It was only a measurement.
Its all we did. A simple measurement.
According to the Uncertainty Principle, you cannot know a particle’s momentum and position at the same time. You just can’t. You can either know how fast its going or where its located, not both.
Well, we begged to differ. My name is Dr. Amanda Heyes. For the past 10 years me and my team and the lab were working on a method to do just that - measure a particle’s momentum and position at the same time. Of course it was mostly a side project that we did together in our free time, no one believed you could actually do it, but the curiosity and the determination to prove the greatest physicists wrong, that kept us going.
And gradually, despite all odds, we were making progress. It didn’t make sense but the math was adding up, the devices we built were working as planned. It started to look like we could actually pull it off.
Then one day, we performed a test. We suspended an electron between multiple electromagnets, so it essentially hovered there. One device was measuring the electron’s velocity in real time, both magnitude and direction, in extreme percision, for every planck time. Another device, when activated, would measure the electron’s position, relative to the device, within the planck length. We activated the device and we had it. The electon’s momentum and position. At the same time.
It was supposed to be a moment of celebration, of scientific breakthrough. It wasn’t. A subtle eeriness filled the room. We didn’t actually plan on doing it, but we broke a law of physics.
And then my punishment began.
It started small. Over the coming weeks, as we were writing the paper, I noticed various small objects going missing. A toothbrush, car keys, a mug, etc. I didn’t really find it unusual at first, I just put it down to me forgetting where I put stuff because of the stress from writing the paper. But it was slowly becoming weirder. My red car became blue, despite my husband claiming that its always been blue. My birthday changed from 02/05/1983 to 04/05/1983. An entire room was added to our house. I felt I was going insane.
One day, roughly 4 months after the test, I headed to the lab to finalize the paper and get it ready for publication. However, the staff wouldn’t let me in. They claimed they have never employed a “Amanda Heyes” and that they had no ongoing research on the Uncertainty Principle. I came home devastated. my entire career, disappeared as if it never existed. All my research on various topics, gone, because of a side project. My husband also insisted I never worked at a lab. I don’t know where he thinks I worked. I didn’t ask because I was scared of the answer. How can entire segments of my life just be erased? What else can be erased?
I have been staying at home from that day onward. Weird things kept happening. Our cat was replaced with a dog, my long hair became a buzz cut, we suddenly had 2 children, we no longer had 2 children, and our house moved to Berlin. Everyone besides me was oblivious to anything happening. Everything in my life was uncertain. I could hardly keep up anymore. I didn’t know how far it’d go and how long it will keep going for. For all I know, I might stop existing entirely. I was terrified.
Then, one morning, I woke up to a strange noise. As I was looking for the source of the sound, I noticed my husband was no where to be seen.
I managed to locate the source of the noise. It was an old 90’s style PC that has appeared in one of our new rooms. It was not a model I knew, but I noticed that the PC had a logo with my husband’s name. A robotic, monotone scream was coming out of the computer’s speakers. The computer was stuck on the Blue Screen of Death. I did everything I could but nothing got it out of it. Despite this, I could feel that he was in there, and I could feel that he was in pain. I wanted to at least unplug the computer to deliver him from his torment, but the computer wasn’t even plugged in to begin with. He was the only constant thing in my life, and now he was in eternal suffering. Could I be next?
For the next few days, things stopped changing. I couldn’t get any sleep. The monotone screaming was audible from everywhere in the house. Just when I had decided to leave the house, another change had occured.
Me and the computer imprisoning my husband were suddenly teleported to space. His screams kept going, of course.
I dont know how I can still hear him. I don’t know how I can still breathe. I don’t know how I can still access the internet. I don’t know if its over or if it will find new ways to torture me. All I know is, that as I stare into the void of space,