At this point, they brought food and drinks to our table.
Ladies (likely in-waiting) lined up silver dishes heaped with colorful mystery cuisine.
I assume that seafood soup was pitch-black because of squid ink, but the only other dishes I could identify were the platter of fruit and one that clearly involved meat. What sort of animal or fish, seasoned how? Couldn’t even begin to guess.
If this was a computer server, there was no chance of us getting food poisoning…
“Computer server?”
Mm? Oh, I remembered easily enough. Managed to not forget this time.
“We’re not actually in one, if I recall correctly,” Koizumi said, clearly keeping up with me.
Silver cup in hand, his smile seemed confident. The cup they’d given me contained some syrupy juice; sort of like peach, but with a hint of citric acidity.
“Is this the infamous nectar?”
Unsure. At the very least, it wasn’t spiked.
I glanced over at the girls, and they’d all been given food and mystery drinks, too. No tables for them, so kneeling servants were merely holding up the dishes.
Haruhi kept her eyes glued to the stage, stabbing a fork into the food and carrying it to her mouth. Asahina was gingerly sipping her cup and letting out appreciative noises.
And Nagato was looking right at me.
I grabbed a berry from the fruit platter, tossed it in my mouth, and shot her a hand signal.
I’d just made it up on the spot, but the SOS Brigade’s brightest mind would surely know what it meant.
“…………”
Nagato rose soundlessly, slowly but steadily advancing to our table, where she sat down next to me. Her figure still glowing; seen up close, her divine aura dazzled the eyes. That’s my best attempt, but it’s a hard sensation to describe.
The moment she sat down, a serving NPC offered her a silver cup. Nagato took it, glanced at her once—and the NPC backed away from the table.
The other ladies kept their distance or were otherwise occupied, bringing food to Haruhi and Asahina; the SOS Brigade’s incident resolution squad were free to consult in private.
Koizumi leaned in. “Nagato, if you’ve seen any chance at escape, by all means share it with us.”
She blinked once. “First, quantized.”
“You wish me to explain?” he said, frowning.
Unemotionally, she said, “Advanced comprehension will smooth future decision-making.”
“So it is necessary.” He sighed and threw up his hands. “Then let us review our current active hypothesis. According to Nagato, this world is an intangible virtual space, and we are data humans composed of quantized information.”
Something like that.
“For some reason, the five members of the SOS Brigade inside this world have become dissociated from our selves in the real world…for lack of a better description.”
What Nagato said was more reliable than the evidence of my own senses.
“Those two facts are likely vital, so bear them in mind. Now, I’m hardly an expert on the matter, but for lack anyone better suited to expositing, I aim to try. But there is one thing I want to make clear beforehand.”
Koizumi turned his gaze to Nagato.
“From your standpoint, there are minor differences from humanity’s current quantum theory and known principles of quantum mechanics. Perhaps we should dub them the super quantum theory, and expanded quantum mechanics, but since these are beyond my understanding, I’m going to parse them via standard quantum theory and convey things accordingly. Is that acceptable?”
Nagato nodded easily.
Koizumi took a sip of the syrupy juice.
“I’ll also warn you that my understanding of quantum theory in general is imperfect. I’d go so far as to categorize it as something I do not actually understand. The field itself has multiple interpretations and contradicting claims, which makes it all the harder. So feel free to take what I do say with a grain of salt.”
A fairly lengthy disclaimer.
“I’ll also add that attempting to make quantum theory easy to understand is virtually impossible.”
Still more disclaimers, accompanied by a pleasant smile.
“With the potential for misunderstanding or incomprehension at the forefront of my mind, I shall do my best. Please avoid phrases like, ‘How is that possible?’ ‘Why does it work that way?’ or even ‘I find that hard to believe.’”
Nagato would hardly say any of those things so it was clearly me he was preempting. I’d better ask any questions I had before he handed me a mask with an X drawn on it.
“Are quantum theory and quantum mechanics different?”
“If I boil it way down, quantum theory is dealing with the broad strokes of quanta, while quantum mechanics is more specialized. Functionally speaking, you can consider them one and the same. For the simple reason that I think they are.”
Cool, got it. Or I don’t, but I’ll roll with it. Please proceed.
“Then let me give a basic rundown,” Koizumi said, straightening up. “Quanta are things that have the properties of waves, yet can be counted like particles. This is referred to as the wave-particle duality.”
That much I vaguely recalled hearing before.
“Closest to hand are things like light and electricity. The double-slit experiment can easily show that these are waves.”
And waves are…?
“In this case, waves are like magnetic waves or frequencies. As I’m sure you’re aware, waves themselves are intangible. As you can see with ocean waves or other bodies of water, or with sound waves or those produced by earthquakes, waves produce oscillation or undulation in some other medium.”
Aha.
“Meanwhile, particles may be incredibly small, but do have corporeal form. The carbon and oxygen that make up human bodies are composed of atoms, but the photos and neutrons within that atom’s nucleus are particles. Quarks are even smaller, but they’re clearly labeled as elementary particles.”
Still with you.
“In other words, from a conceptual level, waves and particles are inherently different. And yet light and electricity are, somehow, said to be both waves and particles.”
Mm-hmm.
“If you attempt to observe them as a wave, they behave like waves, but if you attempt to observe them as particles they manifest as such. Behavior that feels inherently wrong, but is a verified fact, and confirmed with empirical observations.”
I had to stop myself asking why.
Koizumi smiled faintly.
“That’s just how they work. Put your questions in a vacuum pouch and throw that in the freezer. We must begin with the belief, ‘I don’t get it, but okay.’ It’s not like I have a truly better understanding of it. One quantum theory authority said that overthinking quantum mechanics is akin to the Buddhist principle ‘form is emptiness’ and may lead to enlightenment.”
Welp, that’s pretty out there.
“Reading any primer on quantum physics may leave you thinking, ‘Can’t they make this easier to parse?’ but now that I have to explain it myself, I must say that quantum mechanics are the polar opposite of something that can be easily broken down.”
Here, he looked at Nagato. Perhaps he was hoping she’d take over, but the organic android harboring the divinity of Athena within her tiny frame continued mechanically moving grapes from the fruit platter to her mouth with a small silver skewer.
He sighed.
“Next, I should explain the concept of superposition. According to Nagato, those of us here are in a state of quantum superposition over our flesh-and-blood bodies in the real world, but what does that mean?”
Koizumi paused, looking upward pensively.
“Let me try to explain using electrons. The direction of an electron’s spin is fifty percent one direction or the other; the orientation is only set once it is observed.”
What do we mean by spin?
“The angular momentum. All you really need to know is that particles are rotating in a variety of directions. For simplicity’s sake, we classify those as up or down, right or left, positive or negative.”
Sounds like I was right not to take physics as an elective.
“Let us assume that as a result of observation, an electron’s spin is ‘up.’ Herein lies the problem. Our experience-based instincts tell us that the electron’s spin was always up or down, and the act of observation merely verified that. But in the quantum world, this is not the case.”
Let’s hear why not.
“Before the electron is observed, the electron is in a state in which its spin could be either up or down. At the moment of observation, there is a fifty percent chance of its spin becoming one or the other. It transitions from an uncertain state—half up, half down—to a state when its spin is determined—in one or the other direction.”
Who determined that?
“No one. It is determined by pure statistical odds.”
Koizumi plucked an olive from a silver tray and spun it on the table.
“Imagine a die getting shaken. While it is spinning, you put a lid over it and wait for it to stop. In this example, even before you remove the lid, the die will have stopped on either even or odd. But in quantum mechanics, the die will continue spinning until the moment that lid is removed—perpetually until the moment of observation.”