Red Light Green Light

Part the First: The Tall-Leaf Tavern

 

It was early June, and still light out. Bill Symbolton, who is the main character in this story, was sitting in the Tall-Leaf Tavern, at a table, facing the window that looked out onto the street, and across from him was his old friend, his most long-standing friend, Timofy Twilliga, and on the table between them lay the remains of their burgers and fries along with two empty pint glasses and two whose inner volumes were rapidly decreasing. They'd been trading disgusting stories for well over thirty minutes. Bill was ready to tell his tale about the poker game, but then he noted a somewhat distant gaze in Timofy's eyes. Was Timofy having a stroke, or was it a heart attack, what were the normal routes of malady for men just past fifty? Timofy's gaze moved to the right, and it wound up somewhere near the entranceway. Bill snapped his fingers in the middle of the table to get his friend's attention, because the story about the poker game was really gross, and Timofy looked at Bill with a faraway star-struck look in his eyes.

Timofy said: "Did you see him?"

"Did I see who? I have a story to tell."

"You didn't see him?"

"Who are you talking about?"

"Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan just got up from the table behind you, right behind you, and he left. You didn't see him?"

Bill twisted around to see the table behind him. Whoever it was had had the bone-in fish and two glasses of pilsner. Nothing especially dylanesque was apparent at the table. He turned around back to Timofy. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. I'd recognize the guy anywhere."

"What could he have been doing here?"

Timofy ticky-ticky'd his phone for a half-minute or so before replying: "He's doing a concert downtown tomorrow night."

Bill replied: "Okay, well, sure, yes, I suppose it could have been him."

Timofy said: "It was him. How could you have missed it? You have, like, all his good records."

"One my back was turned, and two I didn't look behind me. How long had he been sitting there?"

"He was there when we came in, but I didn't see his face."

"You're very observant."

"Only when compared to you."

This all took place on such-and-such a date, in such-and-such a city. My paraclete has told me that I should describe things so that readers can have an image of what's going on, right there in their heads, and though I tried to tell him I don't want to put images into heads, I gave in to his argument. The Tall-Leaf Tavern, though it is fictional, consisted of a large open space with a bar running along the ... north side, and there were a lot of strange brews and liqueurs behind it, all colourfully illuminated by an array of tiny lights fixed to the wall behind. There can also be a staircase leading up to a smaller room above. Bill Symbolton was fifty-one, not what you'd call fat but rather a bit what Edith Wharton in The House of Mirth called 'stout', of a decent height, and he had very black hair. He looked like someone I know. Timofy, meanwhile, was about the same age, but tall and lean, and often hungry-looking. I swear, the man had a hollow leg! He ate and drank like no-one's business, and it never had an effect on him. Oh, and he was blond, in a Slavic way. They'd been sitting there for about an hour, and by God they were going to sit there for a half-hour more.

Bill pondered his lack of observational skills. "You may be onto something," he said. "I once slept through an arrest."

"Whose arrest?"

"Don't know. It happened right outside my bedroom window. Gunshots, screams, everything, and I missed it all."

"That's pretty good. When was that, anyway?"

"About five years ago. Why?"

Timofy took a mouthful of beer before saying: "If I was you, I would have noticed."

"Yes, and if you were me you would have woken up."

The conversation went back and forth for another half-hour, then the paid their respective bills-of-fare. They didn't squabble about who owed what; they knew how to do the math, though only Timofy was a true mathematician. Actuarial, actually.

Only once they were out on the street and heading north to where the public transit was did Timofy say: "I never thought I would see something like that."

Bill absentmindedly said: "What?" (The alcohol was having its way with him.)

"Back there, in the tavern, those two women with the monkey."

"What are you talking about? What monkey?"

"You didn't see? Down back in the tavern, near the kitchen door. You really should sit facing the room sometimes."

"I didn't choose the seating arrangement, you did. So where does the fucking monkey fit into it?"

Timofy laughed. "You're more right than you know. He fit into both of them."

Bill stopped. "I still don't get it."

Timofy dragged him along. "Two women, and a monkey. All naked, and engaged, if you know what I mean."

Testily, Bill: "Now you're just making stuff up."

"I'm not. 'And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.'"

Bill was dumbstruck. "You're having me on. That's ridiculous. I don't believe it."

Timofy shook his head, laughing. "Believe it or not, they were going at it, like ... a hard-on monkey with two girls."

"That simply did not happen. You're having me on."

"Believe what you want. In any case, you should look behind you every once in a while."

"At what?"

"At things like monkeys and girls, idiot."

"And Dylans."

"Yes, and Dylans."

 

 

Part the Second: The Reductionist Centre

 

Bill was on a couch in the Reductionist Centre. The Reductionist Centre, in case you don't know, was a converted Edwardian structure, formerly a large and stately home, now reduced to being a small complex of offices of psychotherapists and psychiatrists. Bill was on the couch, and his therapist, Dr. Schnorr, was waiting for Bill to say something. Bill, meanwhile, was staring out the window, like he was waiting for something.

Bill said: "The street out there. It's a pretty major road, isn't it?"

Dr. Schnorr perked up. "Yes; though it may be merely tertiary, it's usually well-travelled."

"It's odd, because nothing has been out there for at least a minute."

Dr. Schnorr got up--itself a rare event--and went to the window to look out. A huge truck came into sight. Dr. Schnorr, a devote of the reality principle, said: "A truck's gone by."

"I swear the street was empty until you got up to look out the window."

"That's curious. What do you make of it?"

"Last night I was out with a friend, and I couldn't see what was happening."

"Was there anything happening worth seeing?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. Bob Dylan was there."

"Ah." (Surely a delusion!)

"He's in town, to perform tonight."

"Ah." (Not a delusion?)

"Plus, there was apparently some public sex going on involving two women and a monkey of some sort."

"You saw these things?"

"No, that's my point, I didn't see them. My friend told me about them later."

"Your friend is trustworthy?"

"Mostly."

"What do you make of all this?"

Bill shifted around on the couch. The couch was green, made of some advanced plastic. Science had interfered with upholstery somewhere along history's timeline.

Oh, descriptions! You have the drift of the venue, the Reductionist Centre. How it got that name is a funny story which I might be able to include in an appendix, though 'twould be at risk of upstaging the body of this my tale. Anyway, Dr. Schnorr was an older gentleman, lean, with white hair. It had probably been red some time in the past, but now it was white. He had done a lot in his time, and he'd even appeared once on Broadway, in a production of Oklahoma! He'd had Bill as a client, or customer, for more than one but less than two years. He listened patiently, and he couldn't be taken for a fool. He was a wise man, and, of course, a secular priest.

Bill had been asked: "What do you make of this?", and since Bill knew he was supposed to free-associate, or associate freely, which is something else not entirely entirely, he said: "It reminds me of that marriage of mine."

"Ah, yes, the marriage," said Dr. Schnorr meaninglessly, to keep the words flowing.

"I was such a fool, wasn't I? Right under my nose, carrying on like that, and I didn't notice. Or, now I'm thinking, I wasn't able to notice. The signs were everywhere. Everyone else know except me. However, I didn't see any of those signs. I really thought the telltale moaning was just the wind in the willow. Don't you think it was amazing that I never caught on?"

"I wasn't there," said Dr. Schnorr. (He'd been forced to say something then.)

"And to find out that it wasn't just one person. There'd been so many she couldn't name them all. I mean, what did her calendar look like? Anyway, I didn't know a thing until the papers were served. Statement of claim." Bill shook his head. "Where did she find the time?"

"When one really wants something, the time can be found," remarked Dr. Schnorr unhelpfully.

"I'm telling you, doc, it's like everything, everything everywhere, everything that happens everywhere, only happens without me knowing about it. I go on a little retreat in the Adirondacks, and the minute I go silent, without any contact with the outside world, what happens the minute I cut myself off? Some Moslems smash planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. True story! It synched up to the very hour. I found out about it at the airport two weeks later. My first clue was all the new security. I got frisked and I asked the guy: 'What's up with all the security?' and my frisker said: 'Very funny.'"

Dr. Schnorr let his eyes wander. "I remember that day--"

"Well, I do not. I missed out on the whole thing. I was looking some other way. I live the most empty life possible. I'm missing out, and that's why I'm seeing you, even though I have to say not much is happening here, that's what I have to say. Have you done anything? Is any of this actually working? What do you think?"

Dr. Schnorr stared blankly, then quickly said: "Oh, is that a real question?"

Bill leapt up from the couch and though it looked like he was going to attack the good doctor instead he merely went up to him by the window. "I see things out there, I see them now, but I think I can only see them because others are looking at them. If everyone turned away, nothing would happen."

Dr. Schnorr said: "I think you need a specialist. A very special specialist. And you're going to go there!"

"Where?" cried Bill.

 

 

Part the Third: Princeton University

 

"The physician will see you now," said the drop-dead gorgeous blonde who was shaped all curves like a Rhenish hourglass. Bill stood up, clutching his biometric charts, gulped audibly, and followed her fine keister down a too-brief hallway and into a room whose walls were covered with incomprehensible charts of galaxies, solar systems, planetary spheres, organisms, molecules, and atoms. While he was attempting to decipher how it all fit together, the door closed, and tits-out-to-here was gone. Bill knew she fit into one of these charts, but he couldn't quite figure out where.

"You're here!" said someone in the startled room. Bill then noticed a grey-haired man smoking a pipe sitting behind a desk. The man laughed, nodding at the door. "Man does not live by bread alone," he said, which seemed an awfully and unacceptably objectifyingly sexist thing to say. He looked down at some chart on the desk. "I think I'm getting the issue in your case, but please, could you go over it again? Does it really have to do with a children's game?" He gestured to a straight wooden chair.

Description time! This was Dr. Walter Yarningham, Nobel-class physicist of materials weak and strong, master of the four fundamentals, owner of two katanas, and weekend archaeologist. (He could also read music upside-down.) He was wearing a bright blue suit and a yellow tie. He set down his pipe and leaned back a perfect pitch, balancing himself with his big right toe. Bill sat down and asked: "You want to know?"

Dr. Yarningham replied: "Of course. We must consider everything orally as well as in the written form. There are nuances particular to each. I've written a book about the nuances, you know."

"I didn't know. The children's game?"

"Yes, this Red Light Green Light game you believe is key to your situation."

"I don't know if 'key' is the right word. Rather, it was the first time I'd made note of it."

"I'm rusty on kids' games."

"Well, one person, the 'it' of the game, stands near a goal line. When he's not looking, that's to say when he has his back turned, the other players can advance to the goal line. When he turns around, they stop moving, and he can toss out of the game anyone whom he's seen move. If a player gets to the goal line, that person becomes a new 'it'."

Dr. Yarningham said: "I think I understand. So, continue."

"I only played the game once, one summer afternoon. When I played, advancing to the goal line with the 'it' ahead of me, I won really easily, because 'it' never seemed to turn. It seemed like 'it' turned for the other kids, but never for me. Yes, it sounds impossible, and it was impossible, but that's how it was. Then, when I was 'it', I lost almost immediately, since I could never catch anyone moving. So, for me, the game was pointless."

"Very peculiar, I must say, if this was a real occurrence rather than a dream! Do you have witnesses?"

Bill paused in thought. "Years later, so I heard, there was a terrible bus accident involving a small airplane filled with Norwegians, and it seems like everyone I played with on that day was killed."

"Were your friends the Norwegians?"

"My friends were on the bus, not in the airplane. As a sidenote, one of my friends was Norwegian, but I think that's beside the point."

"Yes, I daresay, that is quite beyond the point. No witnesses, thus only you have evidence! I think we have a replicability problem here."

Bill thought it strange that he was not lying on a couch. He realized that they, together, were working on a problem. He put his balled hand under his pensive chin. Suddenly, Dr. Yarningham leapt from his chair, rounded his desk, and opened a filing cabinet. "I know just the thing!" After a rummage, he pulled out a white plastic shopping bag marked CVS, set it upon the filing cabinet, and continued to rummage, only this time within the bag rather than within the filing cabinet. He produced two plastic L-shaped objects.

"This is the test," he said to his subject. "Turn around and face the wall."

Bill did so, and Dr. Yarningham started spinning the objects, which turned out to be festive noisemakers which buzzed through the air. He stopped and asked Bill: "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"My noisemakers."

"Nope."

To further knowledge, Dr. Yarningham instructed his subject: "Turn around and face me."

Bill obediently shimmied around to face the doctor. "Now what?" he asked.

"Watch me carefully."

Bill watched. Ninety seconds went by. "So?" he asked. "Why are you blushing?"

Dr. Yarningham was indeed blushing, for he found himself stricken with a kind of shyness. Why should he make such noise, why should he behave so childishly, in front of a poor suffering mortal? What, was science such an intellectual game that it could proceed despite hurt feelings or the potential for hurt feelings? He muttered, "Ah, it's nothing. Should we proceed?"

Bill said flatly: "Whatever you say."

Having regained some balance, Dr. Yarningham said: "Turn around again. Face the wall."

Bill did so, and the noisy things spun around like mad. He stopped, with a kind of conviction, set down the plastic Ls, and returned to his desk. Bill turned to face him.

The doctor was writing, and as he did so he muttered, in tones of bald exposition: "I couldn't make the things whiz and rattle while you were watching. I simply couldn't do it. You have a kind of a force field around your field of vision or experience. Your problem can't be studied here, on this continent."

"It can't?"

"Don't interrupt! I'm sending you to a specialist."

"Not another one!"

"I should have said: Super-Specialist."

"That's different."

Dr. Yarningham set down his pen and said: "You are going on a great journey."

"I guess so."

 

 

Part the Fourth: Meyrin, Geneva, on the Franco-Swiss border

 

"It's all due to an odd situation in subatomic physics," Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper continued to explain, since we're coming in with action already passed, "involving the position of the viewer in relation to that which is viewed. Simply put, nothing happens if there is no viewer. When the viewer views, it causes the collapse of the potential waveform. Until a viewer views, that which is viewed is in a messy state of juxtapositions, and it is only when the viewer views that the object settles down into one state or another. This is a key result of the theories of Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg."

"I've heard of those guys," said Bill.

"And thus you are here, on the lovely Franco-Swiss borderlands, to help us in our researches, and in so doing you will find you yourself aided."

"Will I?"

"That is what we theorize."

"I'll take your word for it. However, this all sounds quite bizarre. Are you saying that things don't really exist until one turns one's attention to them?"

"That is precisely the case. For example, I am wont to look at men's crotches at some point during every encounter. When I finally look, it is at that moment when his fly is either up or down or halfway up or halfway down. I collapse the waveform of his cock, er, crotch, and participate in the event."

"So where do I come into all this theory?"

Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper stretched out her arm and gestured to the window. Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper was tall and elegant, very Dietrich with a bit of Garbo in the bust. Bill had just met her two hours before. He found her mostly trustworthy, but, absent his loins, entirely trustworthy. She was obviously very smart despite her ridiculous name, and she had blonde hair, on the young side of forty, and more than a little frightening, thrillingly so. They were together in a chemistry lab room. Sinks with great hooked faucets were everywhere. There was no indication it had ever been used, what with its blank walls and clean blackboard. Bill didn't know what to make of it. Was there going to be some experiment soon?

Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper said: "Scientists all over the world have been trying to solve the Heisenberg problem. It's a slippery one, as you can see. How can accurate measurements ever be taken when the measuring stick changes the measurements in the act of measuring? It's a gap in our knowledge. In other words, some believe there is some other subatomic particle that mediates between observer and observed, id est, the waveform only appears to be collapsing. Do you follow me?"

"I think so," Bill said. "What is the missing particle?"

She sat down on the chair facing him. She smelled really good. He leaned forward primitively. She said: "We think you hold the key to the solution."

"Me? Is that why I'm here? Sheesh! No-one told me anything about this bit."

She leaned back. He leaned further forward, about an inch or so. She said: "If what we believe is true, we can gain control over the forces of the universe."

"All of it?"

"All of it. Thus, we want to get at your molecules."

"That's a new one on me."

"We believe that your self, with its inability to effect change on the external world--as you've said repeatedly, nothing happens when you look at anything--would be a useful tool in solving any number of problems."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know! We're doing theoretical physics here! You know how an elevator can sense when you're blocking its door and won't close?"

"Yup."

"That technology was made possible by Einstein's 1905 papers."

"Oh. So, by experimenting on me, we may be able to see if the light in the refrigerator really goes out when you close the door."

"More or less." Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper paused to look up from the page and directly at you. "Have we don't enough explication? I can tell you're getting a bit bored, but I don't want you to stop reading, because, if you do, we will cease to exist." She listens to your answer, be it verbal or non-verbal. "I get you." She turned back to Bill. "So, enough with the explication. Let's get on with the action."

All that was required was a little cheek-swab, that was all. The doctor scraped out a little scoopful of looses cells from the inside of Bill's cheek and carefully dropped the cells into a small vial. "We will run this through one of our cyclotrons to retrieve a single cell from your multi-celled organism. We only want one. Somewhere in its strand of DNA we expect to find the anti-causal particle."

"And what will you do to the cell?"

She waved her hand quickly. "No explication! That's the rule from here on. You can go back to your hotel room and we'll call you when we've made progress."

Bill left and found his way back to the top-rated Hôtel du CERN. The scientific world was sparing no expense for him; he went to his room merely to check to see if anyone had called--no-one had--and he waited.

Two hours later, he was summoned back to the complex.

Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper was waiting for him. She held out a silver box, but did not allow him to touch it. "A single cell of yours is in here, suspended by electromagnetic forces. One cell in find condition, and still showing signs of life."

Bill didn't know how to react. He shyly said: "Am I really that special?"

"Yes," cried the doctor. "If the hypothesis is correct, this cell can stop the collapse of the waveform. Weren't you paying attention?"

"I don't feel well," he said. "It's like I'm a scientific experiment. I think I want to go home and be alone with my ... special talent."

Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper cried: "No, please don't! Aren't you at all interested in particle accelerators?"

"Well, if you put it that way--"

"Come along, come along, let's see what happens."

She led him down a white hall, down white stairs, along another white hall, down more white stairs, down another white hall, to a white door with German stuff and French stuff written on it. She took him through the door and into a huge room containing a whole bunch of scientists at terminals.

"This is the heart of the experimental method," she said.

In defiance of you, Bill said: "I'm sorry, I think we need a bit of explication here."

"We are going to take your cell, accelerate it to near the speed of light, and bombard it with specially-trained bosons. Your cell will dissolve into its constituent particles, and we believe one of those particles will be both the cause of your condition and possibly the secret to the structure of reality."

"What if nothing happens?"

"Don't worry, Bill. We're certain to learn something really scientific here. We've got all our bases covered."

"I heard these atom-smashers can create black holes. I read it somewhere. What about that?"

Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper waved away the concern by saying: "That's only theoretical! Nothing like that has ever happened. It's just theory."

"Isn't theory precisely what we're talking about doing here?"

She got stern. "Nothing like that is going to happen."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

And, with that, the doctor gestured Bill over to a machine labelled 'Saisir - Eingang'. She pulled open a drawer, and set the cube inside it. She pressed a button, and whir-whir-whir the machine started chugging.

"There we have it," she said. "Now we proceed over here to the control machine!"

All the scientists in the area gathered around, even though they didn't know what was going on. Scientists are a curious lot. The doctor briefly explained: "We're trying to find the anti-causation particle in this sample." The scientists all cried: "Ah. Ah." They didn't understand, but they thought they would soon enough.

She pressed 'beginnen' and all the lights on all the boards in the room started dancing around. Bill's cell was shot along the magnetic path of the circle, going faster and faster, until it was a little short of the speed of light.

Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper said: "Let's take it up a notch. Let's put it to eleven."

She pressed the Außerkraftsetzen button, and the frequency of the machine's noise rose a semitone.

"Now: collision!"

The cell was attacked by bosons somewhere in the north end of the circle.

The cell broke apart into its constituent particles.

Bill looked.

All the particles slowed as if by inertia.

The scientists watched.

The particles slowed even more.

Dr. Züpperzöpperzïpper watched.

The particles stopped moving.

Nothing ever happened again.

Everything froze.

And it stayed frozen until the end of time.

The end.