Original Quantum Sin

"Once we have bitten the quantum apple, our loss of innocence is permanent." —R. Shankar, Principles of Quantum Mechanics

Dear Readers,

I thought I might keep my post material light for your Monday. After all, your weekend has just ended, why should I start off with a very complicated post? In the end I decided that if I was going to do that, I might as well do nothing at all, so instead I am going to jump right in and talk about a topic that has been on my mind quite a lot lately.

That topic is the concept that I like to call Original Quantum Sin. It's a lot better explained as just "decision making" but that lacks the flash (and the significance) that the term really deserves.

This got onto my mind when I saw the recent trending topics on your time-stream's Twitter. Lately there's been a lot of buzz on two films: Inglourious Basterds and District 9. One depicts an alternate past and the other an alternate present. Other than that, I won't refer to them specifically again. As an Anachronist, I have a strong aversion to spoilers, even those I know won't alter the course of history.

The idea of these films' popularity was intriguing to me, especially in light of their reality. They are both possibilities, you see. In one version of the Bible, your time stream's version, Adam and Eve eat the fruit of knowledge. In that version, God does the following: "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way [or which "transformed"], to keep the path of the tree of life." In this myth, the flaming sword can transform the "path" of the tree of life, in light of the choice that Adam and Eve made. That choice was one of many uncertain possibilites for their iconic "first choice." It is not the fruit they ate that mattered, or anything else from this Bible story. It is that they made a choice at all. That is the lesson here.

I talk about possibility. t because the things that are dreamt of in your philosophies are the things that can be in all heavens and earths. What I mean to say is that Borges made the greatest point of human history, and that our world indeed is a Garden of Forking Paths.

These paths are recognized in Quantum Mechanics, which talks about the chances that certain decisions will be made. Before such a decision is made or observed, there exist many possibilities, and so there are many forking paths that extend outward into the labyrinth of time.

Once the decision is made, however, the possibility that happened gets isolated. There is no second possibility; one thing happened, and you can no longer count on its alternatives. You can still imagine them, however. And as you imagine them, you mirror other realities, other time streams, where they are the real events. So each film that presents these alternates, real in its microcosm of your reality, is also real in some other reality where the past flowed differently from its watershed point. Maybe in these other realities they have films where they consider your world to be the fantasy.

It's that concept of fantasy that I call Original Quantum Sin. You make a choice and lose uncertainty, and you can't go back to it. There is no way to undo that choice, its time has passed. And so you have experienced that choice moment and made the decision to bite the apple, take the blue pill, or kill Mace Windu. It doesn't matter what choice you made; for my purposes, each choice is a "sin" because it biases you to believe that the events that resulted from that decision are "reality" and that the events that did not happen are "fantasy." What if you took the red pill? Would the resulting events thus become reality, and the events that "happened" become fantasy? If you are an Original Quantum Sinner, then yes. The choice you made before is the choice that defines your reality. There is no way for you to avoid this "sin."

Not so for me. Not for anyone at this University. We exist in a place where no real choice has been made, or ever will be made. In this place, we can look infinitely far forward and see all of the possibilities stemming from each decision using our Augury technology. The same technology, when invented in a time-normal context, only grants the ability to see the future, not the alternate possibilities in the past and present. It too, is a victim of Original Quantum Sin. It cannot go back or switch realities, like water flowing from a mountain into many tributaries.

What if Adam and Eve, of the myth I referenced before, did not bite the apple? What if no flaming sword transformed their path, but instead they remained naïve to the choice? And what if, in such a place where no choice was ever made, the technology for Augury somehow appeared?

We see worlds where your alternate histories really happened, or the many possible futures that stem out from your time stream itself, and we see it from a world without the "sin" of a preexisting condition. There is no "past" that defines a distinct form of reality for us. Ther are no "consequences" to our decisions. Likewise, we get very little in the way of a future, or a past. For this price--and I assure you, it is a great price that we pay to be here--we can see it all, and study it all forever, without preconceptions about the nature of reality. That is how my "Augury" shows me what I tell you, and it is how I am an Anachronist. I do not study the past, present, or future. I study other times, for no time is my own, in my prison. My "Eden."

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

"Weave a circle 'round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread."