Twenty-One Views of Uncertainty

by Glenn Blakeslee

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Each of the volunteers, except Lawrence, opened each lid in perfect unison. Lawrence fumbled with the oversize plastic latch that pinioned the lid of the box at the apex, the box nearest us. He glanced at us and then glanced back at the latch, and then at the others, who were opening the lids of each of their boxes. He scrabbled at the latch, and then the six boxes and those opening them vanished.

The fourth box was constructed of tightly woven wicker, with a loop-and-toggle latch. The old Greek arcana omega floated above the plane, slowly revolving. This symbol filled us with the sub-emotion of foreboding, yet we still opened the box. The box stank of old-world cynicism and cabbage. Inside the box we found a quilt crafted from scraps of multicolored cotton fabric fastened with thread to a woolen base. The quilt was soft and warm. Next to the blanket was an iron pot filled with warm cabbage soup, and a large battered steel spoon.

We dispatched Bob, along with the soup and blanket, back to the third box where Albert Einstein lay huddled inside a spherically symmetric potential.

“I won’t open it,” Alice insisted.

We had pushed her, our feminine manifestation, to the forefront. The fifth box was brightly colored and cheerful, painted with wide-petal flowers and wispy sailing ships. Strangely, the arcana representing the planet Venus floated in front of the box. We thought it only fitting that the female should open it, and it was only by coincidence that this womanly expression of our common will was also the most contrary.

“It’s just silly,” Alice pled. She turned away from the box and extended a finger toward us, pointing in our general direction. “You go to the trouble to create these boxes, and then one by one you open them, only to find nothing you expect. Why must you always disassemble, deconstruct? It’s never the same afterward; it’s not the same object no matter how hard you try to put it back together. You’ll never unravel the heart of the mystery, it will never be revealed, and you know that but you still can’t leave it intact. You can’t tolerate a mystery.”

As she spoke we stood watching the box, unable to meet her eyes and, out of fear, unwilling to argue with her. Some of us looked at her breasts. Behind Alice the box began to lose its squared edges, and as we watched the box slumped into itself and spread out along the plane, a crayola-colored puddle.

“I won’t open it,” Alice said.

At the sixth box we began to become entangled.

The box was heavy, carved from a green stone resembling jadeite. It was more column than box, its corners rounded so as to make it appear to be cylindrical, and into its curved deep-green surface carved a repetitive motif, the Olmec bar-and-four-dots character alternated with deep bas-relief symbols for the were-jaguar and the celestial turtle. The null or zero arcana, a circle with a right-to-left slash, embossed itself in white on the plane before the box.

The top of the box was fitted almost perfectly to the cylindrical body. It took many of us many seconds to move the top from its static position, but once it was started we were able to quickly move it aside. We could smell ozone and hear a staccato popping noise that we took to be the sound of annihilation, but inside the box we found no such state.

Instead, the wave function collapsed, and the box presented to each of us a different state. Some of us could see and smell the dead cat and claimed that in its dead-meat state it was being consumed by worms. Some of us could see a black flitting form, one that paused and resumed its stalking movement and was understood to be the jaguar, shadowing the unseen realm that we were trying to reveal. Some of us saw a green box turtle, upon turtle upon turtle, receding with distance and disappearing into the gloom at the bottom of the cylindrical box.

This was, so far, the most dangerous box encountered. It threatened to separate us. It had the potential to tear each of us from our joined condition, make us distinct, apart and individual. We — each in our own frame of reference — held no common transformation laws.

Those of us strong enough rallied and attempted to push the heavy jadeite lid back into its static position. Others attempted to see the cat or the jaguar or the turtle and thus change their observation to match the frame of reference to a majority. Some of us could only stare, undecided, uncertain.

The strong amongst us prevailed but, before the box could be completely sealed, those undecided amongst us were lost to the depths of the box. So we stood divided.

The next box was black. It was constructed of no known material, but it appeared to be dense. There was no apparent latch, nor any apparent lid.

The box was the absolute black of the absence of color. In the air above the box appeared an italicized k, the arcana representing Boltzmann’s constant, shimmering and insubstantial. The box radiated heat, yet we could not discern the source of the heat; that is to say, we could not measure light, the concomitant element of heat. In the infrared the box glowed a candy-colored green.

We could not open the box. We moved on.

8. 9.

Our entanglement grew and preceded us. The next two boxes were inconstant, flickering into indeterminate states, present and not-present as we observed and did not observe. Their position changed slightly or wildly at each incarnation, and yet they were the same two boxes. The boxes grew smaller and less distinct or vice-versa. They were decorated with gossamer sailing ships and tiny green turtles, or decorated by the insides of themselves, an unknown quality. They were adorned with the arcana of the improbable, which we suddenly knew and then forgot, just as suddenly.

Our confusion grew as we watched. It was improbable that so many of us, divided and lost and sometimes uncertain, should witness this. The space above the plane, above us, began to acquire a depth-like quality. It shimmered and spat and coalesced. It descended upon us like the absence of light, like a night sky speckled with stars. The stars formed constellations of the arcana, and the arcana of the plane rose to meet the nighted sky.

The opened boxes of the plane fused into formless lumps of potential, and these in turn became eight distinct figures. Albert Einstein and Bob were followed by six unknown to us, and a cat. They moved swiftly across the plane until they were among us.

Albert Einstein held above his head a battered steel spoon, and wrapped around his shoulders swept a soft, rumpled blanket. He was smiling a tired smile. Bob stood behind him, holding an iron pot and also smiling, and the unknown others trailed behind him. Albert Einstein raised the spoon higher, the characteristic slump of his shoulders gone, and he moved between us and past us into the plane, and toward the improbable boxes. Bob and the others followed him. The cat sat alone.

Albert Einstein stopped, and he brought the spoon down in a swift arc, toward the plane. The first of the two boxes appeared exactly at the terminus of the spoon’s arc, and the box dissolved as the spoon struck it. Albert Einstein moved, seemingly at random, into position on the plane and swung the spoon again. The second box appeared and, recapitulating the behavior of the first, dissolved as the spoon struck it.

Albert Einstein motioned to Bob, who moved into the plane holding the iron pot. Albert Einstein moved the spoon over the pot and nodded to Bob, who turned to us, smiling. In the pot was warm cabbage soup. We all smiled back.

Albert Einstein motioned to the unknown six, who moved into the plane, each to one of six of the remaining boxes. He raised the spoon, and six arcana spilled from the night and attached each to the six boxes. He brought the spoon down, and the others opened the six boxes perfectly simultaneously.

From the boxes spilled houses and buildings, and skyscrapers tall with steel. From the boxes flew conveyance, for ground and air and sea, and flung to the stars our bright future. From the boxes snaked lines of light and of metal, and new clever boxes tight with knowledge. We sipped soup and smiled, and watched as the others returned to us, now known to us. We watched as the plane turned bright, humming with civilization.

We watched as Albert Einstein, battered steel spoon held high, moved to the final box.

And the box opened us.