Ostrich: A Novel (13 page)

But I hold up a hand to stop him. One look at his spit-glazed tongue, crashing against his braced teeth like an exhausted sea lion flopping onto land to escape a killer-whale attack, and I know he has no use for the lesson I’m supposed to teach him. It’s obvious from the way the saliva froths like sherbet in the corners of his mouth that he learned long ago
that life and the people in it can be cruel. Perhaps I’m softening in my old age, or perhaps I know how traumatized he must already be from meeting David Driscoll, but for whatever reason I decide to take pity on him.

“Listen,” I whisper, beckoning him close (but not so close that I’m in range if the spit bubbles detonate). “The joke’s on you.”

“W-hat choke?” he splutters before I can hold up my hand again.

“Don’t talk, just listen.” I sigh. “You’re a pawn. And I know you’ve been told if you make it all the way to the back of the bus you’ll become a queen.”

(This time my hand is quick enough to silence him preemptively.)

“But let me school you here for a second, son,” I continue, allowing myself to start imagining what a hero this will make me to this poor boy, probably for the rest of his life. “It’s an ambush.”

(I wonder how he’ll thank me. I guess it all depends on what he does when he grows up. I suppose with his speech impediment he’s unlikely to become a theologian or a therapist or a scientist or a sage, so maybe one day he’ll be an artist or an architect or an alchemist, in which case he might want to erect a statue of me. (I’d insist on something simple. Maybe a
Gulliver’s Travels
motif, like a forty-foot me bowed down (to symbolize my humility) with a child (to-scale) standing in my palm, gazing up at me through eyes full of wonder and renewed hope in humanity. Or maybe I’m releasing him into the air like a dove, so he can fly away on wings made of my infinite
compassion. But either way, nothing too ostentatious, maybe marble or bronze (unless he does become an alchemist, in which case I suppose gold would have to do).))

“David Driscoll,” I say, nodding conspiratorially to the front of the bus. “Looks like a spotty Irish Tintin. He’s the one who sent you, isn’t he?”

The Year 5 nods (normally).

“And he told you to ask how my mum’s piano lessons were going, didn’t he?”

This time he shakes his head.

“He jus thaid
it
.”

“Said what?”

“He jus thaid to arse you house it gong.”

“No, he didn’t,” I say, wiping dry my cheek (subtly, pretending to readjust my cap, so as not to cause offense). “He said to ask how my mum’s piano lessons were going. Because if you’d just said how’s
it
going, it wouldn’t have made any sense when I told you my mum had no arms.”

“Your mumps got no amps?” he asks, suddenly frightened.

“No,” I explain patiently, congratulating myself for not impersonating the boy and renewing my resolve not to start. “My mum has plenty of arms. That’s how this works. You ask about my mum’s piano lessons and I act all upset because my mum doesn’t have any arms, and then you start crying, when actually all along there was nothing wrong with my mum, which David Driscoll knew perfectly well or he wouldn’t have sent you here in the first place. Because if she really didn’t have any arms, then the joke would have been on me instead of on you.” I pause, considerately, to let him catch up. Then I smile benevolently
down at him for long enough to really sear the image on his retinae, just in case he should want to re-create it at a later date in materials of his choosing. “But don’t worry,” I continue eventually, “because I’m not gonna do that to you, on account of my infinite compassion. So instead we’re just going to pretend that all of what I just said was meant to happen
has
happened, and that way the joke’s not on either of us.”

For some reason the Year 5 still seems confused.

“But he jus thaid to arse ith you whir okay,” he says, the spit webbing his lips like ducks’ feet and starting to annoy me.

(I count to ten before replying.)

“That’s not a joke,” I explain, calmly.

“Tho what?” asks the Year 5, insubordinately.

“Tho, he didn’t thay vat,” I say.

I can see his eyes start to bubble.

“I’m sorry,” I thay, internalizing my growing impatience. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m trying to help you out here, kid. Try and understand. This is all a joke.”

“Ven who sit on?” he foams.

“It’s on David,” I snap, “because his mum’s dead!”

The second before the Year 5 bursts spectacularly into tears David Driscoll pops up at the front of the bus and looks over. Very slightly, more with his eyebrows than with his head, but at the same time absolutely unmistakably, he nods at me.

Even though it was practically undetectable to the naked eye, David Driscoll’s nod leads me to pursue some fairly massive trains of thought. To help me manage them, I open my
Maths exercise book to a new page (while Mr. Carson drones on about quadratic equations, which I mastered in Year 5) and divide it into two equal columns. The first one I label “For” and the second one “Against.”

In the
Star Trek
episode “Mirror, Mirror,” the crew of the
Enterprise
ends up in a parallel universe called Mirror Universe, where they meet their evil twins, who are identical to them in every way imaginable except that their moral compasses are completely inverted so they don’t prick themselves when they do something wrong (and Spock has a goatee). This makes the inhabitants of the Mirror Universe the exact opposites of the
Enterprise
crew, because they have only one thing different.

Scientifically, this pretty much all checks out.

My favorite thing about Science is how it’s not always that different from Religion, which is probably why they make such good opposites. For example, a lot of scientists still believe that there is a cat in a box in Copenhagen that is both alive and dead simultaneously. The reason they believe this is that in Copenhagen subatomic particles exist in two quantum states at the same time (which means they’re in two places at once) until, that is, someone observes them. When someone does observe one of these subatomic particles it stops being in two places at once and starts being in one place at once. This is an example of the Uncertainty Principle, because if you can’t ever catch a subatomic particle out (which you can’t, because literally the second you see them they stop being so schizo), then you can’t really ever know for certain too much about them.

The scientists who believe in the Uncertainty Principle remind me of Mr. Carson when he’s writing problems on the
board and he’s convinced that David Driscoll is misbehaving behind his back. However quickly he spins round he never catches David doing anything wrong. However, this only makes him more annoyed, because rather than taking the sight of David doing nothing wrong as evidence of his innocence, Mr. Carson uses it to reinforce his belief that the act of observation has altered David’s behavior. What this means is that the more Mr. Carson turns round and the less he sees David impersonating him having his stroke, the more convinced he becomes that it’s happening.

There is, though, one main difference between the scientists in Copenhagen and Mr. Carson.

Mr. Carson is usually right.

However, today he isn’t. Today, when he breaks off mid-equation to pivot round toward us with a speed and accuracy you would associate sooner with a professional ballerina than a forty-year-old Maths teacher with a face like the Countdown Clock (because ever since the stroke only one side of it works), he finds David in his usual quantum state of good behavior.

“Driscoll!” he booms, through the good side of his face.

“Sir?” asks David, as though melted butter would resolidify in his mouth.

“Now what are you up to?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Yes, I can see that,” says Mr. Carson, frustration ripping wavelike through the good side of his brow. “Don’t be cute.”

But David wasn’t being cute (by which Mr. Carson means clever, which is something he’d never accuse David Driscoll of
being). The entire time Mr. Carson had his back turned David was diligently transcribing the equation into his exercise book. And when I looked over at him to confirm the lack of ill discipline in my periphery,
he smiled at me
.

Which brings me on to the cat.

The reason someone decided to put a cat in a box in Copenhagen is because he didn’t believe that something could be in two places at once and then suddenly stop being the second someone saw it. His name was Erwin Schrödinger (which is easy to remember (
S
cientists
C
rave
H
ealthy
R
eason
O
ver
D
arkness
I
n
G
eneral
E
xcept
R
eality)), and the point of his experiment was to prove that it didn’t make sense to have one rule for subatomic particles and another rule for pet-sized ones. In his experiment, a cat was put in a box with a tiny bit of radioactive material and a Geiger Counter (
G
amma
E
asily
I
s
G
ettable
E
specially
R
adiation), which was hooked up to a Diabolical Mechanism. This is really bad news for the cat, because if a single atom of the radioactive material decays, then the Geiger Counter will twitch, which will trigger the boot, which will kick the bucket, which will release the marble, which will topple the tower, which will dislodge the ball, which will fall on the diving board, which will propel the diver, which will unleash the hammer, which will smash the vial, which will release the gas, which will kill the cat.

The reason that Schrödinger’s Cat is such an important experiment in Science is that it demonstrates a huge flaw in the
way quantum mechanics works in Copenhagen. Which is this: If you believe that a subatomic particle is in two places at once until it is observed, then you believe that the radioactive material both decays
and
doesn’t decay simultaneously, which means you believe that until you take the lid off the box to have a look, the cat is both
alive and dead
. This is a bit like saying that until Mr. Carson turns round to check, David is simultaneously impersonating him
and
not impersonating him. In other words, it makes absolutely as much sense as Dad refusing to watch penalty shoot-outs in case he affects the outcome. Which is why most intelligent people now believe in Many Worlds.

(
“Freeze!”
screams Mr. Carson, swiveling round again like a sheriff in a Western. But the problem in the class is sitting quietly, so reluctantly he turns back to the one on the board.)

In the
Star Trek
episode, Captain Kirk finds himself aboard the
ISS Enterprise
, which is the exact equivalent of the
USS Enterprise
in a parallel dimension. This is completely realistic because of Many Worlds Theory. Many Worlds Theory agrees with the Not So Great Danes in one major respect: that a subatomic particle
can
be in two places at once. However, it has a much better explanation for what happens inside the cat trap. According to MWT, the cat really is alive and dead simultaneously inside the box. However, the cute part is when you open it up. Because when you do that in MWT instead of
making one of the cats (i.e., the living one or the dead one) magically stop existing, what you actually do is lift the lid on one reality
while at the same time another you opens the lid on the other one
. (This is all actually kind of obvious if you think about it (which I am now doing), because if subatomic particles are allowed to be in two places at once in Copenhagen, then why shouldn’t they be allowed to be in two places at once everywhere else in the world? And, more important, if subatomic particles are allowed to be in two places at once everywhere in the world, then why aren’t we? (I think the only reason people have such a hard time accepting that there’s an infinite number of thems in an infinite number of parallel realities is because it makes them feel less special, especially when the alternative is to believe that they’re so special they can bring a dead cat back to life just by looking at it.))

This time when Mr. Carson turns round he notices that the two columns I have divided my exercise book into have approximately nothing to do with quadratic equations. After sidling up to me and reading the page over my shoulder he does nothing about this, a fact which I subsequently record in the “For” column. So far it reads:

When Mr. Carson returns to the board (pausing en route to check on his unlicensed tribute act, who immediately continues to not misbehave), I think about the look Mum got in her eyes last night when I asked her about moving the bed and decide to whisper her back in at 6) using an HB pencil. Meanwhile, at the board Mr. Carson wipes out the first line of workings to make room for the solution. Noticing I haven’t taken any of the workings down, David nudges me.

“Do you need to copy?” he mouths, showing me his transcript.

I shake my head and turn back to my list. But he nudges me again.

“What you doing May twenty-second?”

I shake my head again.

“My birthday,” he whispers. “I’m thirteen. Gonna be a party at my house. You’re invited.”

Here’s the thing that doesn’t make sense: If I had to characterize the way in which everyone’s behavior has been schizo lately, I’d say it’s that (with the exception of Jaws 2) they’re all being nice to me. However, in
Star Trek
, when Captain Kirk encounters people from his parallel reality, they’re the Evil Twin versions of everyone he knows. This is almost always the case on TV and in films, which suggests that if I have somehow
passed through a portal into another world, I must have been living in the Evil Twin version to begin with. I add this observation to the “Against” column, where it slots in at 3), after 1) Goatees and 2)
HOW THE F***?