Sentient Glitter

a black sphere streaks across a black background, trailing a purple and blue aurora like a comet streaking through deep space

“The thing is, none of that shit is real.  Nothing is real, and I can prove it.  Pick any molecule in existence.  If that molecule was a solar system, that is, if some atom in a molecule in a mitochondrion in a cell in your body was the size of the sun, its electrons are somewhere out past Pluto. Most of you is empty space. 

Wait, it gets worse.  I can prove you don’t exist.  Science is fantastic.  I mean, I get why people think they’re just making stuff up, because quantum physics is bonkers.

Because if you get down that small, if you’re looking at electrons, first of all you’re using the most advanced science we’ve ever scienced, machines the size of cities, billions of dollars of infrastructure.  And it still barely works.  You’re trying to catch ghosts.  Really you are because the only way you see quantum particles is smashing them into each other and taking a photo.

I’m not kidding.  This is science.  That’s what they do at the CERN super-collider, which is why they call it a collider.

But think about that.  They’re seeking the building blocks of all we know, and you’d think it would be obvious.  I mean, we’re made of atoms, everything is made of atoms, but atoms don’t really seem to be made of anything at all.

You can know where a quantum particle was, or you can know where it’s going.  You cannot, cannot by the fundamental structure of the universe, know both.  They’re like cockroaches: if you turn on the light they disappear under the cabinets. I mean it, if you locate a quantum particle, the act of looking at it makes it change direction.

Imagine you’re at a baseball game and you’re looking at something else.  Like there’s someone on the jumbotron who doesn’t know her nip has slipped or whatever is distracting you.  And you hear the crack as the batter hits the ball and so you look and you looking makes that sweet long drive to the unguarded right field suddenly in midair veer to the left and land in the midfielder’s glove.

That’s what doing quantum physics is like.  At a million bucks a throw.

Here’s the even worse bit:  in the end the odds of finding any one particle in any one given state or location are just that, odds.  There is no certainty at the bottom of reality.  Just chance.  Your particles come and go, fluctuate in and out of being, are at best potentialities that walk and talk and wear pants and think they’re in charge of some shit when you don’t even really exist. You are seafoam on an ever-cresting wave sweeping through time and space, sentient glitter that winks in and out of existence faster than you or I can imagine.

So why the fuck does it matter which bathroom I use?”