“Have you heard that according to the research of these guys Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, the human brain may itself be a kind of quantum computer? Apparently they think a quantum-mechanical process that occurs in something called ‘microtubules’ inside nerve cells may be responsible for consciousness.”
“Quanta produce consciousness? But isn’t everything in the world made of quanta? So does that mean that robots may have consciousness even if they’re not people? Yukari might be happy to hear that… Oh, yeah, I’ve been wanting to ask, but what’s a quantum computer?”
“Don’t ask me when you know I don’t know.”
I struggled a bit at first, but allow me to sing my own praises: who, but me, could adapt to this situation so easily? I started to think it wasn’t so bad to be able to talk to myself. In fact, it instilled a kind of hope in me. I had to credit Yukari for fixing me like this, but still, couldn’t you say this was my talent? At the very least, you couldn’t call someone who could talk to themselves in a parallel world (or other possibility) a nobody, now could you?
I decided to study as much as I could. I wanted to make some kind of use of this talent of mine. If I could demonstrate a good use for this talent which even Yukari praised as the ultimate in multipurpose capabilities, maybe even I could get into Jaunt, I thought. I have to admit, even at this point I was just a third-year junior high school kid and wasn’t aware of how special I was. Jaunt would have been delighted to welcome me if they knew I could do this, even if I didn’t study. But I didn’t realize that, so I read like crazy. I said I was studying for entrance exams, quit the naginata entirely, and spent all my time at home at my desk and all my time outside at the library. I grabbed whatever books I found and kept increasing my vocabulary of terms like “the hard problem of consciousness,” “the double-slit experiment,” and “quantum decoherence.” (Did I know what they meant? Did I understand them? Don’t ask.)
I ruefully thought to myself that it was pretty funny for Hatou Manabu to be studying waves (hadou wo manabu, as it’s said in Japanese) and tried to study wave functions. Then I learned I had zero talent for math. I started to feel as if equations killed my parents. Reality is harsh: this world contains all kinds of things that are completely out of the reach of a third-year junior high school student. But still I did my best, in collaboration with the other “mes.” I used almost all my free time increasing my knowledge of anything that seemed useful. (That said, “I” am “me” after all, so there was no parallel world with a “me” so brave as to tackle wave functions again.)
I thought if I tried hard enough, I could be by Yukari’s side. I didn’t give a second thought to the lack of contact from Yukari.
“I wonder if she’ll come back for summer vacation?”
“Sure she will. Alice might come back too. I’d love to have this thing in a shape to show off by the time they get here, though.”
“But it doesn’t really have much practical use, does it? It might mean something to me, but it doesn’t to anyone else, and I can’t even use this phone in front of other people. Oh, man, it’s frustrating. I wonder if this is how Yukari felt.”
Then it was good. I could understand how Yukari felt now. Yeah, right.
When she gets back, I’ll tell her all about it, I thought to myself. Meanwhile I wrote all the terms that seemed like they could help explain what was happening to me in a notebook and talked to myself on the phone, and I waited eagerly to see her face when she came back and saw my talent.
But in the end, she didn’t come back.
There wasn’t even a body.
✦ ✦ ✦
Be warned, reader: the story takes a sharp left turn from here.