It is an ill wind indeed, as the old proverb tell us, that blows no good for anyone. And so it has been, for the last few days, a veritable bonanza for me, as one client after another trooped in and out of my office, each gladly paying my customary fees for advice concerning the impending nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. It’s been all poor Gretchen could do to keep them from running into one another in the hallway, which, considering how upset both sides of the political spectrum are with each other about her, has been a real concern on my part – I certainly don’t want any fist fights in the foyer. Yet, in the midst of all that, Fate threw me a knuckle ball this morning when Gretchen buzzed my private extension to let me know that my dear sister-in-law Katje was waiting on Line Three. Sadly, I had to keep her on hold for nearly half an hour until I finished with a fellow from the Cato Institute who was, of course, pretty close to apoplexy at the prospect of Judge Sotomayor’s potential elevation, then dealt with a nearly hysterical woman from La Raza on Line One and then a frankly hysterical man from the American Enterprise Institute on Line Two, neither of whom, they loudly informed me, could wait until their appointments this afternoon to address some particular aspect of Sotomayor’s Congressional confirmation process that was bugging them. Nevertheless, Katje displayed her characteristic Scandinavian stoicism and betrayed not the least bit of irritation at having been required to wait such an inordinate time.
Tom: Hi, Katje, what can I do for you?
Katje: Well, for starters, you can explain to me why my husband should care about the planet Vulcan.
Tom: Oh, well, sure – Rob Roy is a dedicated Trekkie, as I’m sure you must be well aware.
Katje: Damn it, Tom, Gene Roddenberry imagined the fictional planet Vulcan ten years before my husband was born!
Tom: Perhaps so, but the planet Vulcan and its inhabitants have played a central, important and pivotal role in the imaginary history of the future that is the Star Trek science fiction franchise ever since.
Katje: Okay, I’ve hung around with Rob Roy since we were teenagers, Tom, and I think I know a thing or two about Star Trek, but can you explain to me who the Romulans are supposed to be? I mean, I know who the Klingons are, everybody knows about them. Lieutenant Warp…
Tom: That’s Worf. Lieutenant Worf, Son of Morg.
Katje: [Expletive]! Whatever! All right, I confess – I tend to fall asleep watching Star Trek, mostly when somebody’s giving one of those long-winded speeches about galactic cultural unity, or the Bajoran struggle for independence, or something like that. But you’ve got to admit, Tom, I’ve been a very good girlfriend, and also a very good wife about it. Every Star Trek TV series, I was right there on the couch with him, watching every episode, and I’m not exaggerating, either. I was there with Rob when I was like, thirteen or something, watching syndicated episodes of the original series starring that fat, bloated, red-faced [expletive] who does those stupid Priceline commercials…
Tom: You mean William Shatner?
Katje: Yeah, yeah, him and that other [expletive] dingbat… whatshisname, Nimrod…
Tom: Nimoy. Leonard Nimoy. Show some respect, Katje, he’s a consummate thespian, you know…
Katje: A thespian? I always thought Spock was supposed to be a man – or at least a male alien from outer space, anyway!
Tom: He is! And he’s done Shakespeare, performed on Broadway in Peter Shaffer’s “Equus,” won an Emmy Award…
Katje: … and that other gay one, the Chinese guy…
Tom: George Takei. He played Commander Hikaru Sulu. And he’s a Japanese American, from Los Angeles. And Nimoy’s not a gay woman, okay? “Thespian” means “actor!”
Katje: Honestly, Tom, you’re as just as big a sci-fi nerd as your brother is!
Tom: Hey, there’s nothing wrong with science fiction! It’s been the inspiration for generations of real scientists, you know!
Katje: And the preoccupation for a generation of geeks like Rob who visit Slashdot every day and argue about Linux kernels, open source software, Java, BSD and Star Trek when they should be working.
Tom: Yeah? Well, what about Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Stargate, Red Dwarf, Firefly, Dr. Who, and all those MMORPG games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest and Final Fantasy, huh? What makes you think you can lay all that nerdiness at Star Trek’s doorstep?
Katje: Star Trek started it all!
Tom: The hell you say! Jules Verne started it all!
Katje: Jules Verne? Who the [expletive] was he?
Tom: The first, original and genuine science fiction writer. He was born in 1828, and he wrote “From Earth to the Moon,” “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” and “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” If you want to blame anyone for inventing science fiction, blame him!
Katje: So what is it with intelligent men and science fiction, anyhow?
Tom: We like science fiction because it’s a creative exploration of the human condition that juxtaposes basic societal assumptions against the potential of technological achievement. And it’s got awesome space ships, scads of nifty weapons, astounding alien life forms, fascinating inter-species political intrigue, and a lot of pitched battles with stuff that blows up in extremely cool ways. Plus, well… the women tend to be very hot, especially the extraterrestrial ones, that like, are green, have silicon implants, or, you know, a pair of nice, big gamma ray deflectors.
Katje: Well, Tom, I’ll give you credit for honesty, if nothing else. Look, I’ve sat there with Rob through every episode of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, and all of the movies, too…
Tom: And, after all that, you’re calling up asking me to explain who the Romulans are?
Katje: Like I said, I tend to fall asleep watching science fiction. Speaking as a female earthling, you know, I just find it to all be kind of… boring, really. Yeah, I’ve seen Romulans, but I keep getting them mixed up with the Vulcans…
Tom: And there’s a very good reason for that – the Vulcans and the Romulans are closely related, biologically, historically and culturally. Consequently, as might be expected, they look quite similar. But the Romulans harken back to an earlier era, and lack the Vulcans’ evolutionary progress along a path to enlightenment based upon the use of logic, ritual and meditation to suppress the primitive emotions that previously ruled both Vulcan and Romulan behavior. Consequently, as their cultures diverged, the Romulans continued to pursue a policy of imperialist expansion throughout the alpha quadrant, while the Vulcans…
Katje: Tom!
Tom: Yes?
Katje: You remember how Rob Roy acted after The Sopranos ended with a cut to black instead of a sensible conclusion?
Tom: Oh, yeah, that. You know, since then, I bought the DVD boxed set and watched the entire series, and, to tell the truth, I’m kind of surprised that so many people were traumatized when The Sopranos ended with a cut to black. Seriously, if you watch carefully during the fifth season, and, of course, pay attention to what happens in the final episode, particularly the last ten minutes, you can see exactly what was going to happen. The New York mob had that diner surrounded with hit men, and the series obviously ends with Tony, Carmella, and both of their kids getting whacked, just totally riddled with nine millimeter slugs. Now, I think anybody could understand why the producers didn’t want to show that to the fans, why, there would have been riots…
Katje: Tom! Rob’s stopped making love to me again, just like when The Sopranos ended with a cut to black, and it’s all because of “Star Trek!”
Tom: You mean, the new movie? The one that’s in theaters right now?
Katje: Yes, that one. It’s our wedding anniversary, and Rob brought me flowers and took us out to 1789 and bought a new dishwasher, so I thought I’d take him to see the new “Star Trek,” and then, you know, do something really special for him when we got home from the theater. But seeing that movie got him so disturbed, all he wanted to do was get drunk and stay up until dawn watching our entire collection of Alien DVDs!
Tom: That’s rather unusual – him getting drunk and watching DVDs instead of… well, you are a mighty attractive lady, Katje, even with all those tattoos. So I’d agree that if Rob would rather sit on the couch with his buddy Jack Daniels and watch gory masses of teeth bursting out of peoples’ chests instead of hopping in the sack with you, then it’s dollars to doughnuts he’s got to be pretty messed up.
Katje: No [expletive]! Why, the nights after we saw the “Star Trek” movies I through VI, “Generations,” “First Contact,” “Insurrection” and “Nemesis” were ten of the most memorable… ah, trysts of our entire relationship. But after this latest one, though, like I said, he’s a complete dud. And what’s worse, he’s lost interest in work, too, just like he did after The Sopranos ended with that cut to black.
Tom: So he’s not at work today?
Katje: He went in yesterday, but he came home early and called in sick this morning. He just mopes around, Tom. I’m really worried about him.
Tom: Can you put him on the phone?
Katje: I’ll try. Wait a second…
Tom: Sure.
Katje: Hey, Rob! Rob? Rob!
[Forty-eight seconds elapse.]
Rob: Tom?
Tom: Rob? How you doing?
Rob: All right I guess. Katje says she wants me to talk to you about something.
Tom: Yeah, I do. She tells me you went to see the new Star Trek movie, the one so cleverly titled “Star Trek.”
Rob: Uh-huh.
Tom: How’d you like it?
Rob: I don’t want to talk about it.
Tom: Come on now Rob, this is your big brother Tom here, and you have to talk about it with somebody, so it might as well be me. What’s the matter?
Rob: Damn it, Tom, the movie is set in the era between the Enterprise series and Roddenberry’s original Star Trek.
Tom: I know. They even mention Admiral Archer and his pet beagle so you know that the events in the Enterprise series are suppose to precede the action; and, of course, it presents the back story on Captain James Tiberius Kirk, explaining his birth, youthful indiscretions and exploits as a cadet at Star Fleet Academy, and does a parallel development for Spock…
Rob: Yeah, and… hey, wait a mintue – you’ve seen it?
Tom: Of course.
Rob: What did you think of it?
Tom: I think it sort of sucked, actually. There weren’t that many people in the theater, either, even though I was there just last Saturday night and it’s only been in wide release about a week. Word must have gotten around, I guess.
Rob: [Expletive] right it sucked! How could they do that? Vulcan gets imploded into an artificial black hole created by a deranged Romulan renegade and Romulus gets destroyed decades in the future by a super nova that Spock can’t stop with an injection of red matter! What the hell is supposed to be going on, anyway? The plot didn’t make any [expletive] sense, and what’s worse, everything in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and the Voyager series, plus at least six of the Star Trek motion pictures, are all supposed to happen later in the Star Trek Time Line; and, in every single one of them, Vulcan and Romulus still exist! Just thinking about it is driving me [expletive] crazy!
Tom: I understand. But nevertheless, there’s an explanation.
Rob: There is? Well, I’d sure as [expletive] like to hear it!
Tom: Of course. You know about Schroedinger’s cat?
Rob: Uh, you mean, that thing where some mad scientist…
Tom: Erwin Schroedinger. And he wasn’t mad. He was quite sane and a highly respected physicist who’s better known in scientific circles for his quantum wave function.
Rob: Okay, so what about him? Didn’t he say, put a cat in a box with poison gas and a Geiger counter, or something like that?
Tom: He never seriously suggested actually putting a cat in a box with poison gas and a Geiger counter, Rob. The whole thing is a “thought experiment,” similar to the ones Einstein used to derive the special theory of relativity. You see, he was amenable to Einstein’s view of the universe and opposed to the quantum mechanical theories of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. Now, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that delta x by delta p is always greater than or equal to h-bar over two…
Rob: In English, please!
Tom: Well, that was English, but very well, let me put it another way. Heisenberg maintained that it’s impossible to concurrently know both the position and the momentum of a quantum state particle to an arbitrary degree of precision. Instead, there exists a limit of error – Planck’s constant divided by two. Just like Einstein’s somewhat more famous equation, E equals m times c squared, which has some very counter-intuitive implications, such as time dilation and the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, Heisenberg’s mathematical expression has its own strange consequences. And foremost among these is that it is possible for physical objects to concurrently exist in two distinct and different quantum states.
Rob: So a physical object can be in two quantum states simultaneously?
Tom: Well, as Einstein’s special theory of relativity demonstrates, “simultaneity” is an illusion caused by the extreme speed of light. The correct terminology, therefore, is “concurrently.”
Rob: Fine by me, I guess. Make that “concurrently,” then.
Tom: So, Schroedinger was skeptical of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and, in fact, made up his famous thought experiment involving the cat as a way to show how ridiculous, absurd, unlikely and impossible Heisenberg’s theory must be. He said, determine the rate of radioactive decay for a given unstable isotope, then isolate just enough atoms of it so there is exactly a fifty percent chance that a single atom of that isotope will decay within one hour. Put that sample, a Geiger counter, a mechanical trigger actuated by the Geiger counter, a vial of cyanide gas and a cat in a box. Wait one hour. Now, before you open the box, you don’t know if the cat is alive or dead. But, after exactly one hour has passed, we can ask the question – did an atom of the isotope decay, get detected by the Geiger counter, set off the trigger, release the gas and kill the cat, or did it not? You don’t know until you open the box, and until you do, the cat is, concurrently, both alive and dead. Only your act of observing it resolves the cat to one or the other state.
Rob: I get it, but what’s all this got to do with the latest Star Trek movie, which those numbskulls in Hollywood couldn’t think up a better title for than “Star Trek?”
Tom: To understand that, you have to realize that since Schroedinger proposed his famous thought experiment back in 1935, there have been thousands of physics experiments which proved Heisenberg was right and Schroedinger was wrong. The phenomenon he described, where the cat is concurrently in two opposing states, dead and alive, has been proven real, and today is formally known as “quantum entanglement.”
Rob: No [expletive] way! How the [expletive] do they explain crucially insane [expletive] like that?”
Tom: By and large, they haven’t. But there’s one theory which explains it quite nicely – parallel universes. And you know, another way of stating the consequences of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is to say that quantum states resolve when they are observed, and, I might add, not before.
Rob: You mean, I can change the outcome of a quantum system just by looking at it?
Tom: Right.
Rob: That’s ridiculous! It’s got to be nothing but theoretical [expletive].
Tom: Actually, there’s a operating cryptography product that, while still in the early stages of development, nevertheless depends on that very aspect of the Uncertainty Principle. It employs a device which compares photon streams on a secure channel between two parties and uses exactly that part of the theory to determine whether a third party has observed the transmission.
Rob: Okay, okay, I know NASA proved relativity theory’s prediction of time dilation, and that GPS satellites wouldn’t work without it, so if you say there are practical applications of the Uncertainty Principle, then I guess that stuff must be for real, no matter how [expletive] impossible it sounds. But you still haven’t told me what that… oh, wait a minute… I get it. You’re saying that all the inconsistences in the new Star Trek movie can be explained by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It’s as if… the universe where the planets Vulcan and Romulus still exist for Captain Picard and Commander Sisko – and even Captain Janeway, in a couple of Voyager episodes – to interact with later on; and, the universe where Vulcan and Romulus were destroyed in the latest Star Trek movie, are huge, multi-dimensional arrays of entangled quantum states, just like the life and death states of Schroedinger’s cat…
Tom: Correct! And so, when you, Rob Roy Martini, observe the latest Star Trek movie…
Rob: My observation resolves the entangled quantum states into their respective parallel universes!
Tom: Exactly!
Rob: Wow, Tom, that’s incredible! You were right, you really did explain it all – perfectly. Thanks!
Tom: Hey, that’s what family is about, isn’t it? We all help each other out, and in the end, everything’s copacetic.
Rob: I feel so much better now. I think I’ll hop in the car and drive to work.
Tom: Yeah, why don’t you go and do that – after you put Katje back on the phone.
Rob: Sure. Katje! Tom’s done talking to me!
[Thirty six seconds elapse.]
Katje: What the [expletive] where you two talking about?
Tom: Is he gone?
Katje: Yeah. I couldn’t understand a thing listening to what Rob was saying while he was talking, and that last part he came up with sounded like total gibberish.
Tom: So was the screenplay for “Star Trek.” Basically, I used gibberish to fight gibberish, because sometimes you’ve got to fight fire with fire.
Katje: Doesn’t the fire department usually use water?
Tom: In that case, if it makes you feel better, think of my solution as chemical foam instead. The bottom line here is, you’ve got your husband back. His mind is no longer enslaved by the poorly constructed idiocies of lazy hack studio screenwriters who wouldn’t know good science fiction if it ran up and bit them on their ample hindquarters. Not that I’m going to forgive them, though, or the morons who decided to make the engineering section on the NCC-1701 look like an overblown World War II submarine. I still can’t believe that scene where young Scotty gets flushed through a bunch of water tubes after the transporter materializes him inside the engine room machinery. What in blue blazes was that supposed to be, anyway? Anybody can tell you that’s not what a Star Fleet warp core engine room looks like! I was laughing in the wrong places far too much while I watched that turkey unspool last Saturday, I tell you, it was…
Katje: Tom?
Tom: Sorry. It’s a guy thing. Well, a nerd thing, actually.
Katje: I sincerely appreciate whatever it was you did just now. By the way, do you think I should tell Rob Roy what you said about The Sopranos finale, too?
Tom: Absolutely not. If he demanded an explanation from me, I’d have to give him an annotated lecture on Fellini, Jodorowsky and Buñuel.
Katje: Who are they, more scientists like Heisenberg and Schroedinger?
Tom: No. They, unlike the cretins who committed that abominable travesty of Star Trek which is showing in thousands of theaters this week, are – or were – talented, artistic film makers who know how to tell an imaginative, compelling story, that, despite being obvious fantasy, nevertheless maintains a cohesive consistency within the bounds of its own fictional definitions. Which is not to indicate that is the aspect of those gentlemen’s work I would use to explain the ending of The Sopranos to Rob, of course.
Katje: What aspect would you use, then?
Tom: Their deep understanding cinematic art. You see, Katje, in the final analysis, The Sopranos had to end like that, but explaining why it had to end like that to someone like Rob would take hours. It’s simply not a cost-effective use of time. Katje: Okay, mum’s the word, then.
Tom: Thanks. God forbid I should have to put my kid brother – much less myself – through such an ordeal. Speaking of which, I gotta go – I have another consultation about Judge Sotomayor waiting, and five more before I can go home today, and that’s plenty enough ordeal for me.
Katje: Yeah, I can imagine.
Tom: But it’s still nothing compared to the ordeal of watching the latest Star Trek movie. ‘Bye.