky. At
that angle it shone through Lurker Lad's window and into his eyes.
His eyelids were effectively transparent to this bright light as
it caused a pinkish hue to register in his optic nerve. .o(Oh f---)
Lurker Lad openned his eyes and rolled over to look at his clock.
.o(Damned thing didn't go off!) He peered at it. .o(Could have
been worse I suppose. Most people are probably still in bed.)
He sighed. .o(Still, if I'm going to get up at all I might as
well get up now.)
Lurker Lad got out of bed and headed towards his bathroom. Still
half asleep, he was only barely able to pick up the sound of the
water running. .o(Who--?) The light was on too. "Who's there?"
"What?" came the reply from the bathroom. Arriving at the
door, Lurker Lad was shocked to find that the person in the
bathroom was... himself. Both Lurker Lads were speechless.
"What's going on?" Lurker Lad heard someone ask. Both Lurker Lads
vacated the bathroom only to find a third Lurker Lad who looked
like he'd just gotten out of bed himself.
"This is impossible," Lurker Lad said.
"I must be dreaming," the Lurker Lad who'd just come out of the
bathroom said.
The Lurker Lad who has just gotten out of bed let out a deep sigh.
"Look, I can't deal with this right now. If you guys were supervillains
trying to confuse me or something then... congratulations. I'm going
back to bed."
"Excuse me," Lurker Lad said, "but that's _my_ bed."
"I'm calling for help." The third Lurker Lad instinctively reached
for his comm.thingee but couldn't find it. He reasoned that it must
have dropped off during the night. He rushed to his bedside.
"Hey, you two, get out of the way!"
"What do you think you're doing?" the other two Lurker Lads asked
each other. "This is _my_ bed."
The three Lurker Lads collided at the edge of the bed. Lurker Lad
felt a strange feeling of disorientation as the other two Lurker Lads
disappeared: part of him just wanted to go back to bed and another
was looking for...
.o(Ah! There it is! My comm.thingee!) Lurker Lad pinned his
comm.thingee on and then tried to remember why he wanted it. Then
he remembered. He looked around the room and grimaced. .o(There're
gone.) He shook his head. .o(They never were here. I must have
dreamt it all!) Lurker Lad decided that, before he did anything
else, he should pour himself a cup of coffee.
After breakfast, Lurker Lad decided to go ask Doctor Stomper about
his dream, figuring that Doctor Stomper could provide an entertaining
explanation. Doctor Stomper mused about it for a moment.
"Well, Doc, what do you think?"
"You're sure it was a dream?" Doctor Stomper asked.
Lurker Lad shrugged his shoulders. "Can you think of anything else
it might be?"
Doctor Stomper smirked. "Oh, I assure you, I can think of many
possible explanations." He mused a bit more. "Assuming it to be a
dream, I'd say it reflects your feeling of insecurity over your lack
of identity in the LNH, your feeling that you're just another character."
Lurker Lad considered this for a moment. "I _used_ to think that
way... but now I'm a Net.Titan. That's an improvement... I guess."
Lurker Lad started to feel an uneasy concern. "So what else did you
think it might be, if not a dream."
Doctor Stomper smiled broadly. "Nothing definite, I assure you!"
"But..."
Doctor Stomper sighed. "Tell you what, do you think you can do
something for me today?"
Lurker Lad grimaced. "Well, there were some things I was planning
to do today... but at this rate I won't get anything done!"
Doctor Stomper nodded. "Then you might as well come up to my lab
and help me out a bit. How's after lunch sound?"
"OK," Lurker Lad said, reluctantly.
Soon after finishing his lunch, Lurker Lad headed to Doctor Stomper's
lab. He knocked on the door and entered at Doctor Stomper's request.
"Be with you in a moment," the doctor said as he took down some
readings off of one of several gauges that jutted out of the apparatus
he was apparently working on. Lurker Lad couldn't make head nor tail
of what Doctor Stomper was doing and sincerely wondered what he was
up to.
Doctor Stomper turned to face Lurker Lad. "Right. Come with me."
"Where are we going?"
"There's something I need you to do in the lab next door."
"Isn't that Kid Kirby's lab?" Lurker Lad asked sheepishly.
Doctor Stomper smiled. "Don't worry: as long as you don't
touch any of the other experiments, you'll be fine."
Lurker Lad decided he'd just assume not know what dangers might be
involved in touching one of Kid Kirby's experiments and, instead,
made a point of following Doctor Stomper very closely. Doctor
Stomper lead him to a machine that was clearly Kirbytech but which
had labels in Doctor Stomper's handwriting that indicated what all
the various levers and dials were for.
"This device is used to observe proton decay," Doctor Stomper explained.
"The chamber is filled with water, the idea being that water contains
two hydrogen atoms per molecule and that these hydrogen atoms can
decay via proton decay into a neutron and anti-electron." Doctor
Stomper looked at Lurker Lad who seemed to understand so far. "Now,
normally, protons are so stable that you wouldn't observe proton
decay if you watched a tank of water for a million years but this
Kirbytech here is able to catalyse proton decay so that, on average,
you'd expect one decay every ten minutes. You with me so far?" Lurker
Lad nodded. "OK. This gauge here will register the cascade of
particles resulting from proton decay. What I want you to do is
wait here in front of this gauge and keep a look out for when
proton decay is detected. Then I want you to go over to the
counter over there and write down the time when you observed it.
OK?"
Lurker Lad mused for a moment. "What if another proton decays
while I'm writing down the time?"
"Oh, don't worry about that: it won't happen that often. So,
can I leave it with you?"
Lurker Lad hesitated. "How long am I supposed to...?"
Doctor Stomper laughed. "Just let me know when you've got a
few readings. OK?"
"OK," Lurker Lad said, finally, and set about watching the
gauge.
The next few minutes that Lurker Lad spent watching the gauge
seemed like an eternity. .o(How did I get talked into this?)
he asked himself. "This is a job for... Time Waster Lad!" he
said with obvious sarcasm. Just then, he saw the gauge start
to move and then dance in obvious response to a cascade of
energised particles. "That's it!" Lurker Lad said as he turned
and headed towards the counter. He checked his watch to see
the time and then marked it down on the notepad that had been
laid out.
Lurker Lad's sense of satisfaction faded when he realised he'd
probably have to wait another ten minutes for the next event.
.o(There's _got_ to be a better way to do this) he thought to
himself. Dejected, he turned back towards the gauge... only
to find himself still standing there!
"It's happening again!" he realised. His double turned to
face him. "Doctor Stomper!" they both yelled out in unison.
Lurker Lad ran out of the room, only to have his double run
after him. "Stop!" his double said.
Lurker Lad made it to the door to Doctor Stomper's lab and
knocked none-too-gently. "Doctor Stomper!" His double was
right behind him.
Doctor Stomper openned the door to his lab and found Lurker
Lad standing alone outside.
"Doc, it happened again!"
Doctor Stomper looked puzzled.
"There was a double of me! He was right here! I chased him...
no..."
"Slow down, son. Start from the beginning."
Lurker Lad let out a sigh. "I was doing what you said, watching
for proton decay when..."
"Yes?"
"I vaguely remember observing proton decay. Anyway, that's when
I saw my double and came to get you... but now he's gone." Lurker
Lad gave Doctor Stomper a pleading look. "Doc, am I going crazy?"
Doctor Stomper shook his head. "No."
"Then what is it?"
He smiled. "You're just tired... and apparently that's causing
you to see other-world representations of yourself."
"Excuse me?"
"Let's go into the room over here and sit down." Lurker Lad
followed Doctor Stomper into the seminar room. "Alright,
remember what I was telling everybody about the 'many worlds'
interpretation of quantum mechanics."
Lurker Lad grimaced. "I don't know how to tell you this but
nobody understood that seminar."
"Well, to recap, the basic idea is that the many possible worlds
that can exist between two different quantum events actually _do_
exist and what we observe in the laboratory, or in real life for
that matter, is actually the sum of many different possibilities
superimposed upon each other. In this sense, the most likely
outcomes are represented by more of the intermediate worlds and
are thus more likely to be represented in the world we observe."
"Huh?"
"For example, this morning when you got up, say around 7:15,
you were just as likely to have gotten up at 7:14 or at 7:16...
and, as you now realise, you _did_ get up at those times as well
as at 7:15."
"Wait a minute," Lurker Lad said. "How can I get up at all
three different times? How come there were three of me to begin
with?"
"There weren't really three of you: rather, the other two were
just `lurking' and you, being able to detect lurkers, were able
to detect these other selves. Anyone else would have just seen
one of you... probably the one who got up at 7:15, if in fact
that was the most likely time.
"Now, in the case of our little experiment, there were only two
outcomes at any one time: either you observed an event, in which
case you got up and went to the counter, or you didn't. That,
plus the fact that you were getting tired of just sitting there
staring at the little gauge, reproduced what had happened to you
that morning, this time with one double instead of two."
Lurker Lad's mouth dropped. "You mean..."
Doctor Stomper nodded. "Yes, this was one of the explanations
that I had in mind this morning. It would appear to have been
confirmed." He smiled. "Don't worry, if you hadn't come running
in here in a few more minutes I would have had to have gone with
one of my other explanations."
"You mean, you had other explanations worked out?"
"Well, yes..."
Lurker Lad stopped him. "Never mind, they all probably made as
little sense as this one."
THE END
Martin
