How to lose the one you love

• Gary Cuba
  

Nature Physics 10, 172 (2014) doi:10.1038/nphys2886Published online 31 January 2014

Out of sight, out of mind.

First off, the obligatory warning. Don't try this at home, kids! In the hands of inexperienced laymen, the method I am about to describe will inevitably be a disaster. Like, fatal-type disaster. Consider yourself forewarned.

That said, I have to admit that Jillian was truly one to die for. I'd never seen a woman whose visage struck me so deeply — smack-dab in my gut, and various regions nearby. Whenever I saw her in the flesh, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would insinuate itself into my brain, and I would reel in response to the ecstasy of her divine musical theme.

Many wise men throughout the ages have written about this sensation. Suffice it for me to say that, if she were a predator and I were her prey, I'd gladly give up my bodily organs for her to feast upon.

Unfortunately, that was never to be. Jillian didn't even know I existed. Complete bummer.

And why shouldn't that be the case? I was an experimental physicist and she a talented concert violinist. We had nothing at all in common between us, aside from the fact that we both lived in the same apartment building. Furthermore, judging from my surreptitious surveillance of her, she already had an intimate relationship with her orchestra's bassoon player. Even more of a complete bummer. In the time it would take me to become a competent enough bassoonist to challenge his role, all the protons in the Universe would have disintegrated.

It was a no-win situation.

Which is why I began to contemplate suicide.

Trouble was, I didn't want to die. All I wanted to do was to forget about Jillian, completely and irrevocably. Then I could move on with my life. It was a real dilemma. Just as it is, I'm sure, for a million other sociophobic nerds like me.

So here is where it gets a little complicated. Stay with me; don't sweat the physics stuff. It's not that hard to follow.

JACEY

Quantum mechanics boils down to one simple principle: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes you get rained out. You can't be sure of the result until you read about it in the sports section of the newspaper.

But that's just one interpretation — and there's every reason to believe it's the wrong one. We both win and lose. We go on to glory in one version of the Universe, and go down to ignominious defeat in another. (And, not to neglect the other possibility, we get soaking wet in a third.) The field of play is called the multiverse.

But you already knew that, right? Lately, it's all over TV, movies and the Internet. Few, however, realize that the concept is more than 50 years old. Sometimes it takes that long to agglomerate something into the popular zeitgeist.

It may be difficult to understand how we can exploit this fact to our personal benefit — but that's what this exposition is all about.

Like I said, don't sweat the small stuff. Bottom line, here's what you need to kludge together to solve the age-old problem of unrequited love:

1) One big-assed electrical generator, capable of delivering instantaneous jolts of 20 or more amps on demand.

2) Two very large copper cables connected to the positive and negative poles of said generator, terminating in handgrips that you will grasp while standing barefoot in a tub of salt water.

3) A quantum trigger. An old radium-dial watch will do nicely.

4) A photomultiplier tube, to detect the random photons that emanate from the radium source.

5) A video camera, focused on the page of the telephone directory that lists the name of your love interest.

6) A PC programmed to fire off the generator's output when instructed by the quantum trigger, but also to cease firing when the video camera detects the disappearance of said name in the directory.

Simple, right? Remember, you both win and lose. The radium watch dial can either produce a photon within the computer's scanning cycle, or not. Both possibilities are real. The 'you' that survives this process will be the winner, set free, free, free. No more Jillian. No more love dilemma.

True, millions — possibly billions, trillions, quadrillions — of yourselves will die to get there. But they're just bodies under the bridge.

Yet, it's not all so simple. The astute reader will question why and how I can refer to Jillian at all in my tale, when she has never existed in my current Universe.

The answer? I never pulled that quantum trigger. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I just couldn't envisage living in a Universe where I didn't love Jillian.

Author informationAffiliations

• Gary Cuba's speculative fiction has appeared in more than 50 magazines and anthologies, including Jim Baen's Universe, Flash Fiction Online, Daily SF and Grantville Gazette: Universe Annex. He lives in South Carolina with his wife and an inordinate number of freeloading critters.
  

豆瓣上的翻译：


How to Lose the One You Love
如何摆脱你的心上人

作者：Gary Cuba



眼不见，心不念。

丑话在前，免责声明。别在家里鼓捣这个，娃子们！没经验的外行别试我要讲的办法，否则你必然遭灾。就，灭顶之灾。先掂量掂量自己吧。

话虽这么说，我得承认，Jillian值得以死相求。从没有哪个女人像她那样，一张面孔直击我心——正中五脏六腑中央，心肺骨血全都为她而动。无论何时见到她，我的脑子里不知不觉间就有仙乐奏响，而我则因她圣洁的主题旋律陷入狂喜的眩晕。

这种感受历代先贤已经写了个够。简而言之，如果她是捕食者而我是猎物，我会心甘情愿地献上自己，供她大快朵颐。

很不幸，这只是我在痴人说梦。 Jillian根本不知道有我这个人。彻底没戏。

为什么这么说呢？因为我是个实验物理学家，而她是个颇有才华的乐团小提琴手。 除了住在同一栋公寓之外，我们之间毫无交集。不仅如此，据我对她的偷偷观察了解，她已经和她乐团的巴松管演奏员好上了。完全、彻底的没戏。等到我成为一个能和那位先生一决高下的巴松乐手，宇宙里所有质子都衰变完了。

我注定毫无胜算。

这也是为什么我开始筹划自杀。

问题在于，我并不想死。我想要的就是忘掉 Jillian，从头到尾，一劳永逸。然后我就可以开始新生活了。这实在是个窘境，我确信，这种情况对成千上万和我一样社交恐惧的书呆子们都是如此。

所以现在开始有点复杂了。跟紧我，别一看物理就头大。没那么难以理解。

量子力学可以归结为一条简单原理：你有时候赢，有时候输，有时候天公不作美比赛取消。直到你在报纸体育版里看到，你都不能确定结果如何。

但这只是一种解释——而且有不少理由证明它是个错误解释。我们既赢又输。我们在一个版本的宇宙里头顶桂冠，在另一个宇宙里输得丢人现眼。（还有，别忽略其他可能性：我们在第三个里被浇得透湿。）这个赛场就叫做多重宇宙。

不过你已经知道它了是不是？最近在电视啊、电影还有网上，到处都是。但是很少有人意识到这个概念已经有50多年历史了。有时候想让什么东西出现在流行视野里，就得花这么长时间。

要解释清楚我们怎么把这个事实为己所用可能有点困难——不过重点就在这。

我刚才说过，别一看物理就头大。以下是你需要攒来的东西，用来解决单恋这一亘古难题。

1) 一台大块头发电机，需要时能产生20安培乃至更强的瞬时电流。

2) 两截超大铜电缆，接在发电机正负极上，一端连上把手，好让你光脚站在一盆盐水里时握住它们。

3) 一个量子触发器。一块旧的镭夜光表盘手表就很好。

4) 一个光电倍增管，用来侦测镭放射源发出的随机光子。

5) 一个摄像机，对准电话号码簿里有你心上人的那一页。

6) 一台编程好的电脑，在量子触发器被触发后启动发电机，但如果摄像机发现号码簿里的名字不见了，就停止启动。

很简单，是不是？记住，你既赢又输。镭表盘要么会在电脑扫描周期内产生一个光子，要么不会。两种可能性都是真的。经历这个过程活下来的那个“你”就是赢家，奔向自由的新天地，自自自自自由由由由由。再也没有Jillian。再也没有爱的困境让我好为难。

没错，成千上万——没准是千万，亿万，亿亿万——的你会死在半途。但他们只是桥下的尸体，达到目的的炮灰。

不过，这事也没那么简单。明察秋毫的读者会质疑我为什么，以及怎么能在这个故事里讲述Jillian的，既然在我当前这个宇宙里她从未存在过。

答案？我从来都没用过那个量子触发装置。尽情笑我吧：一个病入膏肓的痴心汉。我就是没法想象生活在一个有Jillian的宇宙里，而我却并不爱她。